Pre-orders are now open for the four different editions of God of War Ragnarök - the most expensive of which, the Jotnar Edition, is priced at £230. As Tom explained at the time, this includes lots of fancy physical items and a digital code for the game - but no disc. Given the limited numbers, it probably comes as no surprise that already the more collectible editions have already sold out on official retail sites like GAME and the official PlayStation Store. And, perhaps even more predictably enough, it looks like too many scalpers have laid their dirty hands on the pre-orders (or pretending to, anyway) and are listing them on auction places for massively inflated prices online. A quick peek on eBay UK, for instance, sees the £230 edition retailing for £300, £350, £530, £550 and even higher. Our friends stateside aren’t faring much better, either. The lowest Buy It Now price I’ve seen for the fanciest edition on eBay US is $375, although some are chancing their luck and demanding as much as $500+. ICYMI, whilst the most expensive of the versions, Jotnar Edition, is priced at £230, you can get the God of War Ragnarök Collector’s Edition for £180, whilst the Digital Deluxe edition costs £80 - as you might expect from the name, there’s no disc there, either. A standard digital/disc copy of the game costs £70 on PS5, or £60 on PS4 (where there’s a £10 upgrade option). Back in December 2021, US lawmakers announced a bill to prohibit bot scalping of high demand goods. The bill, which specifically targets scalpers using bots to snap up online inventories of in-demand items in order to resell them at significantly higher prices, doesn’t limit its focus to the video games industry, but it would certainly cover items such as consoles and graphics cards - both of which have been hit particularly hard by scalping as a result of supply chain issues worsened during the pandemic.
