Zotac is selling RTX 50-series GPUs directly to customers to thwart scalpers

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This is a fair way of ensuring that everyone gets a chance to buy a new GPU.

Zotac USA
(Image credit: Reddit/waldesnachtbrahms)

Zotac has devised a new way to distribute Nvidia's latest GeForce RTX 50-series (Blackwell) GPUs to gamers. The company (via Reddit) is implementing a priority access system to directly sell GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080 GPUs to its gaming Discord server members. This will combat scalpers and ensure that only end-users get their hands on the limited supply of GPUs.

Many consider Blackwell a paper launch, as gamers and enthusiasts scramble for availability, and scammers and scalpers take advantage of it. Retailers, or at least some, ensure everyone has a fair chance of snagging one of these powerful new GPUs. One Japanese computer store hosted a lottery for prospective buyers, which, unfortunately, ended in chaos and injuries. To avoid situations like this, Zotac has opted for a different approach.

According to Zotac’s rules, you must be a Zotac Gaming Discord server member and “actively engage in challenges, discussions, and community activities.” There’s also a “zero-tolerance policy against re-selling & scalping” and that “all serial numbers are recorded to track and verify purchases.” While the company cannot stop anyone from breaking the re-selling or scalping rule after it has sold a GPU, anyone caught doing so will have their Discord username banned from future Zotac raffles.

The company noted that this is not a raffle for a free RTX 5080 or RTX 5090 GPU; instead, it’s an opportunity for the selected Discord user to buy Nvidia’s latest GPU at MSRP. To ensure fairness, the winners would be chosen using a random number generator, but the giveaway would only be open to users based in the U.S.

At the time of writing, Zotac said five RTX 5080 AMP Extreme Infinity and five RTX 5080 Solid OC GPUs are available. There are currently no RTX 5090s in stock, so those who want to get their hands on one will likely have to wait several weeks or months before they arrive in warehouses.

Many gamers and enthusiasts appreciate Zotac's move, as it ensures that only end-users can purchase these new GPUs. However, other Redditors also commented that Zotac’s Discord server is now being spammed by new users desperate to spend over $1,000 on a new GPU. Fortunately, another Redditor who claims to be a veteran member of the Discord server said its moderators created a private channel just for them, and they will have a separate raffle with higher chances of winning.

This move shows how some brands care about their customer base, ensuring their fans can acquire an RTX 50-series GPU early. Hopefully, Nvidia can improve its supply of Blackwell GPUs so gamers have a better opportunity to upgrade, as some have been holding off until Blackwell.

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Jowi Morales
Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

51 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Jabberwocky79
    I applaud the endeavor, but absolutely no faith that it will be carried out fairly. And the fact that they only have like, ten 5080s available is an absolute joke. This is more of a savvy marketing move than anything.
    Reply
  • A Stoner
    Scalping actually causes a much fairer distribution of products than simply selling at an arbitrary retail price does. It does come at the cost of some friction in the market. But at the end of the day, the product ends up in the hands of more people who can put it to its best use.

    Someone like me who has reasonable amount of money might buy a new video card just because I can afford it and not use it to its full potential where as someone who can use the cards to create games or something else would pay more for the card and create more wealth for the society as a whole.

    The same thing happens in disasters, where the government prevents price raising. I bought every damned drop of gasoline I had storage for. I did not need need it, not immediately, but if it remains cheap, I do not want to be left wanting or being forced to sit in line for 3 hours a second time.

    If the price of gasoline had risen to double or triple, I might have thought harder about how much gasoline I truly needed at the moment.
    Reply
  • Heiro78
    A Stoner said:
    Scalping actually causes a much fairer distribution of products than simply selling at an arbitrary retail price does. It does come at the cost of some friction in the market. But at the end of the day, the product ends up in the hands of more people who can put it to its best use.

    Someone like me who has reasonable amount of money might buy a new video card just because I can afford it and not use it to its full potential where as someone who can use the cards to create games or something else would pay more for the card and create more wealth for the society as a whole.

    The same thing happens in disasters, where the government prevents price raising. I bought every damned drop of gasoline I had storage for. I did not need need it, not immediately, but if it remains cheap, I do not want to be left wanting or being forced to sit in line for 3 hours a second time.

    If the price of gasoline had risen to double or triple, I might have thought harder about how much gasoline I truly needed at the moment.
    Or maybe the company supplying the cards can actually launch with proper amounts if inventory instead of just trying to get stuff out there.
    Reply
  • daftshadow
    It's really up to nvidia to stop scalpers and bots but this will never happen. This is what happens when we have one company really, monopolizing the gpu market.
    Reply
  • A Stoner
    Heiro78 said:
    Or maybe the company supplying the cards can actually launch with proper amounts if inventory instead of just trying to get stuff out there.
    It is not like they are making more money by failing to meet demand, and it is not like they do not understand what the demand is going to be.

    They are restrained by many aspects and those aspects are hard to change. The amount of access to process nodes, how many chips make the cut and so forth. These things are second tier cutting edge technology, with their AI products being first tier cutting edge technology and first tier profit margins. Their first priority is to supply as much AI as they can, because their priority is always investor return on investment.

    If they had access to more wafers they would make more wafers, if they had higher success with the wafers, they could sell more devices, but their are constraints and there are competing priorities.

    The fact that they are making any consumer grade chips at all when there is still a massive demand for $60,000 AI processors is really about all you can hope for.

    They did allow the technology to stagnate though, adding in more AI rather than rasterization and RT power. That is because their current gravy train is the AI. That will change eventually.

    Hopefully this gives Intel and AMD a chance to catch up and become true competitors, as competition will eventually cause the leaps in performance and the need to meet customer demands to be required.
    Reply
  • DavidAdas
    Hey, great article but...ease up on the AI a bit :)
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    Thing is though is that even if it were completely fair, say a total random lottery, if you give someone something for $XXX, and they can sell it for double or triple digit profit percentages, there's a good chance they will flip it, be it hardware, event tickets, or whatever, especially if it's something they don't absolutely need.
    Reply
  • Moores_Ghost
    This isn't news. They've always done this. Then they send a business card for volume sales in the box.
    Reply
  • jlake3
    Yeah, at only 10 available cards this is basically a marketing stunt. This won’t fill any meaningful amount of demand, and banning someone’s Discord username from future drawings is hardly a deterrent to scalping given that accounts are free and easy to make… if you can even catch them at all. Seems like enforcement would depend on Zotac trying to pull serial numbers from the pictures of listings, and if you just don’t show a full serial number (or resell locally through a platform less likely to be checked), I’m not sure how they’d be able to tell.

    And even if they could guarantee somehow that they can identify 100% of the people who flip cards after the fact and ban all of their current and future accounts, people will still try to scalp cards because they’re not loyal to Zotac as a brand and don’t care about getting disqualified and/or they figure that statistically they’re not going to be winning multiple Zotac drawings.
    Reply
  • ThijsL202
    According to Zotac’s rules, you must be a Zotac Gaming Discord server member and “actively engage in challenges, discussions, and community activities.”

    And only 10 cards

    No thanks.
    Reply