It came as little surprise a full week before the release of the new Nvidia RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs that scalpers were already attempting to gouge on RTX 50 graphics cards, cards they didn't even have. But what, exactly, can be done? AIB GPU maker Zotac may have a solution, selling cards directly to gamers via Discord.
To quote Zotac on Discord (via VideoCardz), "we want to reward real gamers and active members by giving you the chance to secure a slot to purchase a Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5080 or 5090—no bots, no scalpers, just my fellow gamers."
The post explains that participants must be active members of the Zotac Gaming Discord who get involved in various "challenges and discussions" and that any cheating or manipulation will result in disqualification.
Beyond that it's not clear exactly how Zotac is choosing successful members. Inevitably, all this raises questions over how access to purchase slots can all be effectively policed. Almost immediately, posters on Reddit observed that, "the Discord server is being flooded with new people spamming their way to 'engagement'. Feels like a bot-race all over again."
The initial ickiness we felt as a team when we first saw this story is echoed in those concerns. Instantly the idea of only getting access to new, scarce graphics cards if you genuflect to a manufacturer and show yourself to be some sort of true fan, for just the opportunity alone to play full price for a GPU, well, it doesn't feel great. Neither does the idea of having to take part in challenges to get in line.
However, it's also been noted that Zotac has reportedly created a separate private channel for long-time Zotac Discord members in order to make sure at least some of them get access to the cards. So, fair play to the company for giving loyal users the opportunity away from bots et al, so long as it is genuinely monitoring whether those users are really long-time folk.
Ultimately, no attempt to exclude scalpers is likely to be entirely successful. But equally this move by Zotac will surely put a few RTX 50 cards into the hands of gamers that would otherwise have been snapped up by bots and flipped for profit.
Of course, this is also a fairly labour-intensive way of going about selling GPUs. So, it's not entirely reasonable to expect every AIB card maker to conduct a similar program. But it would be nice to see a few more do something similar.
Some of the comments surrounding Zotac's program are also a timely reminder that the current situation isn't actually the end of the world. As one Redditor sagely observed, "patience is all you need. I got my 4090 about five months after launch, new for $1,600 MSRP. People just need to learn to wait. It ain't a big deal."
That can be difficult advice to swallow, given how used we all are to the instant gratification of modern online commerce. The idea of having to wait for something really jars. But maybe we all just need to recalibrate our expectations.
Instead of viewing GPU release dates as general availability dates, view them as the date from which you can get in line. And if you don't want to get in line, you don't have to. It's not the end of the world.
