NVIDIA apologizes for RTX 3080 launch mess, but it's not enough

NVIDIA kicked off sales of the RTX 3080 before today, with the RTX 3080 Founder's Edition up for sale on its website and over a dozen AIB (add-in board) cards with custom cooling and overclocked designs from the likes of ASUS, MSI, EVGA, Zotac and others hit major retailers.

But just a few seconds after sales kicked off on NVIDIA's website (at 6am PT on September 17), the RTX 3080 went out of stock. That was the example over at Amazon, Best Purchase, and Newegg, with Newegg noting that it saw more traffic than the morning time of Blackness Fri.

Predictably, a lot of users took to Twitter to vent their frustration regarding the limited availability and the fact that the RTX 3080 sold out barely a few seconds after it went for sale on NVIDIA's website:

What's the signal of the whole "Notify Me" emails if they didn't go out with a time for us to buy them or some arrangement to purchase them that isn't easily targeted by bots?

One second it was Notify Me and then Out of Stock the side by side. Why wouldn't you do more to stop scalpers?

— Amber Hamilton 🏳️‍⚧️ (@ANicHamilton) September 17, 2022

1) Non a single partner who had notifications for launch of the product sent one (that includes your ain stores)
two) the nVidia store went from Notify to sold out in 1.two seconds
3) Y'all didn't work with retailers to prevent scalpers

So you desire us to buy AMD Cards?

— NotTheOnlyRobert (@rleiper84) September 17, 2022

Immediately thereafter, hundreds of listings for the RTX 3080 started showing upward on eBay (as of writing, at that place are over 600 listings), selling for $2,000 — three times the $699 asking price of the RTX 3080 Founder's Edition.

In that location was limited availability of the RTX 3080 to brainstorm with, and NVIDIA didn't brand matters easier by failing to add bot protection on its site. As a result, scalpers were able to utilize tools similar BounceAlerts — an automated bot that allowed resellers to option up hundreds of RTX 3080 cards ahead of regular customers — to option up hundreds of cards. As spotted by PCMag, resellers posted screenshots of over a dozen confirmed orders:

Thank yous @BounceAlerts for the Nvidia bot like shooting fish in a barrel money pic.twitter.com/bLhQ7Be8z5
— Waves (@YoungWaves_) September 17, 2022

NVIDIA took to the GeForce forums to repent for the low availability of the RTX 3080, stating that information technology will now manually review orders to ensure legitimate customers get their orders:

This morning time we saw unprecedented need for the GeForce RTX 3080 at global retailers, including the NVIDIA online store. At half-dozen a.m. pacific we attempted to push button the NVIDIA store live. Despite preparation, the NVIDIA store was inundated with traffic and encountered an error. We were able to resolve the issues and sales began registering normally.

To stop bots and scalpers on the NVIDIA shop, nosotros're doing everything humanly possible, including manually reviewing orders, to get these cards in the hands of legitimate customers.

Over l major global retailers had inventory at half dozen a.1000. pacific. Our NVIDIA team and partners are shipping more RTX 3080 cards every day to retailers.

Nosotros apologize to our customers for this morning's experience.

NVIDIA is now limiting the purchase of RTX 3080 to one unit per customer and is calculation bot protection to the site, only an admin of BounceAlerts revealed to PCMag that the tool has measures to "circumvent the protections." So even if the RTX 3080 goes dorsum on stock at NVIDIA's site, information technology is likely to be snatched up by resellers.

An easy footstep would exist to add together CAPTCHA for its online orders — NVIDIA does the aforementioned on its forums to prevent spam, so it'due south unclear why it did not have the aforementioned safeguards for its online shop. The RTX 3080 is on its fashion to becoming the best graphics card of this generation for its balance of performance and pricing, just that becomes a moot point if potential customers tin can't get their hands on the card without paying a huge markup.

There is a thriving secret reseller market for video cards, and NVIDIA was undoubtedly aware of the same before kicking off orders of the RTX 3080. By not adding measures to prevent bots and limiting the number of orders from a single account, NVIDIA failed to thwart resellers from getting the initial batch of RTX 3080 cards. Information technology now needs to piece of work with retailers and add more safeguards to its site to ensure this isn't the case one time the cards go dorsum on sale.

Side by side-level

NVIDIA RTX 3080 Founders Edition

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founder's Edition

This is the one to get

The GeForce RTX 3080 has everything y'all could desire from a graphics card in 2022, but availability is going to be a problem — particularly for the Founder'due south Edition. Your all-time pick at picking upward the card would be from a retail store.

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