Newegg has closed a loophole that allowed frustrated enthusiasts to get their hands on a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics card without going through the retailer’s seemingly impossible lottery system. As discovered by a lucky 11-year-old from Florida named Ricardo Santana, the Newegg Shuffle could be bypassed by exploiting the mobile app version of its gaming PC builder service, which allowed users to add “hot items” that would have normally been unavailable for purchase to their cart and check out, even if they were listed as “out of stock” (in Santana’s case, an EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra). Newegg has thanked Santana for discovering the exploit, noting that over 100,000 people try their luck with the shuffle for popular items on average.
“I thought about purchasing more but don’t want to abuse it and would like to give other people the opportunity,” he told PCMag. “I’m thinking that they (Newegg) are prioritizing selling custom builds with the inventory they have for the Shuffle. I’m not sure exactly how many people are winning the Shuffle, but I tried the Shuffle so many times and never won.”