It's called a lotto because what you get could be left to chance. This was a pretty common to have happen in the past and some tech news sites covered it too. I'm not sure if it's still happening a lot nowadays but it was certainly a real thing 10 years ago. Current day monitor manufacturers still do very questionable things like rating a 4k monitor at 120hz in its primary tagline / description / on the box but there's fine print that says "only when running at 1080p". It's taking advantage of folks who don't know a lot or do a bunch of research beforehand in order to sell more units.

To a lesser degree the "lotto" idea happens with CPUs too in terms of overclockability potential. Certain serial numbers performed better, it became a lotto unless you went out of your way to purchase specific ones. This feels a lot less wrong than the panel lotto aspect tho.

You are right in that it feels criminal, it's not even the same product.

> Panel Lotto" (as I know it at least) refers to the company's policy regarding returning a panel that had dead pixels on arrival.

Like the Nintendo 3DS back than? Where you couldn't figure out, which screen(s) you would get pre-purchasing or Lenovo with their display panel and keyboard lotto?