Hey there.
Let us talk about the least glamorous page on this website, which also happens to be the one that decides whether you get the thing you want.
You have done this before somewhere else. A hot release goes up, you click the button, you get an email eight weeks later at 3am telling you stock has landed, and by the time you wake up it is gone. Or worse, you get nothing at all and never find out whether you were even on a list.
We built our own system rather than installing an app, specifically so we could avoid that. Here is exactly how it works, including the parts that are not flattering.
There Are Two Systems, Not One
They look the same from the outside. They are not.
Restock notify answers "email me when this is back." No account needed, just an email address. When stock returns, everyone subscribed gets an email with a buy link. First to click wins. This is what you get on an ordinary item that ran out.
The pre-order waitlist answers "reserve my place in line." This is for a hyped release where we might only receive a handful of copies. It is a strict, first come first served queue with an actual position number, and it behaves completely differently.
Rule of thumb: something ordinary that ran out uses restock notify. A new release that might be short-allocated uses the waitlist. The product page will tell you which one you are looking at.
How the Queue Actually Works
You join, you get a position, and that position never changes.
That is the whole promise, and it is worth stating plainly because it is the bit shops usually fudge. You are not in a pool. You are not being re-sorted. You are at a number, and you keep it.
When your turn arrives, we send you a Shopify invoice for your copy. It is genuinely yours at that moment, held for you.
You then have 24 hours. That is the claim window, and we are telling you now rather than in the email so it is never a surprise. If the window closes unclaimed, your copy rolls to the next person in line, because somebody behind you is waiting for exactly that to happen.
If we run out before reaching you, we send an email saying the delivery is fully claimed. That is not a nice email to receive and we send it anyway, because silence after a drop is what makes people assume they were forgotten or skipped. It tells you the number you keep and confirms the next delivery resumes from exactly there.
The 24-Hour Clock Has an Exception, and It Exists Because We Got It Wrong
Here is a genuinely embarrassing story that ended in a feature.
The claim window works by asking Shopify one question: was this invoice paid? Which is fine, unless you are a regular who always pays cash at the counter. Those customers never paid online, so the 24-hour window expired on every single drop they were reached on, rolled their copy to somebody else, and then emailed them to say they had missed a turn they were literally driving in to collect.
So there is now a pay-in-store option. If you are set up for it:
- You get a 7-day hold instead of 24 hours.
- Your queue position does not change at all. You are served at exactly your own spot, no earlier and no later.
- Your email says "set aside for you in the shop, pay at the counter", with the online pay link kept only as an alternative if you decide you would rather have it shipped.
- The order gets marked PAY IN STORE so whoever is on the till knows what they are holding.
If you are local and you prefer paying in person, talk to us and we will set that up.
If You Are Not Signed In
Be honest with yourself about this one, because it is the difference between a place in line and a hope.
A signed-in customer joining a pre-order gets a real queue position. A guest gets an email box instead, which is the restock path wearing a pre-order's clothes.
We do not leave guests with nothing. Guest signups on a pre-order are held back until every queued member has been served, and then they go out. That is deliberate: without that hold, a guest would get a public buy link the moment stock landed and walk straight past the people who had been queuing for weeks. That would be unfair, so we stopped it happening.
But it does mean the honest advice is: if you want the copy, sign in before you join.
What This Looks Like Right Now
The waitlist is how we handle a line that arrives in dated deliveries rather than sitting on a shelf indefinitely. Two of ours work that way.
HexaDome Legends, Corvus Belli's arena game, which is brand new. We wrote a full introduction to it if you have not met it yet.
Warcrow, the fantasy game from the same studio.
If a product page shows a waitlist rather than a buy button, that is not the site being broken. That is the queue doing its job.
The Short Version
- Restock notify: no account, email when it lands, first click wins.
- Waitlist: sign in, get a real position, keep it forever.
- 24 hours to claim once your turn comes, or 7 days if you are set up to pay in store.
- Your position survives a delivery running out. The next one resumes from where you were.
- Silence is not a policy here. You get told when you miss out, not just when you win.
That is the whole thing. No app, no dark patterns, no mystery.
Anything above that is unclear, tell us and we will fix the wording, because a queue nobody understands is just a lottery with extra steps.
Happy gaming, and may your claim window never expire at 3am.