Pokemon Center actually has good bot protection

Hello All,

I wanted to hopefully provide some of you guys some information that I believe is not widely known about the Pokemon Center website. I often see jokes about how PC doesnt care about bots or takes them lightly. I hope to change some of your opinions.

Yes. Bots are a problem on Pokemon Center’s website…I’m not going to sugar coat it. It does though take up an enormous amount of scalper bot developer time to prepare for an upcoming release, which sometimes they don’t have the time for. Contrary to many people’s belief, TPCI employs multiple anti botting defenses.

-1. Datadome (https://datadome.co/)
-2. Incapsula (Incapsula - Wikipedia)
-3. Hcaptcha (https://www.hcaptcha.com/)
-4. Unique filtering payment processor
-5. Queue once website traffic gets too heavy

  1. Ever wonder why you get temp banned from refreshing too quickly? That is Datadome security cranked up to help combat “website page monitors” alerting people when product actually goes on sale. Essentially saying its unhuman like to be refreshing the page this many times per min. Also helps block suspicious IP addresses “proxy IPs” from accessing the website.

  2. Similar Incapsula tries to stop website scraping. As a redundant backup, it as well tries to stop “website page monitors” alerting people when product actually goes up for sale and blocks suspicious IP addresses (proxies) from entering the website.

  3. Ever need to solve a captcha when on Pokemon Center? That is where H-captcha comes in. One of the most advance systems from telling the difference between humans and bots. No 3’rd party captcha service/API currently can solve the requested token. All solves need to be done by a human currently as writing this.

  4. Pokemon’s payment processor is very strict allowing one checkout per address. Botters will typically try and manipulate their address to try and get multiple orders delivered to one address. IE. How many physical addresses can one have if a website limits to 1 order per customer. Pokemon’s to stop fraud and bots will actually look a device finger print, checkout IP address and billing info to block any attempt to circumvent this limit.

  5. New Queue once website reaches a certain limit. We’ll have to see how this plays out.

Typical retail websites are lucky to have 1 anti bot protection service. Target uses “Shape”…Walmart uses PerimeterX…Pokemon uses at least 3 known different forms of anti bot protection. Something that actually is applaudable that they honestly dont get enough credit from the community about. What the website really lacks is server stability to handle the influx of traffic. That’s what causes the website to crash and become sluggish.

Hope you learned something and go a litter easier on Pokemon. They have a lot more in place than other companies and probably costing them a lot of money as well.

Formatting edits…sorry

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Hello TPCi employee. Nice guerilla Public Relations post you got there. :kissing_heart:

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I hope the pending site renewal addresses a lot of its longwinded online struggles

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Actually quite the opposite. All the knowledge I’ve learned is from sneaker and retail bot developers. I myself to a small scale, bot Pokemon Center…a handful of orders each release for myself.

Just was trying to show you guys (who are obviously very hard core collectors and very knowledgeable on Pokemon in general) that Pokemon deploys more security than other retailers.

Proof if needed?


Not to be rude, but we all know pokemon center has better than avg bot protection. Nobody (at least here) likes botting, so I am not really sure what the point of this post is? Are you offering bot services (not allowed)? Are you just letting us know they have bot protection? Do you have a non bot solution?

Most of us here just wanna collect sets as they come out. The rest of us dabble in both selling and collecting but still frown upon botting. I suggest you try Reddit, they love this crap

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I thought the E4 community enjoys information about all things Pokemon? The point of the post was meant to be educational…like many other posts on this forum are.

I havent promoted any bot services or I would have left that information in the webhook. Some member thought I was apart of Pokemon’s PR team (quite literally the opposite of what you’re now saying about me in the post). I posted “proof” that an E4 mod had to APPROVE of for the post to show with my account just being created. Obviously by my name…I’m not going to have “credibility” just joining a forum. Proof I’m sure if needed to back up my claims.

I’ve seen numerous times that people complain that Pokemon Center’s website does nothing to prevent bots…when that is absolutely not true.

I do what I do to collect the sets I want to collect without having to pay resell prices.

Your post is fine! The member is just teasing you about working for pokemon.

As for the post approval, every new members initial posts require approval to prevent spam. We get almost weekly spam accounts that never see the light of day because of that stopgate.

In relation to the actual topic, bots are here to stay. While I personally never use them, and couldn’t be bothered with the stress Olympics that is english modern, its still valuable to others. Its good to know that Pokemoncenter tries to prevent bots as Primastic Evolutions won’t be the last frenzy.

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Thank you for the reply. I understand fully about the needing approval to stop spam.

Just so members know…Pokemon has had all of these protections (maybe not H-captcha) for years (2021 at least)…and constantly tweaking protection settings.

Like you mentioned, I thought it was at the very least interesting to know that TPCI actually does deploy and tweak their bot protection settings…and can ramp up the settings when a drop is imminent. The complaints by the community are definitely heard…or they wouldnt spend the amount they do on the protection.

I don’t know if you should speak for everyone. I personally don’t really care if someone uses automation tools to buy something. I definitely prefer it to sweaty costco battles. Fair distribution of the product is on TPCI to provide.

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Just to chime in. Im pretty sure alot of members here can get disgruntled at the post because it should be common sense overall. With so many new people both good and bad coming into the hobby at various ages, someone is bound to blame TPCI, and they bleed into E4 from various platforms.

I actually learned a little bit I didnt already, and appreciate the knowledge. While I myself frown upon the use of using it I also see where its a benefit.

Thanks for sharing what you know.

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I appreciate the post and understand the triggering nature of the topic of “Bots”…especially in the Pokémon community/hobby.

Not saying you in general or anyone does this. But to use your “common sense” term…I find it common sense to know that if an exciting/talked about product is going up for sale, it’s going to go out of stock very quickly.

Especially in times of unprecedented demand with limited supply…to always blame bots (again not you personally, but general attitude) to me gets my disgruntled seeing those naïve posts not knowing about different site protections.

While bots do exist, like I’m trying to illustrate with my post, they have quite a few bot deterrents in place to severely mitigate how much stock is actually taken by them.

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With all of these protections in place, how do people like yourself still manage to successfully bot from the Pokémon center?

Is what you wrote above also true for Pokémon center Japan?

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Sure very fair question.
It really comes down to the bot developers trying to find loop holes/vulnerabilities/bypasses for the given security. Think of like a Windows update or Mac system update…the changelog often details what areas were “patched”/loop holes closed.

As smpratte mentioned above, anytime “money” is to be made, devs/people will try to find ways to bypass limits. For years when Pokemon cards were not reselling/not quick flipable almost no bot covered Pokemon Center. Back to 2021, when “easy” money was to be made, more and more bot developers started to add Pokemon Center modules. During the beginning of Scarlet and Violet (when Pokemon wasnt reselling)…it wasnt worth bot developers time to find these vulnerabilities and Pokemon Center didnt work. All really at the mercy of the bot developer to update the module and if it’s worth their time in their eyes vs the current market conditions or whatever other websites (Say like Walmart, Target etc) they believe is more critical for the “greater good” of the userbase.

Pokemon Center Japan
As for Pokemon Center JP. I’m not as versed as I am from the US. I have botted Pokemon Center JP for the Eevee Heroes drop. That drop almost singlehandedly changed how PCJP did releases for years. They started doing raffles for boxes and would make it so you had to have a JP address. (That basically eliminated me as forwarding addresses were filtered out). I’m unsure of any Japanese bot developers if they had a raffle bots or not…I’m going to assume there probably was something out there.

Fast forward to today…Pokemon Center JP does FCFS stocking of product again. They use one of the worst bot protections with lots of bypasses called Queue-IT (https://queue-it.com/). So many developers have ways around this. This is the little man saying “you are currently in line…it will take x amount of min until your turn”. I’m sure you noticed now queue times of hours and hours…its because bots can use proxy IPs and mimic waiting in line. So say you’re a regular user and have your 1 place in line. Botters with IP proxies (normally very minimal additional charge for the botter) can have hundreds of places in line…inflating the overall queue time for all users.

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I have to ask because you mentioned it, but with your knowledge I would assume you make decent money. (Again assuming) When you were using a bot was that your main source of income, or did you just want more money?

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No worries at all. Not what most people “believe” or “think” when they hear of botters…but generally, I buy product to just keep for myself. At least to this moment, I’ve hardly sold anything Pokemon related that I’ve gotten from a bot.

I’m not a whale like many people on this forum are, but I would say I have a decent Pokemon collection. I have multiples of golden era Japanese promos (Masakis, Grand Partys, Natta Wake, Pokemon Trainer Magazine etc.) I basically buy the modern era sealed to eventually fund my singles collection. I generally dont open modern, but when 151 released, I did bot that to actually open product. Not having to pay resell allowed my budget to afford to open more product than if I had to buy on the secondary.

I will say that right now during this craze of Prismatic Evolution (I’m sure most here believe that Pokémon will print this set heavily and a price correction will occur)…so I am “quick flipping”/“scalping” ETBs that I was able to buy. But IMO anyone buying at these prices are crazy.

My main source of income comes from working a professional 9-5 job. I got into botting sneakers around 2016. I did quick flip shoes and used that money just as like a side hustle. Thats where I gained most of my knowledge on different site protections etc.

I’m mainly now a “casual” botter and wanted to make this account to just post from a different mainly unheard from perspective.

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Understandable. I try to not witch hunt, or any of that when it comes to understanding perspectives as most people here do, but again I see why you did it. Thanks for replying, and I wish you the best of luck on your collection goals.

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Pokemon Center has added a queue once traffic reaches a certain threshold. Another addition. We’ll see how this plays out!

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This is even worse, they can just flood the queue with bots…