Updated | ZOTAC antagonizes an army of gamers as it promotes a parade of Gaming GeForce RTX 30 Series White Edition cards as ready for crypto mining duties

Update February 18: ZOTAC USA has now taken down the tweet in question after it was met by a wave of criticism from irritated gamers. You can still see a screenshot of the post below, which has been deemed something of a PR blunder for the graphics card maker.

Original story:

ZOTAC USA has pulled off an interesting publicity stunt at a fractious time when gamers and miners are clashing furiously over supplies of the Ampere-based graphics cards that Nvidia has produced with the GeForce RTX 30 Series. Gamers have been calling out for companies like Nvidia and its AIB partners to somehow block crypto miners from grabbing all the stock. However, this could very much be a losing battle for gamers, as crypto miners are more likely to be willing to pay double or triple a card’s MSRP when they know they can soon make it back by digging up digital coins.

We have reported several times over spikes of activity in regard to GeForce RTX 30 Series cards (as well as GeForce RTX 30 Series laptops) being used in mining farms around the world. As cryptocurrency prices continue to skyrocket, this state of affairs is going to carry on, and it appears ZOTAC wants to show the mining community what it has to offer while making sure the angry gaming community knows what it’s up to. So a recent tweet showing an image of a long parade of Gaming GeForce RTX 30 Series White Edition cards connected to each other accompanied by the caption “An army of #ZOTACGAMING GPU’s hungry for coin” has been met by applause from miners and boos from gamers.

Of course, a typical miner looking at the business side of the current situation would see no problem in a company, which has the sole purpose of making a profit, selling its product to those who are willing to pay the most. Unfortunately, this will leave a lot of members of the gaming community struggling to find or purchase a GeForce RTX 30 Series card as they are either completely out of stock or being sold at unreasonable prices. The backlash to ZOTAC’s post has been quite strong so far, with one commenter simply stating “scummy” and another asking why the tweet was partially aimed at the gaming community by including tags such as #PcGaming, #Gaming, and #Gamers, just for gamers to see a mining rig setup along with that divisive caption.

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