The Nintendo Switch has become a hot-selling item when it comes to gaming during the onset of the coronavirus, also known as COVID-19.
So much so, global demand exceeded existing supply. Perhaps this rise in popularity of the nifty gaming console stems from the fact that everyone is just fucking bored at home.
After all, with governments across the globe imposing lockdowns on their people to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, we have to find ways to entertain ourselves in self-isolation.
And the Nintendo Switch evidently proved to be the perfect solution to everyone's entertainment struggles. It's light, compact, and extremely versatile. You can play your favorite games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons while dropping a massive deuce, or you could even hook it up to your TV via the Nintendo Switch Dock.
But more importantly, how did the Nintendo Switch fail to meet the global demand of a COVID-19-impacted world?
It's all thanks to Bird Bot, an online shopping bot that guarantees instant purchases of the Nintendo Switch.
And it was created by a 16-year-old American from Virginia.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Nate (surname redacted for privacy reasons) says he created Bird Bot as a one-stop solution to a problem that his friends kept encountering: Not being able to score the Nintendo Switch because they were selling out in a lot of ecommerce sites.
But increasing demand and fledgling supply weren't the only things that spurred the 16 year old to create Bird Bot. His friend, nicknamed 'Bird' (Nate doesn't know why, apparently), challenged him to create a bot that would help all his friends successfully buy a Nintendo Switch as soon as it became available.
“It took me a few days; it was pretty quick. I had a lot of free time,” says Nate.
Let's just say he beat the challenge effortlessly. To make sure it worked, he used Bird Bot to buy just one Nintendo Switch. He gave it to one of his friends, sadly not Bird.
He then put Bird Bot on Github, which is essentially a Reddit for software developers. It turned out to be really popular in the forum, even attracting attention from a Google software engineer, who 'starred' the creation on GitBook.
“Nate’s really excited that a software engineer from Google ‘starred’ his autobot on GitBook. That has motivated him more to study computer science than any AP class could,” Nate's mom said in the same interview.
Nate actually learned all this from his experience in the sneaker ecommerce world.
Nate's not really a gamer, and he has no intentions to use Bird Bot to resell Nintendo Switches either.
His true love is sneakers. Much like the Nintendo Switch and its current level of demand, the sneaker world is a wild place when it comes to demand-and-supply.
The sneaker resale market is worth billions, thus driving up the prices of what were once US$200 to US$300 sneakers to numbers that hurt just a little more.
And the sneaker world is where he learned to use bots. He once scored eight pairs of Adidas Yeezy sneakers (each costing around US$200) and managed to resell each one for between US$500 to US$600.
I guess Nate is also an intrepid businessman.
But Nate is also the subject of anger from a lot of salty individuals who blame him for fueling the global Nintendo Switch shortage.
“Some people were calling me a scalper. It’s just basic supply and demand,” says the Bird Bot creator.
In fact, he hasn't even profited off the bot. Though he collected payment from developers who used Bird Bot, he donated all proceeds to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, amounting to US$1,000.
“He’s been blamed for causing hoarding of the Switches. He’s gotten angry messages, requests for interviews — and someone even tried to steal his code and pass it off as his own,” says his mom.
Ultimately, Nate wants to inspire other kids to get creative during their time in quarantine.
“The Internet is a great resource, try and think of something that hasn’t been done before, think of something that others can learn from," Nate says. "The biggest takeaway from this is that you can create something really cool at home, on your own.”
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Cover image sourced from Campaign Asia.
