If you accidentally slept in and missed out on the fun of refreshing store listings over and over for the chance of scoring a GeForce RTX 3080 this month, don’t worry, because it would have been a complete waste of time, anyway. Evidently, NVIDIA’s flagship GPU launch has been a bit of a disaster, with major websites imploding due to overwhelming demand. Prospective owners have taken to social media to shout, scream, and fume, claiming that the card sold out in as a little 15 seconds. Thanks, scalper bots…
the #RTX3080 sold out in 15 seconds. people who own the bots that do this shit can blow me, ebay should ban all these nerds. Stand together boys, dont buy these inflated cards, make them take the L pic.twitter.com/KRjGYFNQYO
— Wubby (@PaymoneyWubby) September 17, 2020
“This morning we saw unprecedented demand for the GeForce RTX 3080 at global retailers, including the NVIDIA online store,” wrote a forum staff member. “At 6 a.m. pacific we attempted to push the NVIDIA store live. Despite preparation, the NVIDIA store was inundated with traffic and encountered an error. We were able to resolve the issues and sales began registering normally.”
“To stop bots and scalpers on the NVIDIA store, we’re doing everything humanly possible, including manually reviewing orders, to get these cards in the hands of legitimate customers. Over 50 major global retailers had inventory at 6 a.m. pacific. Our NVIDIA team and partners are shipping more RTX 3080 cards every day to retailers.”
“We apologize to our customers for this morning’s experience.”
Here are a few gems from NVIDIA’s own forum members, which may or may not be moderated soon.
- NVIDIA CRAP LAUNCH
- COMPLETE BULLSH*T.
- I HAD the RTX 3080 IN MY CART AND IT WAS REMOVED
- The ultimate play, no stock to inflate prices and only sell a handful of FE’s
- The world’s leading AI company can’t stop footwear bots? You look like fools.
- Anyone else going to AMD now?
If you want another laugh, take a look at what’s going on at eBay. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is being listed at absolutely insane prices – as high as $80K, $65K, and $50K, in fact. This appears to be the work of one pissed-off enthusiast who was shafted by scalpers and decided to return the favor with his own bot, which is purposely inflating prices and ruining listings.
Legendary. pic.twitter.com/CZOTruEHEb
— Cyberpunk 2077 Countdown (@CP2077Countdown) September 17, 2020
Let’s hope that the launches for the GeForce RTX 3090 (September 24) and GeForce RTX 3070 (October 15) fare a bit better. While the GeForce RTX 3080’s current stock kerfuffle is nothing to brag about, it really attests to NVIDIA’s popularity in the GPU market.