After months of anticipation, Sony’s PlayStation 5 is finally available worldwide as of this week.

Thursday marked the second and final wave of launches for Sony’s new game console, which included the critical PlayStation markets of Europe and the United Kingdom. 

Because of the pandemic, millions of people turned to digital storefronts to purchase the new console. But that proved impossible for many, just as it was in the United States the week prior: Customers tried and failed to order the PS5 through a variety of retailers.

https://www.businessinsider.com/playstation-5-launch-day-us-europe-flooded-by-reseller-bots-2020-11

“Overall, I feel like it would be easier to get one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets,” a woman in LondonĀ told the Financial Timesof her experience.

Meanwhile, on the popular chat app Discord, reseller groups with thousands of members were organizing to buy as many PlayStation 5 consoles as possible for resale. “Our total collective number is 2,472 PS5 consoles across all of our members,” a manager of one such UK-based group named CrepChiefNotify told Business Insider.

That’s in addition to “just under 1,000” PlayStation 5 pre-orders from back in September, when Sony initially opened sales, he said, meaning the group sourced nearly 3,500 consoles to sell to customers searching for the next-gen console.

Credit: Business Insider