Overclockers UK continues its anti-bot campaign with a £10,000 RTX 3070 TUF

Last week, Overclockers UK implemented a new anti-bot system within their website, a clever method designed to prevent bots from purchasing graphics cards while allowing genuine customers to continue purchasing GPUs. This is how Overclockers UK is trying to get GPUs to gamers and not bots.

Overclockers’ anti-bot purchasing method is simple; they list their RTX series graphics cards with crazy high retail prices and offer their Forum members discount codes that will allow them to lower these extortionate prices down to more reasonable levels. 

Today, Overlockers UK received a shipment of ASUS RTX 3070 TUF GAMING OC graphics cards, which are currently listed with a £10,000 price tag. When genuine customers apply Overclockers’ discount code, the GPU’s price will lower to £680. While this is much higher than Nvidia’s RTX 3070 MSRP, we will note here that Nvidia’s MSRP pricing is practically non-existent within today’s market outside of selected GPU models. Retailers cannot sell graphics cards for less than what they purchase them for from distributors…

How to get Overclockers UK’s discount code

Overclockers UK has restricted access to their discount codes to members of their forums with Members Market (MM) access, which is only available to forum members who have been with the site for at least six months.

This method prevents bot makers from accessing Overclockers UK’s discount codes, making access to these graphics cards exclusive to Overclockers UK forum members. 

While this method prevents the wider PC gaming audience from accessing these graphics cards, it allows Overclockers UK to serve their most loyal customers first. This is good news for Overclockers UK from a marketing standpoint, as it will prevent their community from turning against the company during the market’s GPU supply shortfall. That said, aggravated customers would like to purchase these graphics cards but can’t because they are not Overclockers UK forum members.   
This is how Overclockers UK has decided to fight bots

All GPU retailers need to combat the scourge that is scalper bots, and Overclockers UK’s solution is to set their prices sky high and then offer discount codes to genuine customers through their forums. Any order placed on these £5,000+ RTX 3070 graphics cards will have their orders cancelled by Overclockers UK staff. Nobody’s paying full price on these GPU listings. 

Today’s market has forced retailers to think outside of the box to create solutions that will outsmart the creators of GPU buying bots. The only downside of Overclockers’ solution is that PC gamers outside of the know will only see their ultra-high bot-killer prices.  

In an ideal world, Nvidia and AMD would be able to supply enough graphics cards to meet demand. Sadly, this is not the world that we are currently living in. As it stands, retailers need to be creative to supply graphics cards to genuine customers and not bots or scalpers. Let’s hope that the GPU market will be able to return to normal soon. 

You can join the discussion on Overclockers UK continuing their anti-bot antics on the OC3D Forums.