The latest Nvidia graphics cards are impossible to find at retailers, and you’ll be paying double or triple the already-high price if you try to get one on the secondary market. But Zotac is trying to help out its most loyal customers by selling directly to them in the US, skipping stores altogether and going right to buyers via Discord. It’s a novel approach.
If you’re an old person like me, Discord is sort of like Slack or Microsoft Teams but much more annoying. Though it was originally designed for organizing gaming groups, it has increasingly become a kind of cross-platform chatroom used by many companies for online customer service. In that sense, it seems like a natural fit for direct sales, if not without a few organizational hurdles to leap.
In a message on its Discord server (spotted by PCMag), Zotac USA representative Bryant says:
“We want to reward real gamers and active members by giving you the chance to secure a slot to purchase a Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5080 or 5090 — no bots, no scalpers, just my fellow gamers.”
In order to be eligible for the program, you need to be an active member of the Zotac Discord server. The more engagement, the better. That seems like a pretty easy way to weed out any new accounts. Those selected will be contacted directly and limited to just one GPU purchase, offered at MSRP. Stock for this program is incredibly low — as of Friday, February 7th, only ten RTX 5080 variants are part of the Discord program. The announcement post has over a thousand likes.
Discord
Of course, nothing would stop a lucky winner (winner in the sense that they “win” the chance to give Zotac $1,000+, I suppose) from flipping that high-powered graphics card right away. And while Zotac couldn’t stop them, they’ll be watching and enforcing a zero-tolerance policy for resellers. “All serial numbers are recorded to track and verify purchases. We will publicly expose you if you’re caught.”
So if someone, say, tried to register their card for the OEM warranty and it didn’t match the identity of the original Discord buyer, they’d be disqualified from any future Discord purchases and paraded up and down the server for their naughtiness. (I hope Zotac adds a custom emote reaction, something along the lines of the “SHAME, SHAME!” bell from Game of Thrones.)
Bryant has since walked back their initial zeal. An updated version of the message omits the slightly ominous language, saying instead, “Your Discord username will be on a ban list for future raffles… I apologize. I did not mean to threaten doxxing.” It’s okay, Bryant. I think we all understand a little extra enthusiasm here.
That said, it’s a bit of a Sophie’s Choice. Hate on scalpers all you want (and I do!), but if someone offered you a way to instantly make a month’s rent via a quick eBay auction, and all it would cost you is the everlasting scorn of random Discord users, I don’t think I could blame you.