Trying to pre-order a Nintendo SNES Classic Edition is going to be tough, especially if you aren’t using a bot to do so.
As Nintendo turns its ordering system into a carnival game, causing more than 50 people to line up at 11 in the morning outside a GameStop in San Francisco, more people are turning to bots to do their online bidding. One in particular, the Tai Ding bot, gained notoriety last year after people found success using it to secure a Nintendo NES Classic order. When Nintendo announced it was releasing the SNES Classic, people didn’t want to wait around to get burned again and the Tai Ding bot made a resurgence.
Less than a month ago, a thread on the mini NES subreddit popped up asking how to purchase the Tai Ding script so the bot could run when pre-orders were announced. People have been trying to figure out how to buy it, download it and run the script so they don’t have to worry about constantly refreshing Walmart or Amazon’s page the moment the sale goes live.
“People have realized that our bot puts them ahead of the competition,” one of the Tai Ding bot creators, who asked to remain anonymous and acts as a representative for the team, told Polygon. “We have a 93 percent success rate. Basically our bot is able to "Automatically Cart" and checkout an NES [or SNES] without the presence of a person monitoring the computer.”
This means that those who use the bots can pre-order multiple SNES Classic Edition consoles. One user was able to snag four SNES Classic Edition pre-orders by using the bot. Leading up to the pre-orders going live, he had tweeted about running the software in order to cop a couple of consoles for his various friends and family members. While this is legal, it’s frowned upon by most corporations and considered cheating by most consumers.
“It’s very much frowned upon by those who don't have the software and find it ‘unfair’ that others have the upper hand,” Tai Ding bot’s representative said. “The bot gathered a lot of attention last year around the release of the NES Classic. The attention died down after that but has begun to rise again during these past few months now that the SNES [Classic] is here.”
According to Chris Wheatley, another team member behind the Tai Ding bot, GameStop, Wal-Mart and Toys R Us are aware of the bot. Wheatley told Polygon they have tried to figure out ways to shut the bots down, but haven’t been successful. Polygon has reached out to all three companies for comment and will update if more information becomes available.
“They’ve attempt to lawfully shut it down before, yes,” Wheatley said. “They have tried to shut us down multiple times, but they haven’t been able to do it yet.”
That means those who are in possession of the bot can run it to their hearts’ content. When asked if he thought it was unfair to those without the bot, Wheatley didn’t hesitate to say no. In his opinion, since the bot is available for anyone to purchase, it comes down to whether or not people want to spend the money to have an advantage during red-alert sales.
“There’s an increase in people using it and our revenue has gone up, so people are buying it,” Wheatley said. “We’re not giving the bot to certain people and stopping others from purchasing it. If you buy it, you can use it. I wouldn’t consider that unfair at all.”
The Tai Ding bot is available for $110, with the option to add custom sites for an additional fee. The bot works on most sites, but there is one security factor that the team hasn’t been able to get past: the captcha. Sites that use captchas, like the popular clothing brand Supreme, render the bot useless. Wheatley told Polygon the team is trying to figure out a way to get past the captcha system.
“Captcha is basically high security for the bot,” Wheatley said. “If we bypass captcha, we can cart any site that we like. Once we do that, we’ll have to increase the price of the bot, but we think that’s fair considering how advanced it will be.”
To say that buying the Tai Ding bot, downloading it and running the script is an easy task would be a lie. It can get pretty difficult, with subreddit threads and tweets dedicated to asking for help popping up all the time. Despite that, Wheatley said this past month has seen a big increase in orders as people began to prepare for the SNES Classic Edition pre-order.
“When the pre-order announced was released a few months ago, we had a lot of people purchase from us,” Wheatley said. “A lot. We noticed a big increase in sales. We knew this was going to be an event.”
For those who weren’t able to get their hands on a SNES Classic Edition pre-order, the console will be available in stores on Sept. 29 for $79.99.