THE BOTS ARE HERE!

by Tim Haas October 9, 2020

Team,

The bots have found us!

If you recall, I did my third Champion’s Path ETB preorder drop on Sunday, October 4, and since then I’ve been getting absolutely pummeled by bots trying to purchase ETBs. By pummeled I mean like 20-30 checkout attempts per minute for the last 4 days straight.

I’ve reached out to Shopify about how to handle this, but they don’t really offer any technical solutions to bots for their regular tier customers. Advanced bot protection is part of their ShopifyPlus tier, but that starts at $2000/month so it’s kind of a non-starter.

I’m certainly not going to give in to the bots and just let them buy up all our inventory because they're a huge reason why these products are so hard to find in the first place. The grossly inflated prices scalpers demand on the secondary-market make it difficult for many people to enjoy the TCG and I refuse to knowingly contribute to or enable scalping/botting.

So what do we do?

For the time being, I’m going to be handling orders for highly sought after items manually.

For Champion’s Path, I’ll keep the text on the main Champion’s Path page updated with available products.

I’m still not sure how I’m going to handle other products (Ultra Prism booster boxes, Unbroken Bonds booster boxes, etc), but I’ll keep you updated.

How can I order?

Less hyped items will still be available for normal purchase through the regular Shopify checkout process without any interruption or intervention.

For more hyped items like Champion’s Path, you can use the product request form to send me an email and I’ll respond in the order they're received. This process is more labor intensive, and therefore slower, so your patience is greatly appreciated. Please know that if you email me about getting Champion’s Path products I _will_ respond, but it may take a couple of days as things start to stack up.

Emails and (their subsequent orders) will be processed in the order they’re received.

How long will it be this way?

I’m hopeful that this is a temporary measure and things can go back to normal quickly. Battling bots and manually processing orders is a very labor intensive way to conduct business. As the chief cook and bottle washer of iChooseYou, as well the primary caretaker of my 3-year-old, time is a precious resource, so I’m not eager to continue this practice for any longer than is absolutely necessary.

 That’s all yo. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Stay safe!

-Tim