Blizzard Entertainment has a conference every year and the height of their popularity demand for tickets far outstripped the capacity of any venue they could reasonably get.
I recall in the first years hearing of friends or acquaintances who sat up in a group and spammed the server right after tickets were posted. In later years I heard they went with a lottery system. You had a window to sign up that gave their servers a break and at the end you either got a ticket or you didn't.
Where a convention differs from a concert is that you can show up at a convention without a ticket and still participate in some fashion. You can hang out at off-site events that are affiliated, and it's common (if not entirely legal) for people to timeshare a pass, going for a few hours and then letting a friend or coworker go for the rest of the day.
The scalpers could still of course flood a lottery system, but if you make sure that only 4 tickets go to the same human (via ID or some other means) then the scalpers are limited to how many people they can get to agree to pretend to be the purchaser, and they open themselves up to identity fraud and/or theft charges if they get caught faking it.
I recall in the first years hearing of friends or acquaintances who sat up in a group and spammed the server right after tickets were posted. In later years I heard they went with a lottery system. You had a window to sign up that gave their servers a break and at the end you either got a ticket or you didn't.
Where a convention differs from a concert is that you can show up at a convention without a ticket and still participate in some fashion. You can hang out at off-site events that are affiliated, and it's common (if not entirely legal) for people to timeshare a pass, going for a few hours and then letting a friend or coworker go for the rest of the day.
The scalpers could still of course flood a lottery system, but if you make sure that only 4 tickets go to the same human (via ID or some other means) then the scalpers are limited to how many people they can get to agree to pretend to be the purchaser, and they open themselves up to identity fraud and/or theft charges if they get caught faking it.