NVIDIA did a great job getting gamers hyped up for the launch of its RTX 3080, which does offer a huge leap in performance over the last generation. When it came time to sell it yesterday morning, however, the train went a bit off the rails. NVIDIA apparently failed to account for the excitement it created, as the $699 RTX 3080 Founder’s Edition sold out nearly instantly. On top of that, the site went down almost immediately after sales opened, shutting out most buyers.
In a post on its forums (via Gamerant), NVIDIA said “we apologize to our customers for this morning’s experience,” explaining that “the NVIDIA store was inundated with traffic and encountered errors.” It said that managed to resolve the issue and resumed sales, adding that it was taking actions, including manually reviewing orders, to stop bots and scalpers.
