With all this talk of crypto, it's ironic that the problem is essentially the same as bitcoin, it's a Sybil Attack problem. Scalpers can pretend to be dozens o

With all this talk of crypto, it's ironic that the problem is essentially the same as bitcoin, it's a Sybil Attack problem. Scalpers can pretend to be dozens of people (registering multiple accounts, trivial variations on address, privacy cards to generate unique credit card numbers, automating all this by botting, etc) and the real underlying problem is that you need is a unique personal identifier. I personally think hardware identifiers are a good approach. NVIDIA has GeForce Experience, they have access to hardware identifiers and telemetry that will let them see who's actually gaming. This approach works very well for games like Overwatch, where hardware bans are essentially "game over" and you now have to get a new motherboard, CPU, GPU, clean OS install, and new IP address in order to hack again, it is fairly painful and slows down hackers significantly after a ban wave. (Or something like requiring a unique driver's license, one per person.) All of the other approaches are trivially gameable. A queue? Scalpers will register 1000 accounts and take all the queue spots. A lottery? Scalpers will register 1000 accounts and win all the lottery cards. etc etc. There will always be retailers if you do not currently have a card or are morally opposed to GFE.