"Nobody likes scalpers. They're the parasitic, dried-up pieces of excrement on the arsehole hairs of gaming, ruining an already expensive hobby for us gamers."
— Larry Bundy Jr. perfectly summarising what's wrong with scalping in his video on scalpers getting instant karma [1]
"Selling/buying accounts or unauthorized in-game currency is strictly forbidden. Such behaviours place your game and financial security in a high-risk situation. Once your account demonstrates the misconduct of account sales or illegal top-up, the Guild will take measures including but not limited to revoked in-game currency, temporary game suspension, or permanent game account closure."
— Revived Witch Guidelines
Scalping refers to people who buy up high-demand video game items and sell them for astronomical prices. This type of behaviour is criticized by the gaming community because when scalpers get their hands on those items, they usually do not care about the game or franchise and instead only care about how much money they can make.
Gamers who truly want these high-demand items are either fans of a particular series or a game they are excited about and may not be able to obtain them because the scalpers would buy them up in a short amount of time and then they can't afford the inflated prices caused by scalping. This is especially bad when the item is a limited-time item.
During the amiibo craze back in 2014, there were listings of certain rare amiibo (such as Marth, Villager, and Wii Fit Trainer) that sold on eBay for around $100 per figure (even though the retail price for each figurine cost $12.99). The Rosalina Amiibo also became the target of scalpers, infamously a user by the name of Mariotehplumber, who bought over 262 Rosalina Amiibos so the fans could not.
When the NES Classic Edition (which retailed for $59.99) was released in November 2016, Nintendo announced that there were going to be limited quantities for each store. When they were sold out, countless amount of listings appeared on eBay that went up from $100-$12,000. Often, scalpers bought the entire stock of a store.
When Square Enix announced that there were only going to make 30,000 of the Final Fantasy XV Ultimate Collector's Edition (which retailed around $270), they were sold out instantly and were resold for around $370-$650.
When the Super NES Classic Edition was announced the pre-orders for Amazon UK immediately sold out and scalpers already put the SNES Classic on eBay for $300, even though the console hadn't even been released yet. Those listings on eBay were forcefully removed and Nintendo asked people not to pay for those overpriced listings after they promised they would produce more stock. While Nintendo did produce enough stock to stop scalping from being as bad as with the NES Classic, overpriced listings on sites like eBay were still frequent.
As their name hints, Limited Run Games re-releases PS4 and PS Vita digital games physically in limited quantities for those who prefer physical over digital, and despite their effort to avoid scalpers, some of their products still end up being scalped, especially the Vita games, their most scalped game so far are the physical copies of Jak and Daxter on the PS4.
Because of how fast the Nintendo Switch sold, it became a common target for scalpers. The retail price for one that doesn't come bundled with anything is $299, but they were being sold on eBay and Amazon for hundreds of dollars more, with some being sold for over a thousand dollars if they were a bundle. Many of the scalpers listed Nintendo Switches that were nothing special as "collectables" in an attempt to sell the system faster. This mainly occurred during what can be called the Great Switch Shortages of 2020 and 2022.
Similarly, many fans will attempt to sell iPhones which have delisted apps for thousands of dollars, like Flappy Bird and even Fortnite as of recently. Apparently, Apple caught up to this and began to lock devices that have been sold just for the apps. Many people will even sell their own MMO accounts (Toontown, etc), and eventually, most of these accounts end up being terminated for violating their ToS. A Summoners War account was sold for 45 thousand dollars and eventually got terminated afterwards. Eventually, many gacha games started to implement their guidelines policies about illegal refunds or selling/buying accounts.
Now, both Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 are being targeted by scalpers. The Xbox Series X was targeted and cancelled a thousand ordered purchases of the console. The PlayStation 5 on the other hand, was sold by scalpers for a thousand dollars and was so widespread that it made the console struggle in sales.
Scalping is not limited to consoles. In late 2020 when Nvidia released the GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs, 30 series graphics cards were targeted by scalpers, selling for over twice their MSRP. Despite RTX 3090 being released on September 29, 2020, it is still nearly impossible to buy an RTX 3090 or any 30 series graphics card at MSRP value.
Super Mario 3D All Stars is an infamous example of this, as many copies were being sold in order to inflate their prices and sell them on eBay, especially after March 31st, when the game stopped being produced, and digital copies were being delisted. However, this has backfired on scalpers massively, as it does not sell for that much in the second-hand market anyway, new copies of the game still exist, and many copies of the original versions of all 3 games respectively can still be bought and used.
The Forza auction house is an interesting variation of this practice as aside from premium or added content every car can be accessed using in-game earnings instead of real money, and the game is generous enough to provide multiple easy ways for big prizes. However certain vehicles: notably the Ford Crown Vic or anything super rare, or new additions or Forzathon prizes, not only sell for millions even tens of millions some players actively try and claim everyone on auction to horde and resell at inflated prices.
A PS4 game called Poop Slinger (Yes it's exactly what the title says) was announced to get a limited release of 1000 copies on April 1, 2019. Many assumed it was an April Fool's prank due to its name especially since the company releasing the physical release was called Limited Rare Game, which was not only very similar to another company that releases physical games called Limited Run Games but was also copying the same logo layout; however, it was discovered that all of this was real and it was the company's first and only physical publishing due to the physical release failing to sell enough. Only 84 out of 1000 copies were sold, making it the rarest PS4 game, which led to scalpers selling their copies for the cost of $1,500 minimum.
Scalping can also affect e-sports tournaments too. The DoTA 2 The International tournament is an infamous victim of this, with tickets selling out in less than an hour thanks to scalpers before being resold online at S$600 (US$436.20) minimum. One scalper even resold tickets at S$5500 (US$4001.70), which is 11 times the actual cost of the tickets.