Meet the streamer who helps PS5 buyers beat bots and scalpers – Polygon

poly-lt-wire-logo Jake Randall has built a platform on sharing his strategies Join one of Jake Randall’s streams and he appears, in the corner of the screen, sitting with his back against a bookshelf that’s overflowing with video game jewel cases. He’s staring down an online retailer in the nervy minutes before a PlayStation 5 restock. Today, the target is Amazon, and Randall educates the crowd with his most dependable console-rustling axioms: Be an Amazon Prime member or free trial holder, go to the PS5 page and click “add to list,” have one tab open with the the product page and one with said list, and attempt to buy the hardware from both sources once the “add to cart” buttons unlock. He explains that it’s common to fail dozens and dozens of times before you are successful, and to repeat these steps until the process works. A few minutes later the consoles are restocked, and the legion of Randall pours through the breach, refreshing the checkout page over and over again. The chat lights up as people share successes and failures. For the past two years, Randall has been one of the preeminent console purchasing influencers in the world. He has…
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