How do you prevent moneychangers from buying the latest graphics cards and computer processors? Electronics retailer Newegg is responding with a lottery system that will distribute the products on demand to participating consumers.
The only problem? Well, it looks like you have to buy each product with a motherboard.
On Wednesday, the company briefly published a web page for the “Newegg Shuffle” event, which Reddit users saw. The system works like this: during a three-hour window, consumers can enter the lottery of the product they want to buy. Newegg will then draw the winners on the same day and notify them by email, eliminating the first come, first served approach. Winning consumers will then have a short window of two hours to complete their purchase, or their reservation will be canceled.
Based on the webpage, the retailer used the lottery system on Nvidia’s RTX 3080 graphics cards and AMD’s Ryzen 5000 CPUs, which are sold out at all major retailers. However, none of the items could be purchased individually, according to Internet users who visited the site. Instead, they had to be purchased through business packages, increasing the total price.
As a result, the reaction to the lottery system was outrage among PC developers on Reddit. “If you click on one of the items, you’ll have a selection of combos that you can sign up for. You couldn’t sign up for an item yourself, ”wrote one user.
(Credit: Newegg)
However, the Newegg Shuffle website was taken down on Wednesday afternoon, making it uncertain whether the event is unique or whether we will see it again.
We will contact Newegg and update the story if we receive a response. But last week the retailer hinted that a lottery system was coming. “For those looking for a way to buy GPUs, CPUs and consoles, we have a long-term solution that will be out soon for important items with little supply. More information soon ”, wrote the company in a tweet.