It was a DDOS, basically. 

Systom

 
https://www.pcmag.com/new...sumers-could-grab-them

This article goes over how someone bought 40 FE cards
 
 
edit: and nVidia made a statement about bots and scalpers: https://www.nvidia.com/en...ia-store-availability/

There needs to be transparency like going forward let us know launch day for bots on September 17 at 6 am. Second and third bot release will be on October 2nd and October 24th at 6 am. Expect consumer availability to be in November through December.

Straykatt
There needs to be transparency like going forward let us know launch day for bots on September 17 at 6 am. Second and third bot release will be on October 2nd and October 24th at 6 am. Expect consumer availability to be in November through December.

November through December? Which year?

q5sys

Cerulean_Shaman

oVerRateD

Systom

 
https://www.pcmag.com/new...sumers-could-grab-them

This article goes over how someone bought 40 FE cards

And yet tons of people, including EVGA mods and tech staff, continue to deny the existence of bots or any meaningful influence on stock because they cHeCk iF aNyTHinG SeeMs oFf. 
 
Probably just checking that they actually have enough money, is all, and then a good 'ol RIGHT THIS WAY GOOD SIR. Only one address to ship 200 cards to? Wonderful!

I have a friend who works with one of those bot systems for buying other things, he normally only buys one or two and doesn't go crazy with it, but its not hard for a single person to get multiple valid addresses.  If you live in a area that's built up you're sure to have several of those private mail depot places that are like PO Boxes but not at the Post Office and accept mail from UPS and FedEx.  The place around me runs boxes for $6 a month, and you can have a 1 month contract.  I could walk in and for $50 walk out with 8 different addresses.  And since the zip code here is used by like 6 towns, I can change the town name and FedEx/UPS will still properly deliver it because they're go by the street address and zip code. 
If you're in an area with multiple of those locations on person could easily have 20 physical addresses to use.

Yep on the addresses.  People have to also understand:
 
- There are all sorts of anti-captcha techniques with bots and various other things they do to appear human (mouse movement, etc)
- They have some sort of more direct / back end access to these online retail systems, so the bot can get in and execute orders before the average consumer would even see the item is for sale.  In the screen shot above, you can see it is trying to check out on the Nvidia site at 8:33 am, well before the front end went live at 9AM - all the cards were long gone by then, which is why it went OOS immediately.
- There are multiple profiles that people set up ahead of time for the bot to use, with temp credit cards, fake names etc.  The bot just feds those into the retail system.
- In the case of Bounce, I gather that individuals are not running the bots at home on their own machine, they are a client of a bot server(s) that they log onto and provide their profiles to and the target product/website, then the server with it's FAST and direct internet connection does the heavy lifting of repeatedly checking the retail servers and placing orders.
- The bot designers are constantly creating custom bots to overcome countermeasures. 
 
It's really crazy, you will never beat a bot in this situation.  The race is over before you've even gotten to the starting line.
 

oVerRateD
 
Nvidia just admitted to bots: https://www.nvidia.com/en...ia-store-availability/

Lol at the official thread having over 600 down votes. 

I learned a lot about bots and cockroaches, and kids jumping on my lap

Bounce alerts, well at least I can buy my shoes from the same guy who bought all the video cards.

I've learned a lot about sneaker bots too in the last few days, I had no idea how sophisticated they were. 

 
"leaned"   LOL