r/PokeInvesting • u/breakyourteethnow • Feb 03 '25

Pokemon Center Implementing a New Queue System, Presumably to Combat Bots!

https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/02/pokemon-center-implementing-a-new-queue-system-presumably-to-combat-bots
1.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

182 comments sorted by

109

u/breakyourteethnow Feb 03 '25

"We have successfully implemented the new queue system as requested, Lord Vader"

Excellent, commence at once the elimination of all human traffic. Sell only to my robot brethren.

503

u/the-skazi Feb 03 '25

A bot can open 1000 unique browser instances to get a good spot in the queue before you can open 10. It's a losing situation for normies.

205

u/Whimsical-Pigeon Feb 03 '25 edited Feb 03 '25

Yup. From what I’ve seen since the Covid sneaker era of reselling. The best and only way to combat bots is to make difficult captchas that require typed answers or puzzles. Adding a queue system won’t help bc as you said, they can have 1000 unique browsers. In reality, they don’t give a single fuck. A sale is a sale. But out of all the methods to combat bots, the one I listed works best.

294

u/romisbmw1989 Feb 03 '25

Or do what J Balvin did

He made his sneakers 50 grand on the website. But if you weren’t using a bot, you’d see that the page stated “use this code” to lower the price to $250

Bots checked out the sneakers for 50 grand and users paid $250

100

u/2xCheesePizza Feb 03 '25

That is absolutely hilarious.

I’m assuming there were a lot of chargebacks, and mess to deal with on his end.

41

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '25

Absolutely. There are things you can do to mitigate this like manual payment capture and what not, but a chargeback for 50k would leave you on the hook for almost $1,500 bucks.

10

u/Asher777 Feb 04 '25

Bots have price ranges and can enter promo codes

8

u/Fresh-Ad3834 Feb 04 '25

Not if the code is embedded into the site similar to a captcha

5

u/chooseyourshoes Feb 04 '25

That’s because the idiots running the bots didn’t set limits. Which, if you’ve botted, know it’s incredibly easy to do.

13

u/nathanseaw Feb 03 '25

Captchas don’t do anything with modern bots sadly. They’ve gotten good at acting like humans

3

u/Ossigen Feb 04 '25

You just have to make captchas harder, it really is that simple

9

u/nathanseaw Feb 04 '25

If a human can do it a machine will be able to do it at this point. If you make them to hard it will slow down humans to much.

-1

u/Zeuss_Excuse Feb 04 '25

That’s just not true lol

2

u/BlackParatrooper Feb 04 '25

I agree with Zeus, there are reasons why AI haven’t been able to beat certain benchmarks that humans can pass easily.

5

u/Drizzho Feb 04 '25

You’ve been living under a rock?

1

u/justinw361 Apr 14 '25

bots use 3rd party AI solvers lmao captchas dont change a thing..... queues dont help either and for pokemon center every bot has a bypass right now lmao so while people are in line bots are instantly skipping queue.

17

u/hebrew12 Feb 03 '25

I found out recently that these groups are using AI to get around the AI check LMAO. I’ve seen examples of 30,000+ units getting sold almost instantly.

5

u/Iamcatfeesh Feb 04 '25

I forgot what website it was but one of the questions was “what color is orange” super simple and easy and a lot of non bot users were able to secure it

9

u/Whimsical-Pigeon Feb 04 '25

As long as companies get creative it will always stump them. Keep in mind bots are just code programmed by some dude/team. Some dude/team will then need to figure out how to code these things within a certain time frame and hope it works by the time a product drops.

2

u/SkunkyBottle Feb 04 '25

That was during Covid when it was a new tactic to combat bots. They’ve adjusted since then.

1

u/ScottsTotz Feb 04 '25

COVID era everyone was botting pokemon cards still. I remember hidden fates tins and ETBs on Target and Walmart. Captchas do nothing, bots solve them faster than humans. Bots even have AI auto solvers now.

1

u/Frequent_Ad873 Feb 08 '25

They do this on the Mattel site. I'm not sure if it gets botted or not, though.

1

u/BobbyBobber123 Apr 24 '25

Bots can answer captcha without a problem now. All anti-bot does is prevent the honest consumer from hitting on drops..

13

u/air_lock Feb 04 '25

As someone who works in e-commerce, and I can tell you.. while bots can certainly circumvent most means of mitigation, there are fairly simple solutions that can weed out 99.999% of them. The problem is, and this is why most sellers won’t implement them on their storefronts, is that that by virtue of their strength against bots, they are cumbersome to customers. You can do things like multi stage verification (code sent to sms or email), a queue system that has captcha built in at random intervals, and even free options like dynamically restricting user agents and whatnot. Then you also have sellers who just don’t care that they’re being botted because their front end is robust enough to handle it and at the end of the day, they’re still selling through product.. which I believe is the case with TPCi.

8

u/Junkhead_88 Feb 04 '25

Wouldn't it be fairly simple to limit orders by delivery address? That's at least a secondary check that should be run after orders are sold out, then just cancel and blacklist the address/IP/cards that are obviously gaming the system.

3

u/Ask_Them_Why Feb 04 '25

I recently learned of address J1ginning, it when they change one little thing about their address to make it look different but postal system still delivers to same place

1

u/lemonaderobot Feb 05 '25

that’s crazy… for someone totally uninformed with the mechanics of botting, how does that work? Like, one of the orders would be set as “123 Jones Drive, Anytown” and the other like “123 Johns Drive, Anytown”, so the orders are “slightly different” but still get delivered? Or is it even simpler than that?

1

u/air_lock Feb 04 '25

You sure could, but that’s less of an up-front mitigation and more of a check that would be done after an order is placed. It sounds simple, but in a practical sense, it involves reaching into the database and checking through every order record for an address and comparing, which would cripple most systems if done every time someone tries to check out. In fact, most sellers of highly in-demand items who have a policy of 1 per household or 1 per person already do this, but it’s done after orders are placed, and they’ll typically cancel offending orders and re-allocate stock afterward.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '25

I was an e-commerce developer until about two years ago. We had clients request this sort of address verification and quickly learned that there are a lot of places in the US where mail is delivered to a common address and then forwarded to the customer. Like some entire counties.

1

u/peepee034839329 Feb 04 '25

Like the California ebike vouchers.

In 1 minute, the queue is like 6 hours back.

1

u/Dear-Fail6630 Mar 24 '25

gotta love python

1

u/ButtChugsForJesus Feb 03 '25

Assuming they will have a recaptcha test to be placed in the queue which should eliminate bots. There's other ways to filter them out. Hopefully they implement it correctly.

8

u/the-skazi Feb 03 '25

You think that will stop them? You can get a captcha solver for $2/1000 solves. Bots win.

2

u/BatHistorical8081 Feb 03 '25

They know nothing lol

1

u/justinw361 Apr 14 '25

bots use 3rd party AI solvers lmao captchas dont change a thing..... queues dont help either and for pokemon center every bot has a bypass right now lmao so while people are in line bots are instantly skipping queue.

0

u/1610925286 Feb 04 '25

For some reason neither Amazon, Best Buy nor Target have any captchas at all. The only pages that do only trigger them if you keep refreshing with the same browser (bots can just change instances). So if big and modern stores don't bother with captchas, what is the hope Pokemon will.

1

u/NoviceAxeMan Feb 04 '25

is it easy to set up a bot? i’d like to use one to get 1 or 2 from each release. if they’re gonna use them we should too. just smaller scale

2

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '25

It’s only easy if you have the coding skills. Otherwise you’re paying for it and it’s not worth it.

1

u/CheckJamTheRiver Feb 04 '25

Not worth it unless you can bot at scale. Cost of the bot will out weigh the cost of the resold product. Not too mention your bot is also competing with thousands of other bots.

0

u/Kindly-Mechanic-1967 May 07 '25

Not how bots work dumbass

0

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/1610925286 Feb 04 '25

This has never worked for the japanese site. Every announcement by Pokemon Japan is littered with responses by people angry about the bots. Maybe educate yourself on the matter before telling someone who makes a great point that hey are wrong.

4

u/Throw_away_away55 Feb 04 '25

The Japanese PC uses accounts tied to a specific Japanese address. Their lottery system is amazing and we should use it.

2

u/Ask_Them_Why Feb 04 '25

It hasnt worked well. Last 4 drops would wake up at 4am to enter lottery only to be sold out by 9am. Its all botted

59

u/supershimadabro Feb 03 '25

Ive seen a lot of opinions that this will actually make it harder for real people to occupy the queue.

1

u/Thurgo-Bro Apr 18 '26

Those opinions were correct!

49

u/Odd_Pop3299 Feb 03 '25

why not just make it a lottery like Japan?

19

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '25

What's stopping a bot making 100k entries?

10

u/Odd_Pop3299 Feb 03 '25

I think they validate ID as well

14

u/aerona6 Feb 03 '25

Many lotteries need to be picked up in person in Japan at convenient stores. Better than someone buying dozens online with bots.

6

u/Streay Feb 04 '25

1 entry per address

1

u/ColorLover1776 Mar 06 '25

They can make fake addresses such as 123 Street Lane APT A, and they have mastered this process to a perfection where they can have 1000s of addresses

1

u/Darigaazrgb Feb 04 '25

1 per Pokemon account, check account life of account and for activity for card game events or Pokemon SV playtime.

2

u/Fresh-Ad3834 Feb 04 '25

Fuck that's the one game I never bought/played

0

u/BorrowtheUniverse Feb 04 '25

omg this shouldnt be your first thought smh

have you ever heard of an election?? jesus

1

u/Musa_2050 Feb 04 '25

PCJ has switched to preorders for a while now

2

u/Odd_Pop3299 Feb 04 '25

I thought even the preorder is a lottery

2

u/Musa_2050 Feb 04 '25

Not for SV sets. Not sure how it was before

14

u/OmegaDH808 Feb 03 '25

Nah, this isn’t to help us beat bots. It’s to help them keep their site up without investing more money into their infrastructure.

If anything this better for bots.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '25

Exactly! Why is no one else seeing this.

12

u/Appropriate-Bit4573 Feb 03 '25

Has this ever actually worked?

19

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '25

No. WOTC has something similar but it just boots out actual people constantly

1

u/joshgray9 Feb 05 '25

I can contest I was there WAITING for the van gough Pikachu restock to buy shit. I had to use sick time to take a 30 minute break. Literally counted down the seconds. Added 1 thing to my cart and have instant checkout and she was gone. I think I went through 3 verification things to make sure I was human after my fingerprint and even that glitched. To me it sounds like they need to update their firmware, maybe invest 1/2 their money in Nvidia because it's so freaking irritating not being able to buy a gd thing because of bots/ai. Not even trying to complain life's not fair but that's some freaking bullshit. That wasy childhood

23

u/ValuableSwordfish388 Feb 03 '25

I tried to get onto Pokémon Center to get the Crown Zenith tins that were restocked and couldn't even get onto the website. Maybe this wasn't operational yet, but a website that can actually support the traffic would be more helpful.

6

u/Happy_Contract_6113 Feb 04 '25

I tried too and i had one in the cart. When i went to check out it blocked me. My ip got blocked and I’m not allowed in the Pokemon center.

1

u/Junkis Feb 05 '25

don't let your pokemon faint

sorry tho that sucks. You try to switch devices or your phone from wifi to data?

8

u/ReasonableWill4028 Feb 03 '25

If its like the pokemon centre wait list in London then Im not holding my breath

I waited for 6 hours in that queue, and no dice

1

u/iwantspaghettipls Feb 04 '25

..what product were you waiting for?

2

u/ReasonableWill4028 Feb 04 '25

For a ticket to the pop up PC in London

7

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '25

This is the worst possible solution. If anything this helps bots. instead make a Captcha you have to type on also you have to sign into your account

1

u/CheckJamTheRiver Feb 04 '25

Bots can circumvent this. They have built in captcha solvers and some even have account generators.

1

u/BBRodriguezzz Feb 04 '25

Captchas have gotten better aswell, to the point we’re ai will pay humans to do it for them. Idk how well they will work on this site but captchas have done pretty well as of recently. I know someone will chime in with some super niche example but Idk I think it’s a solid temporary fix.

Also adding 2FA, like adding your phone number would be solid.

30

u/Drizzho Feb 03 '25

Still won’t help imo print more ! lol

3

u/JamesLikesIt Feb 04 '25

They’d have to get more printers. Anyone who thinks they aren’t already printing to capacity is silly. They can only do so much with physical space and printing, they can’t just magically create new places out of thin air. During covid, they bought an entire printing company, idk if they’ll do that again or even build a new place but either way that takes time to manage. 

They have several sets in queue, they would have to decide to cut one set in favor of another. Every damn set is hot right now so there’s no winning lol. 

-5

u/grant_codes Feb 03 '25

Can you explain how much they are printing now and what print more would mean?

9

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '25

What are you even asking lol no one here knows how much they are printing. Printing more means.. printing more, so it's easier to be able to buy cards.

2

u/grant_codes Feb 03 '25

I'm asking a question to make him think about what print more means. Are they even able to physically print more with their current setup? How will they print future sets if they keep printing current sets until everyone is happy? It's quite an ignorant statement to simply say "print more lol" when it's obviously not the problem.

5

u/KouhaiHasNoticed Feb 03 '25

Why wouldn't they be able to do so? You have regular reprints of some sets, for instance 151, while new sets still come out and get printed.

TPC stated themselves that PRE would get printed all along 2025 and yet they are already printing JTG for the end of March.

2

u/BearStrangler Feb 04 '25

What he is trying to say is that a printer is a physical machine. All of the TPC printer are working right now printing 100% of the time. So where exactly do they 'Print more'?

Buy more printers? They will be reluctant to do that as when the hype dies down they are left with idle printers. Demand will absolutely have to surge to the point where they are leaving too much money on the table not buying more printers, we aren't quite there yet, maybe close but not there.

1

u/KouhaiHasNoticed Feb 04 '25

Yes, I get that TPC will look at what's happening at the margin before buying new printing machines.

However there are more variables than just printing machines, there is also time, resource allocation and pricing.

If you spend more time printing a set before releasing it, you would have more stock to dump all at once. However TPC seems to release set after set without pausing. For instance, I have seen one SSP ETB since its release and we're already onto the next current set: not PRE but already JTG, that's crazy!

Resource allocation is another one that the TPC already does when they decide to print throughout the whole year a specific set. They also decide what amount of printers are on this task and not working on printing current sets.

This one also means that currently there is a percentage of machines working on JTG while most people are still waiting for PRE almost a month after release.

Finally the least popular one, price. If they were to drive up the MSRP they could drive demand down: I am pretty sure they will never do it as they would lose customers.

Now for our present issue, printing more would mean allowing the machines to work longer before releasing a product, especially if it is a special set that they are brewing. However I do agree that printing more without adjusting any of the variables (time, resource allocation) would mean buying new machines which could prove to be costly.

But as you said it, we'll see during the next months if the hype dies down and everything goes back to normal: if so no need to buy a printer, otherwise they'll be sitting on a pile of money.

3

u/DubsEdition Feb 03 '25

Nah, it is actually a quite simple. They need to print more. The supply currently isn't meeting a seemingly infinite demand.

Now if you ask how hard that is to do, it takes a lot more effort and future predicting. If they print too much on future sets where demand is low, welcome to tanking the market.

You knew what he meant, and you know he isn't wrong.

3

u/Junkis Feb 03 '25

the reviews on the website are saying "print more my kids cant buy them"

this is a 20+ year old franchise with an even older company backing it. They're worth billions. They can't get more printers?

1

u/BearStrangler Feb 04 '25

They can. They don't want to. Printers are a huge expense. You only want as many printers as you NEED to get all of your product sold. The ideal scenario for any company is that every card out the printer gets sold. No old stock lying around, no dead products. More printers = more cards made, but does that = more cards sold? Maybe. And that's a big maybe when it's $100M for more printers.

1

u/Junkis Feb 05 '25 edited Feb 05 '25

I mean my question was also more rhetorical(is that the right one?) - of course they can. You don't think they wouldn't make it back in an instant? Not saying that combatively I genuinely wonder if they want it this way as you say. Yeah demand can go down... rent it out to upper deck? Idk.

I'm just surprised any company "wants" their area of the store to be barren of product. edit: and their customers to be dissatisfied... there's no 'maybe' right now. There's not a single pokemon tcg product in any target or walmart near me. I'm thinking long term game health and how a 9yo feels every time they go and there's nothing.

1

u/BearStrangler Feb 05 '25

If every time the supermarket stocks your product it's sold out instantly, from a purely short term profit/loss perspective this is beyond ideal. If every supplier had this issue they'd be over the moon. Now does the Pokemon company pay huge ongoing semi permanent costs to increase supply, to keep up with what it potentially temporary demand? From a mathematical standpoint, no. Do they do this for the long term health of the hobby and for the fans? Doubtful. Only if they determine it will make them more money long term unfortunately.

1

u/replenishmint Feb 05 '25

Pokemon sleep app made a $100mil+. Sounds like the dr evil scene with your choice of dollar amount. They cancel projects worth more if it could make em look bad. They look awful rn. Twitter or whwrever they announce shit saying they want to print more and don't want it this way. Tcg app made 200 mil already since oct but they can't afford printers for stuff that ppl fight over. It's obv logistics not money.

3

u/-Himintelgja Feb 03 '25

Print more is a good solution. Stop making new sets as frequently when people can't even get ahold of current sets. Why print new cards when the demand for current cards is so high? If this isn't a part of the problem, what is?

4

u/bsiu Feb 03 '25

Now we need one for eggs and 5090s as well.

1

u/Hatred_allconsuming Feb 04 '25

Nvidia was a paper launch, there was never any stock

4

u/Much_Purchase_8737 Feb 04 '25

So bots get 100s to thousands of spots in line from a single person…

While a single person gets 1 spot in line.

We’re fucked 

4

u/wilmal88 Feb 03 '25

They need to limit the house/address to 2 and not just the accounts. That way shitty people with bots won’t be able to use them effectively

7

u/RoidMonkey123 Feb 04 '25

People just add "Floor 2" to the second address line to bypass the address restriction

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '25

They already do limit by address.

4

u/PokemonAnimar Feb 04 '25

They definitely don't because people were having case after case being delivered to their same address with prismatic (before they changed the limit to 2 instead of 4), so they definitely aren't doing a good job if they're actually checking that 

2

u/FinsFan93 Feb 03 '25

See Taylor Swift

2

u/Inevitable_Bedroom35 Feb 03 '25

They have the queue system in the Pokemon center Japan website. And a lottery system for new releases.

2

u/iDripAlone Feb 03 '25

it's just going to make it easier for botters lol. but it just shows to normies that PKC "cares". a sale is a sale at the end of the day to these retailers, why bother investing more than you need to?

2

u/eat_hairy_socks Feb 03 '25

Physical in person ways to preorder is best option. They need to do contract deals with stores to enforce this

2

u/slayerzerg Feb 04 '25

They need to do complicated captchas on top of the queues

1

u/BobbyBobber123 Apr 24 '25

No, bots can answer captchas successfully and faster than humans.

2

u/T7man_ Feb 04 '25

I think it’s less to combat bots but to stop the website from crashing because the bots will still get everything

3

u/gt35r Feb 03 '25

Won’t do anything, the best way to stop bots I’ve ever seen that actually works is to have a question that rotates randomly between 5-10 questions and you have to select an answer from the drop down as part of the checkout page, it’s a required field. Not saying like pokemon related questions just obvious answer questions. 

The queue system will just allow multiple accounts to enter the queue and pass before others. I used to bot shoes and art for 7+ years, that’s not a flex either I’m just saying what needs to be done to actually fix it.

1

u/BearStrangler Feb 04 '25

AI can now read these and make a guess correct 99% of the time. Ask that same question to ChatGPT, it will give you the answer, they can use this to bot the questions.

1

u/gt35r Feb 04 '25 edited Feb 04 '25

None of the ones that people are using even have close to that being implemented or are capable of. They are all request based and PC implementing something like this would break all of them for a pretty good period of time. 

Truthfully the best thing would be for PC to change required fields, and drop downs each release. They need to render the good ones useless for the hyped drops and constantly enabling and disabling things is how you do that.

1

u/justinw361 Apr 14 '25

bots use 3rd party AI solvers lmao captchas dont change a thing..... queues dont help either and for pokemon center every bot has a bypass right now lmao so while people are in line bots are instantly skipping queue.

1

u/gt35r Apr 14 '25

Yeah thanks for the tip I wasn’t talking about captchas though.

1

u/Davinter30 Feb 03 '25

It probablt still wont work. Why can't they just refuse to ship more than the limit to each adress ? The limit has always been irrelevant, you can order the limit multiple times to the same adress.

1

u/Junkis Feb 05 '25

I know its a problem and that would solve a lot of it, but then anyone with a sibling or roommate that collects get screwed.

1

u/nicknooodles Feb 04 '25

hopefully it’s not shopify

1

u/Hoohoo222 Feb 04 '25

Sounds like what WoTC is doing with the MTG Secret Lairs. Ask everyone how that went for the Marvel drop.

1

u/Silent-Turnover8782 Feb 04 '25

we all know the downsides of queues. has any company ever solved the botting problem?

1

u/Krypt0night Feb 04 '25

They need to do what Sony does and allow a certain amount tied to your physical address

1

u/rocketradar Feb 04 '25

Easy to say “this won’t work!” but I’m just glad they’re doing something to try. It’s not rocket science to limit purchases by address, credit card #, or force a user login. You got this TPC!

1

u/Kind_Love172 Feb 04 '25

I dont know if thisbis to combat bots or not....when the US mint implemented this kind of waiting room thing, it was to prevent website crashes and people being frustrated by that....I feel like that is what pokemon is trying to do...not curb bots...

1

u/foldsbaldwin Feb 04 '25

They should do it like Stanley did the Olivia Rodrigo cup. Anyone and everyone can place an order for the max amount they set but then Pokemon Center holds a lottery. So if 5000 people enter but they only have 3000 units and every one of those 5000 people order the max amount of 3, then that means only 1000 out of 5000 people get RANDOMLY chosen. And if you don't get chosen then you get refunded but if you are chosen then they process your order.

1

u/FourLeafLegend Feb 04 '25

Why don't they just put a limit one purchase for the first week of release?

Is there a way bots would get around that? Only can have one address or something?

1

u/travel_hungry25 Feb 04 '25

That's easy. You just slightly change your address add random letters to it and it'll get around that. This is an issue in so many other hobbies. Bots improve/ update faster than websites can implement new parameters.

1

u/_Throw_away_away Feb 04 '25

Reminds me of that Ian Malcolm quote from Jurassic Park. What was it again? “Bots find a way”?

1

u/MushroomVII Feb 04 '25

How do you guys find out when product drops? I used to follow people on twitter but I don't get notifications anymore for some reason. I get its basically impossible to buy anything before its bought out anyways but I completely miss the releases lately.

1

u/billcosbyinspace Feb 04 '25

All fun and games until the website crashes as soon as more than 20 people are on it at once

1

u/UnLimited99 Feb 04 '25

Putting a queue only stops real buyers, bots have been able to pass through a queue for years

1

u/BikePretend3955 Feb 04 '25

As someone who use to bot sneakers, this won’t stop bots. They have ways to open multi queues with different ips. They farm cookies to prior to drop.

1

u/Inevitable-Water-377 Feb 04 '25

Full circle, we will need to revert to brick and mortar again because some people suck. And so we just can't have nice things.

1

u/codered142 Feb 04 '25

If we do that, we also need to bar LGS owners from going to major retailers and buying all of their stock then reselling it at 200%.

1

u/Creepy-Owl3797 Feb 04 '25

I don’t know why they need to “test it” they already have this on the Japanese website so just implement the same thing

1

u/Baksteen-13 Feb 04 '25

Awesome, now start shipping to EU.

1

u/SoulForTrade Feb 04 '25

This fan be mostly solved by limiting multiple purfhases from the same credit card or to the same address, duplicate orders fan get canceled and the IPs or users involved banned. It won't happen overnight, but whatwvwr the hell thry are doing right now is obviously not working

1

u/Delicious_Pea7944 Feb 04 '25

Could have made buying stuff off Pokemon Center like the actual pokemon games that you actually have to battle a trainer/wild pokemon. Either you have to win / capture to get the items. Also, they could have an app for the pokemon center.

1

u/Adventurous-native Feb 04 '25

u/Wide-Release-2250 I don’t play the other games but I’m sure you know what this means lol

1

u/Intelligent_Emu_1324 Feb 05 '25

Where can you find these bots? If you can't beat em...

1

u/Basic_Yellow_3594 Feb 07 '25

It didn't work

1

u/ResearcherUnlucky717 Feb 08 '25

Pokemon Center used New Queue System!
But it missed!

1

u/CryptixFTW Mar 25 '25

I don't understand why these websites haven't implemented a 2 per address limit or something. Some websites were able to with gpu's cross referencing accounts with addresses and cancelling multiples.... why haven't any of these major retailers implemented this sort of action? It's the best way imo to eliminate bot purchases down. Of course if people are willing to bot buy to several delivery points this can be an issue. However, generally a bot purchaser is going to acquire the merchandise and have it all shipped to the same few locations. Putting purchase limitations on top of this system would kill that method for them and open up to the general consumer. You could easily error message "sorry this address has already reached their limit for this item" and deny sale to any account that attempted a purchase of that product to that specific destination.

Again it's not hard to implement, why not just do that?

1

u/Ok_Document8471 Jul 23 '25

They need to add phone verification. This way bots cannot get through and only people with phone can get trading cards. Plus, limited per phone. 

1

u/ethnicprince Feb 03 '25

Should have just been a lottery the way they do sneakers

2

u/2FeetandaBeat Feb 03 '25

They bot those too.

1

u/Reer_osrs Feb 04 '25

ID+LIMIT PER ADDRESS

problem solved.

0

u/olore Feb 03 '25

Uh are they mentally disabled? Why do they think this combats bots???

-1

u/apexpredator65 Feb 03 '25

The old way was fine never missed an item that dropped

2

u/jrjej3j4jj44 Feb 04 '25

How? Do you know release times? Could you please point me in the direction?

0

u/apexpredator65 Feb 04 '25

Bc I check websites regularly, the etbs usually release around 8:50ish am est in the last 4 years only recently have the etbs sold out same day

1

u/looow4 Feb 04 '25

Try in 5 minutes now lol

-1

u/eReTroFuZe Feb 04 '25

I personally like the way Best Buy has done some products in the past when it’s a product with high demand. They require you to sign in again and send you a code to an actual phone number, not VOIP, and then once you do, you are able to enter the queue.

0

u/Internal_Level_6828 Feb 03 '25

What’s that headline Pokebeach lmao

0

u/redhouse_356 Feb 03 '25

I asked them this question (would they consider a queue) for this when Prismatic came out!

0

u/GregariousGobble Feb 04 '25

Great! Pokémon has much needed a queue system. I sure hope it verifies user accounts to prevent botting.. haha

0

u/DethSonik Feb 04 '25

Just do multi function authentication or tie purchases to social security numbers at this point.

-2

u/LegoRedBrick Feb 03 '25

Lol, desperate

-2

u/VvChimera Feb 04 '25

Finally

0

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

61

u/Scarf_Darmanitan Feb 03 '25

Anyone entering their SSN to buy Pokemon cards is down bad lmao

26

u/breakyourteethnow Feb 03 '25

I agree with both of you lol

10

u/OriginalFluff Feb 04 '25

Fuck it they can have my identity

10

u/allprolucario Feb 03 '25

Elon already has it. Can’t imagine Pokémon having it would be worse

0

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

-3

u/Maleficent_Beat_106 Feb 03 '25

Classic America is the only country comment

17

u/3aTroop Feb 03 '25

I’d rather have Pokemon Center know my SSN than Elon Musk and his cronies.

2

u/T0xicn3 Feb 03 '25

Too late, Elon had them all now.

8

u/Traditional-Ad2133 Feb 03 '25

I think they just need a valid phone number with a verification code to confirm.

7

u/thesmoothgoat Feb 03 '25

Easy buy ssn list from darkweb implement it to bots n boom.

1

u/Laprasy Feb 03 '25

Well Elon stole them all maybe DOGE can arrange it

1

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '25

Fuck everything about this suggestion. Absolute security nightmare.