Japanese gaming convention tackles scalpers by threatening to print their faces and personal information onto merch
A gaming convention in Japan has recently come up with an interesting way of dealing with scalpers, offering them a choice between two “punishments” if they are caught.
Gaming Bazaar is a casual market event held periodically around Japan where people can display, buy, sell and exchange all kinds of original merch, artwork, devices and publications related to video games. However, the event has experienced problems in the past with resellers buying up rare and limited products (especially custom accessories and controllers etc.) and reselling them online at inflated prices. This has prompted the organizers to take some unique anti-scalper measures, as detailed below.
The punishment if you are caught reselling merchandise is that the organizers will print your face and personal info on T-shirts and sell them as merch at the next event. For those who want to avoid this embarrassing fate, the other option is to beat one of the organizers at the FPS Quake. This sounds like an easier way out at first, however the organizer in question is former Quake pro player Tahara, so unless you want to end up with some very sore thumbs indeed, it’s probably not worth the risk.
