The past cou­ple of months, resellers of the next-gen con­soles have made a for­tune, as well as caus­ing short­ages for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/Series — with lim­it­ed sup­plies in-store due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Accord­ing to VGC, six law­mak­ers in the U.K. are seek­ing leg­is­la­tion that would pro­hib­it the sale of gam­ing con­soles and com­put­er parts at prices that are “great­ly above” the MSRP.

The MPs from the Scot­tish Nation­al Par­ty tabled this motion, so it’s in extreme­ly ear­ly stages of pos­si­bly com­ing into effect. The motion also states that the resale of goods pur­chased by auto­mat­ed bots should be ille­gal. The MPs are com­par­ing this to a bill already intro­duced, which con­trols the activ­i­ty of tick­et resellers, who must give their iden­ti­ty and exact details of the seat they are selling.

Of course, it’s dif­fi­cult to know exact­ly how many PS5s and Xbox­es that have been resold, but there is every indi­ca­tion it’s a rather large amount. Analy­sis from a data engi­neer con­clud­ed that scalpers made $82 mil­lion in sales and $39 mil­lion in prof­it since Sep­tem­ber from next-gen con­soles and high-end com­put­er com­po­nents. Ser­vices like eBay and Pay­Pal took a $6.6 mil­lion and $2.4 mil­lion cut, respec­tive­ly. How­ev­er, the analy­sis only includ­ed US list­ings, not tak­ing into account oth­er mar­ket­places like Facebook. 

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