hey, welcome, welcome, welcome! lara lewington, what is the craziest thing you've ever bought on ebay? um, slippers? dogs — dog slippers! i wondered where that was going. ok, i did ask for crazy. well, look, do you remember the times when you bid on an item and you thought you were going to win the auction, and then in the dying few seconds, you were beaten by someone else? yes, they weren't real people, though, were they? no, they weren't. they were computer programmes designed to work really fast and beat you to the bid button, and i hated them. no—one did that to my dog slippers, though. can't imagine why. well, look, now, this idea is being used in new ways, and omar mehtab has been looking at the phenomenon of the scalpers. with the pandemic came lockdowns, and with the majority of the population stuck at home, we had nothing really to do...but buy. and so online spending went up. we bought clothes, hobby kits, sourdough starters, fire pits, hot tubs, gym equipment, anything to get us through it, and that includes gaming consoles like the brand—new p55. but there was a problem — the semiconductor shortage. the shortage of semiconductors... they don't have the semiconductors... what is that? simply put, they are the brains of modern electronics. so, they're in pretty much every product. electronics need them. cars, smart phones, laptops, gaming consoles. and so, with very few on the market, fans are trying websites to try and get them. however, there is money to be made. in come the scalpers. so, these are people who buy rare or sought—after items and resell them again at a higher price to make a profit. you've probably seen them outside of concerts, reselling tickets, or putting up a nice pair of shoes on ebay for double the price. but the modern scalper is a little bit different. they use internet bots — online software that's programmed to do a certain task. so, that could be buying the first tickets available for a trip to majorca. telling me when the ferrari testarossa is under 100k. or telling me when new stock of ps5 appears on a website. and when you've got a bot, there's almost no limit to how many you could buy to allow you to resale. and the fact is, whether you like it or not, scalping and the use of stock check bots are legal. douglas, could you give a clap for me, please? this is douglas chapman, an mp leading the charge in proposing to ban the resale of gaming consoles purchased with automated bots. i think it's skewing the market beyond what's reasonable. you know, i think we need to look as well about what are the protections for the consumer, returns policy, for example, if something's not working properly, you know, how does it affect guarantees? are they paying tax? are they paying vat? are they registered for vat? they're there purely trying to make a quick buck on the back of somebody who's desperate. it's just on the edge ethically, but it's also on the edge commercially, i think. so, when most physical shops were closed, it meant that scalpers could clean up, this is jack, a scalper. he got into reselling years ago and made big money. for example, by flipping £150 yeezys for up to £1,000?! he's a former investment banker who used to make around 1,500 quid a month. and he's given up that dayjob. why? because since setting up aftermarket arbitrage, his reselling company, about 18 months ago, he claims that he's made £456,000 in revenue in subscriptions alone. he helps others resell with a plethora of channels stacked with info, tutorials and advice on the social platform discord, which people pay at least a £30—a—month subscription to be a part of. his bots provide notifications to his 1,200 paying followers when a rare item is suddenly in stock, and he can even auto buy it if the bot is powerful enough. and with so many subscribers, you can see why scalping might be on the rise. however, these bots aren't easy to maintain. when i first started in, like, trainers, there was maybe, like, three bots, and now there is hundreds. a lot of the bots that have been developed are all by very young kids, and these are young entrepreneurs that are making a lot of money from producing this software. it gets very expensive to run a bot. this is what people don't think about. so we do that, we handle everything, and then you just so, we do that, we handle everything, and then you just sit back and wait for your success e—mail. but why does it get expensive to run a bot? because this is, like, where websites, for example, will put, like, anti—bot protection on a website. so, we have to use a lot of proxies. so, say you want to get 100 pairs of trainers from that one bot and you're on one if, the website that you're trying to acquire the shoes from is going to know that you're bombarding their servers, and they're going to know what you're doing, cos it's not physically possible that there's100 people trying to spam that auto—checker — that �*add to basket�* button. so, what the bot will do is you buy proxies and it assigns, like, one proxy to one task. so, it looks like these 100 tasks are in 100 different locations by one person. so, it means that it looks legit. legit — yeah. and it wasn'tjust consoles. isn't that creating unfair competition? yeah, it is, but i think if you look at any marketplace and anywhere where you see a supply and demand issue, you're going to see people exploiting that. if there's an arbitrage opportunity, people are going to capitalise on that. it's like, why would you leave the money on the table? there will be people out there paying more than what they should do for these products. yeah. so, is that not morally reprehensible at the end of the day? i don't...| wouldn't class not having a ps5 as suffering. like, i think that's a luxury. surely he wanted to show off how much he earned, but he did speak of others for scalping for greed. i'm sorry to hear that. one thing he also said during our chat interested me. that there is more than one reason why someone would scan. sure, with his walls of x boxes and ps5 behind us, he wanted to show off how much he earns but he did speak of others that got into scalping not for greed, so i spoke to a few of them. there was one who had a gambling debt of £30,000 that he cleared away with the money that he earned and another, who used it to restructure his life and step away from alcoholism, but because of what happened with jack, they didn't want to be filmed in fear of their safety. when i started this journey, i thought it was a simple story of people trying to make a quick back. what i didn't expect to find with people struggling to make ends meet and turn into scalping to make ends meet. people like them don't represent the majority who do it for agreed, however this minority does exist and you could argue that they are not doing anything that's wrong. remember, currently, this is legal, but should it be? the activity is related to organised crime or people trafficking. i take your view that there are individuals out there, where it has made a difference to their lives but that is the reason as well but we went to the regulation. if they are entrepreneurs, they are living within the same rules, as people setting up a high street shop. the bill brought forward had failed recently but he is renewing it again this year. there is no doubt that bots make scalping a lot more ferocious than it ever was. giving tech powered resellers and edge that consumers cannot compete with. what do you think? should be outlawed ? hand—held gaming is rarely about raw power. hand—held devices tend to double down on fun, pure gameplaying experiences that don't rely on graphics, so sharp that you cut yourself. that could be about to change as a result of this. a hand—held gaming pc from the people behind legendary games as well as the steam digital store, which dominates the gaming scene. it feels a little bit like a switch which has been down to the gym and spent a lot of time working out. it has a grown—up feel to it. there is a seven inch touch—screen, and although it is quite big, it's reasonably comfortable to use over long periods of time because it is not actually that heavy. gaming on pc relies on keyboard and mouse, which offers you a lot of options. but on hand—held, you don't have the same kind of real estate but the steam deck does have a plethora of control options. touch—screen, joysticks, feedback touchpads, triggers, and grip buttons underneath. all of them are combined to make the pc gaming experience on the move work. the weird thing about playing a game that you are so used to playing on keyboard and mouse is that with a control of this kind of setup, it's not quite as comfortable, but the touchpad here is really making up for that lack of mouse. the big advantage that this machine has over most new devices is its enormous library of games. steam is lunching with its own platform with thousands upon thousands of games. that is something that no other console has been able to rely on. been able to rely on, which puts it in such a unique position. not all the games in that library are optimised for play on the steam deck. games like control or fallout all work fine, even with the graphics settings maxed out. but maxing out the graphics as a graphic affect on battery life. if you play graphics and process intensive titles, expect that life to drop to something like two hours. the store is by far the largest digital distribution platform as far as pc games are concerned. but it's previous forays into hardware haven't always enjoyed the same success as its games. they've had a disastrous time. jumped up pcs that didn't have a benefit, and they've lost a bunch of money on pr headsets. and they've lost a bunch of money on vr headsets. it's tried to make its own controller that was trying to make of mouse into a controller. it wasn't successful. but with this, it's presenting its own version of the switch. how do you see the life cycle for the steam deck? will be like a console where you change the machine, or it will be more like a pc where you upgrade over the course of the machine's life? it's very much a pc, like a pc. some of the benefits you get don't i transit to the original pc space. i it's also mobile specific _ opportunities to expand the gaming space, so if you look at something like pokemon go, no analogue... i one of the more - specific opportunities. one of the more _ specific opportunities. mobile the steam deck isn't perfect. the plastic feel a little bit low end. battery life can be variable. there are other hand—held pcs, but in terms of specification, they'll cost quite a bit more than this does. pc gaming has endured several console lifecycles, and will no doubt involve beyond the current console state—of—the—art. let's see if hand—held pc devices like this one are a new evolutionary branch to the long—standing pc story. and, as ever, you can keep up with the team on social media. find us on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter at @bbcclick. thanks for watching. we'll see you soon. bye— bye. hello, and welcome to sportsday. i'm hh — and today, it's all about the finalists. chelsea make it through to their third fa cup final in three years as they beat crystal palace. we'll be live at wembley with all the reaction. another extra time epic for rangers, as they beat celtic to go through to the final of the scottish cup. and chelsea women stay on track for their fourth fa cup title, beating arsenal to secure their place in the final next month. good evening and welcome to tonight's sportsday. no easter eggs but we do have a cracking amount of football, with three semifinals this afternoon. we've had the women's fa cup, the scottish cup, and of course, the showdown between chelsea and crystal palace at wembley. with a place in the final of the fa cup at stake, chelsea grounded the eagles to make it to last two for the third time in three years. matt graveling is at wembley for us. this was exactly what they needed after a which is threatened them, they are in the third successive fa cup final the last two, they have to win it. a perceptive or, a stubborn

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