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Gaming’s biggest controversies of 2020

By Elliott Gatica

LOS ANGELES, CA - JUNE 10: A Playstation 4 controller is displayed at the Sony Playstation E3 2013 press conference June 10, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. Thousands are expected to attend the annual three-day convention to see the latest games and announcements from the gaming industry.(Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CA - JUNE 10: A Playstation 4 controller is displayed at the Sony Playstation E3 2013 press conference June 10, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. Thousands are expected to attend the annual three-day convention to see the latest games and announcements from the gaming industry.(Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images) /
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Next-gen console pre-order and post-release fiasco

The 2019 Game Awards briefly showed and confirmed that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X would be releasing the year after, but with little information until midyear at the earliest. When Sony unveiled their hardware and the prices in which they will launch at , Microsoft followed. It’s all healthy competition, and gamers were eager with their credit cards to pre-order these the moment they were listed on the many retail sites out there.

What happened next was a technical nightmare. The biggest online retailers were so backed up with overwhelming user requests for pre-orders that they would crash or have problems loading. While many people secured a day-one copy for themselves, many were left disappointed with additional salt in the wounds with the fact that they had the consoles in their carts but then went out of stock in what felt like a matter of seconds.

While Sony and Microsoft ensured customers that there’d be enough quantities to secure one, the reassuring became quieter as the days came closer to the launch dates. Some people were even told their units weren’t going to be shipped to them until 2021 because of the limited supply. What made matters worse was that before release, people’s pre-orders were being cancelled.

Then on release, as people were starting to get their new hardware, rumors started to surface about day one defects like overheating issues, hardware failure, and system crashes. Those have since then mostly been dealt with, but one more hurdle plagued consumers. Scalpers started to snag more than one console for themselves and tried to flip prices of these consoles for double or triple the MSRP. Not only did people have to compete with those with faster internet speeds or better luck, but they also had to compete in the F5 lottery against bots taking up all the copies.

The F5 lottery is basically hitting the refresh button on your browser, or F5 on your computer’s keyboard to refresh the page you are on in hopes that a restock is shown on your end. It’s basically what sneakerheads have to deal with when a limited shoe brand comes out. Even now as consoles are starting to be restocked, scalpers are still trying to flip these systems for an easy buck and trying to get desperate people to buy these systems.

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