Yeah, if you've been collecting from us for a long time and are maintaining a complete set, we'll go out of our way to make sure you can get a copy. We don't want to lose longtime supporters over a single game and we have the 32X variant in production that we can allot some units from. Honestly, we may even take units from that variant to help as many people on the waitlist as we can. It's clear demand is too big here to keep that variant as a rewards exclusive - we'll still honor anyone who already sent tickets in for that variant, but I think we kind of have to do the right thing here.
What matters with regards to the first point about long-time fans/customers is that they actually have our releases still - not just their purchase history. We aren't going to go out of our way to help resellers or long-time customers who don't really care about keeping our games around. We want to help out the true fans who are showing up with every release to buy both the obscure games and the big games.
For anyone still discussing the checkout system, just think about the realities of a system that works any other way and you'll quickly realize that there is no perfect solution.
If we had a cart reserve and 15,000 people tried adding a game to their cart that was limited to 5,000 copies - 10,000 people would immediately be left out in the cold with no chance to get the game unless they stick around and refresh until something frees up. With the current system, all 15,000 people are on a level playing field and have an equal chance to get through check out with what they want. There'd be more frustration with a cart reserve because window shoppers who don't even want the game could hold units hostage. Games would literally be unable to add to cart within a second of a page going live. At least you have a chance with the current system! If you believe some people are using bots, then use a bot, at least the field is still level. For reference, there's no evidence of bots being used or even existing for our site. We're not Nike or Amazon - who is developing bots for us when 90% of our releases don't need such a thing?
No matter what is done with the checkout system, people are going to be left out and they're going to be mad. No solution will satisfy everyone and every solution will have its drawbacks. I think what we have is the fair and easy approach. I think Shopify picked the right way to handle this and I plan to stick with whatever they have in place.