Curative Funko Pop retailer GameStop continues its ill-advised NFT marketplace turnaround despite a series of embarrassments.He came less than two weeks after news broke that the service had hosted his NFT “adaptations” of famous images of his 9/11 victims. (opens in new tab) fall to their death, Ars Technica Report (opens in new tab) revealed that the GameStop NFT Marketplace was promoting the sale of unauthorized NFT copies of indie games.
An individual named Nathan Ello released a NiFTy Arcade collection on GameStop’s marketplace, garnering 8.4 ETH (approximately $14,000) in initial sales. Ello did not have permission to use at least two of these games in his projects. We’re not entirely sure, but it appears we weren’t even given permission to use the three more games included in NiFTy Arcade. Additionally, Ello did not have a license to use his PICO-8 engine, which is used in all five of these games.
Ultimately, NiFTy Arcade was removed from the GameStop marketplace and Ello’s account was suspended, but the pervasive nature of NFTs meant that users could still access these unlicensed copies of the game, and the creators could rely on it. Ello has offered to provide compensation to developers harmed by NiFTy Arcade, while ensuring that future games “adequately comply with all NFT Marketplace terms of service.” ” and revived the project on another marketplace.
This story is another example of shady behavior fostered by NFT marketplaces. In summer 2021, NFT promises that “ownership” of artists’ work will rapidly give way to the reality that their work is often unintentionally misused. This is all while NFTs themselves continue to offer use cases beyond tangible benefits and profit generation, as Brazilian developer Mark Venturelli so eloquently said at the Brazilian International Game Festival. (opens in new tab) last month. This is not the first example of his NFT creator transforming existing games into blockchain tokens using MetaGravity’s Retro Arcade Collection. (opens in new tab) It offers this treatment to a selection of older, bigger-budget games.
It’s especially jarring to see this mentally deadly NFT nonsense from GameStop get worse, especially when you remember that the company laid off quite a few employees recently. (opens in new tab)including fellows from the longtime video game magazine Game Informer.
