New PS5 stock was released today, but before it went on sale, scalpers bought up the entire stock, leaving PlayStation fans with little chance to grab an order. Today, UK retailer Argos surprised PlayStation fans with new PS5 stock, but unfortunately, scalpers exploited a loophole to purchase the stock before it even went live to consumers. More specifically, and according to a new report citing several sources, scalpers were able to get their hands on the stock not just moments before it went live, but a whole day before it went live, and the loophole to facilitate this was quite simple.
According to the report, a group of scalpers by the name of Express Notify got access to the sale links before they went public, and shared them in a premium Discord server, allowing members to gobble up as much of the stock as they wanted.
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Thankfully, the retailer was able to shut down the loophole before the entire stock sold out, but by the time the stock went live for the public, it was lighter as a result, and thus went even quicker than normal. And of course, there were still other issues as well, such as website problems, amplifying the debacle.
Responding to the report, Argos has confirmed that the loophole has been closed, and thus won’t be a problem going forward. That said, right now, the retailer hasn’t disclosed how much stock was lost to the exploit or whether or not anything is being done to void these orders.
“It’s clear our customers are excited for the new PlayStation,” said an official spokesperson for Argos. “We released a small amount of additional stock and have seen huge numbers of customers trying to place their orders with us and we have now sold out.”
Of course, Argos is far from the first retailer to have issues with scalpers and the bots they use to gobble up stock of not just the PS5, but the Xbox Series X. Just the other week, one scalper publicly bragged about securing 2,000 PS5 orders from a single GAME restock.
The problem has gotten so out of hand, that it’s actually starting to attract the attention of various government officials, some of which are looking to take down the practice through legislation.
At the moment of publishing, there’s no known PS5 restock coming today, but surprise drops are still very much on the table at this hour.
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