Monday, February 10th 2025
Zotac Uses Discord to Sell RTX 50 GPUs and Stop Scalpers
Zotac has come up with a new way to fight graphics card scalping by starting a "Priority Access Campaign" on their Discord server, with a Zotac employee named Bryant making the announcement. The plan is simple and has only one main goal: to help regular buyers get a real chance of buying NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 5080 and 5090 models at the right price. These cards have been almost impossible to get because they sell out fast and end up on resale sites at high prices. Zotac says it wants to use its online community to help real gamers, not scalpers.
The process is pretty straightforward, with users being selected based on engagement in discussions and various challenges. Then, using a random number generator, eligible buyers will be selected. The campaign is already active (is limited to users in the U.S.) with special Discord channels to give out RTX 5080 models (currently Zotac has only ten RTX 5080 cards) while the RTX 5090 isn't yet available. The company has insisted on warning scalpers; each card sold via this method will have its serial number recorded, and any user caught trying to resell it at a higher price will be permanently banned from any future Zotac direct sales events or raffles. Zotac isn't the first to try this approach, in the past, companies like Newegg and NVIDIA have used lottery systems or sold directly to customers to avoid scalpers. While there is no guarantee of completely avoiding scalpers, the action is commendable and it is possible that we will see similar actions from other brands or retailers in the future.
Source:
TechSpot
The process is pretty straightforward, with users being selected based on engagement in discussions and various challenges. Then, using a random number generator, eligible buyers will be selected. The campaign is already active (is limited to users in the U.S.) with special Discord channels to give out RTX 5080 models (currently Zotac has only ten RTX 5080 cards) while the RTX 5090 isn't yet available. The company has insisted on warning scalpers; each card sold via this method will have its serial number recorded, and any user caught trying to resell it at a higher price will be permanently banned from any future Zotac direct sales events or raffles. Zotac isn't the first to try this approach, in the past, companies like Newegg and NVIDIA have used lottery systems or sold directly to customers to avoid scalpers. While there is no guarantee of completely avoiding scalpers, the action is commendable and it is possible that we will see similar actions from other brands or retailers in the future.
36 Comments on Zotac Uses Discord to Sell RTX 50 GPUs and Stop Scalpers
I'm one of those so called "buyers that don't exist" in your mind that is likely not going to buy a card because of the tarrifs.
That's the sole reason why I actually placed the order for my 5090 day one knowing full well I won't see it for some time, it's easily about to shoot outside of my price range before any scalping takes place and I actually managed to place an order that wasn't cancelled at MSRP. Even though the MSRP includes the Brazil taxes and is actually almost twice of what it costs in the United States... "Tariff man good/bad" is pretty much irrelevant in this context, IMHO.I loved this video, it upset fanboys of both brands in equal measure. What he states by Nvidia wanting to reinvent the wheel to induce vendor lock-in is both real and absolutely true, as is his point about AMD and Intel having absolutely no vision whatsoever, going with the flow and ultimately crashing along the way. Which is precisely what I meant by "never underestimate AMD's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory". Blind faith won't solve the problem: AMD does not know how to market their products and has no clear roadmap to innovation, while Intel has not put nearly as much effort in Arc so far as they should have.
- Cuda is barely supported by any software. And I think closed source.
- Double display initialisation with windows 10 pro wiht nivdia 960 gtx - but radeon does not have that issue. (extra 5 seconds wait time early 2023 - i tried again a nvidia card to see the driver quality)
- poor driver quality
- poor gnu linux support
- cuda kinda worthless since 2006 for myself with the linux kernel and gnu userspace
- i dislike the marketing
- overpriced
- raytracing which is hardly a feature to myself
- low vram
- questionable durability when looking at those repair videos
- bad graphic card power connector which may cause issues with my existing power supply, cables, mainboard
- bad quality management as that power connector is still an issue in my point of view over years.
- bad nvidia graphic card bios, which forced me to patch every single linux kernel for years.
- binary nvidia driver is picky on which linux kernel version to use - ~2 - 4 weeks wait time for last kernel support from 2006 - 2016 (i think in my case)
- ....
My speakers, audio interface, cables costs more than my 7800xt graphic card or any other pc single component.You ask for a list - you get a small list
And we both know than some months from now the situation will be very similar, because there will certainly be some earthquake, tornado or random end-of-the-world event preventing Nvidia from being less greed.
And what does your audio cable have to do with anything...