Nvidia is indicating the RTX 3080 Founders Edition card will be back in stock next week.
On Reddit, an Nvidia representative responded to a user desperate to buy the special edition product, which quickly sold out yesterday. “I can't comment for our partners but we will have more cards next week,” the Nvidia rep posted on Friday morning. “Users who previously signed up to be notified but did not get a chance to place an order will receive an email when the store has been updated with additional GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards.”
That’s good news for legions of PC gamers, who were unable to purchase the RTX 3080 on launch day. The Founders Edition card is only sold over Nvidia’s website, but resellers using automated bots managed to buy units ahead of average consumers, making the product almost impossible to obtain. To buy the card, you'll have to go to eBay, where merchants are hawking the $699 product from between $1,000 to $2,000.
The limited supply has infuriated PC gamers, who are now blasting Nvidia for the launch-day debacle. “The world's leading AI company can't stop footwear bots? You look like fools,” wrote one angry user in Nvidia’s official forums.
(Credit: Nvidia)
Nvidia’s website for the Founders Edition card had also offered to notify interested customers about the upcoming sales via email. However, many users who signed up say the email came over an hour after the sales actually began or never came, making the tool completely useless.
How Nvidia will fight the bots the next time around is unclear. But a company representative told users in the Nvidia forums it’s considering adding a CAPTCHA test on future orders to help stop automated bots from making purchases. In the meantime, Nvidia says it's manually reviewing orders made on the company’s site yesterday to filter out purchases that came from suspected bots and scalpers.
“As much as I understand people’s frustration, believe me we do not want scalpers buying our products,” an Nvidia rep wrote in a company forum post. “We would rather the purchases go to legit consumers. During our manual review process, we have proceeded to cancel several suspect orders.”
We’ve reached out to Nvidia about the Founders Edition card getting restocked, and will update the story if we hear back.
Further Reading
- How a Bot Bought Dozens of RTX 3080 Units Before Consumers Could Grab Them
- Nvidia Is Manually Reviewing RTX 3080 Orders to Stop Scalpers
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- AMD Teases Radeon 6000 'Big Navi' Graphics Cards With Fortnite Easter Egg
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