How common were video game scalpers in the 1990s?

Submitted ⁨⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨NightOps@nord.pub⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I mean, the act of people scalping stuff has existed before the digital age. Even a century ago: scalpers would pay a third party to hold a spot in line on purchasing concert or theater tickets to resell at a higher price since the internet didn’t exist back then. Like, in the 90s: scalpers showed up in person (paying someone to hold the spot for you whilst in line) for acquisition of the product, that’s how they’ve done it.

At the time, pre-orders for an upcoming console or game were done in store (you physically went to the store and place an order when seeing an ad on TV or a magazine. But, how common were scalpers during that era? It would be like a group of scalpers pretending not to know each other or split into smaller groups heading to different retailers on buying the same product whilst playing as another customer.

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Apepollo11@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The main reason we didn’t have scalpers was that there was no way to sell these games on.

There were no online auctions until the tail end of the 90s, and even then virtually nobody trusted them. There was no digital payment - you had to send cash, cheque or postal order. There was no Facebook. Essentially there was no way to sell to a large audience.

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- dhork@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The closest things we had back then was USENET (which required you to already have a connection to a provider that hosted a server) and BBS’s (which required you to dial in to connect to a local server, which proabably did not have its own USENET connection). I suppose there was also Compuserve, and QuantumLink/AOL, but they were metered dial-in providers, and when they finally connected to USENET, they ruined it.
  
  There was no concept of a device that was always connected to the Internet in the 80s for most users. Most home computers were islands. Maybe if you were on a University campus you might have access to a computer with that permanent wired connection, but that was about it.
  
  My kids have grown up in a world where everyone is connected, all the time. We’ll see what they do with it.
  
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jrs100000@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It seems like some people are maybe thinking of the 80s here. Console games were big business, popular and widespread from the NES onward, at least among younger audiences.

You didnt see many scalpers mostly because there was less zero day hype. You got your video game ads in a magazine, so if a game had big hype it was because the publisher had spent big on marketing, which meant they had printed a shit ton of launch day copies.

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HeyJoe@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Not sure, but my experience is when I was a kid my parents told me later on that they couldn’t really afford to get me a console, but they were able to get one for a fraction of the price by buying one off the back of a truck which was a lot more common back then for lower income neighborhoods. Lots of stolen goods sold locally that way as long as you had the hookup. As for games the only thing I remember was in the 90s some of my asian friends had some awesome toys from chinatown. They had this adapter that plugged into the snes and it played games that were on cards which were basically copied roms so you didnt have to buy full games anymore. My mind was blown at the time. Idk about scalpers, but this was what I remember for that market at the time.

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ace_garp@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Zero scalpers in my town.

Bought Half-Life on release day, by walking in to a store.

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If anyone would try to sell a boxed copy secondhand, there is no way to tell if the CD key had been widely disseminated, and therefore would be worthless.

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one_old_coder@piefed.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Video games were less popular (less demand, mostly restricted to nerds), etc. The PlayStation changed that mentality a bit, but it was not the 90s anymore.

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- Apepollo11@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The Playstation changed the demographic, but it was towards an older audience.
  
  Sony’s marketing team realised that while kids only got given consoles and games on special occasions, adults can just buy them whenever.
  
  It’s the classic disruption technique - in a saturated market, find an underserved audience and lean into it hard.
  
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Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
We did everything in the 90s. Even if I don’t know what you mean :)

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- jqubed@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I believe they’re referring to buying up all of the copies of the hot new game or console, then reselling them above MSRP to make a profit in a time of scarcity.
  
  I don’t remember scarcity being as much of a problem back then, nor was demand high enough for scalping to be common. It might have been less legal, too. As far as tickets to sporting events and concerts, back then it was illegal to resell them for more than face value in my state. That changed 10-15 years ago thanks to lobbying from Ticketmaster and affiliates.
  
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  - Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    As far as tickets to sporting events and concerts, back then it was illegal to resell them for more than face value in my state. That changed 10-15 years ago thanks to lobbying from Ticketmaster and affiliates.
    
    I think that it was the other way round for games. Laws have been developing all the time towards advantages for copyright owners.
    
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