According to the report, the group relied on a variety of tools to help them nab all these units, including communications over Discord, retail-scalping bots, and also inside information to give them an advantage over regular shoppers. Sony has attempted to combat scalpers by limiting the number of units that customers can purchase per household, but it seems that whatever measures they put into place did not help as it is clear that the group managed to find a way around it.
To make matters worse, Sony did not make any units available as in-stock items that you can purchase from physical stores (at least for some regions), which meant that all units had to be bought online, which made it even easier for these scalpers. Obviously you should not purchase scalped PS5 units at their absurd markup prices, so if you don’t need to have the console right now, you can always wait for when retailers get them back in stock.
We’re not sure when there will be new units available, but even Microsoft is having a tough time keeping the Xbox Series X in stock, with the company estimating that they could face shortages until April 2021, and we imagine that it should be a roughly similar scenario with Sony as well.