- GameStop has announced an NFT marketplace
- The company will work with Immutable X to create the new product
- The GameStop community has not taken the news well
GameStop, the darling of the Reddit WallStreetBets gang, has announced that it has teamed up with Immutable X Pty Limited to create an NFT marketplace. The marketplace, the name of which was not given in the announcement, will launch later this year and will use Immutable X’s Ethereum Layer 2 solution as its base, with GameStop ploughing $100 million into Immutable X in the form of an NFT creation grant. Predictably, the news has gone down well with the Immutable X community while the negative reaction from the GameStop community is another example of the chasm between the crypto and gaming sectors.
Power to the creators! https://t.co/mYI9AdybEM
— GameStop (@GameStop) February 3, 2022
GameStop Turns to NFTs
GameStop rose to prominence in 2021 as amateur traders helped push the stock to record highs as part of a kind of anti-capitalist protest, ignoring any fundamentals within the company itself. However, as those in the crypto space know all too well, the party can’t carry on forever, and, indeed, the GameStop share price has collapsed over the past year, leaving the company needing to find new avenues of profitability.
GameStop has turned, almost inevitably, to NFTs, announcing yesterday in a short statement that it has teamed up with Immutable X to create an NFT marketplace. No details were given in the press release aside from the injection of $100 million by GameStop into Immutable X “which the parties intend to use for grants to creators of non-fungible token (“NFT”) content and technology”.
In return, Immutable X will provide some $150 million in IMX tokens to GameStop “upon the achievement of certain milestones.”
Immutable X’s IMX token jumped 28% on the news while GameStop shares barely moved, reflecting the mood in the two camps – Immutable X fans were delighted with the tie in while GameStop supporters were, well, less than enthusiastic:
Well… I don’t know if I should continue purchasing goods at my local gamestop store now… I don’t support nfts, in which they’re just money laundering, and a environment killer, but I enjoy getting things from gamestop, its a nice store.
— yoav the yoshi (@the_yoav) February 3, 2022
Shame on you. Been a GameStop fan forever. I held my stock and didn’t sell. I try to buy my games physically just to support my local GameStop. But if you are gonna go into this scam of NFTs then I think we need to reconsider our relationship. Sucks but you made a bad decision.
— 🎲The Dyslexic DM🎲 (@ReginaldShoe42) February 3, 2022
The reaction from the GameStop community echoes sentiment already seen time and time again when it comes to gaming companies incorporating NFTs, a sentiment most notably witnessed this week when Worms creator Team17 was forced to abandon its planned Worms NFTs after community backlash.
