Sclerotic Funko Pop retailer GameStop continues its ill-advised turn of the NFT marketplace despite a string of embarrassments. Less than two weeks after news broke that the agency was hosting an NFT “adjustment” of a famous 9/11 victim image (opens in new tab) fall to their deaths, a report from Ars Technica (opens in new tab) has revealed that the GameStop NFT marketplace has enabled the sale of unauthorized NFT copies of indie games.
An individual named Nathan Ello released the NiFTy Arcade collection on GameStop’s marketplace, earning 8.4 ETH (about $14,000) in initial sales. Ello definitely did not have permission to use at least two of these games in his project, and it appears, but is not entirely certain, that he did not have permission to use three more games in the NiFTy Arcade. In addition, Ello was not licensed to use the PICO-8 engine used in all five of those games.
Ultimately, the NiFTy Arcade was taken off the GameStop marketplace and Ello’s account was suspended, but the diffuse nature of NFTs means users can still access their copies of these unlicensed games and their creators may not have a story. Ello offered to compensate the developers who suffered damage from the NiFTy Arcade, meanwhile, has revived the project on another marketplace with a promise that future games will be “in good compliance with all NFT marketplace terms of service.” .
This story is yet another example of the shady behavior facilitated by NFT marketplaces. Summer 2021 promises NFTs that will ensure that artists ‘ownership’ of their work has quickly given way to a reality in which their work is often exploited against their will. All while the NFTs themselves continue to offer no tangible benefits or use cases beyond profit generation, as Brazilian developer Mark Venturelli so eloquently put it in his speech at the Brazil International Games Festival. (opens in new tab) last month. This isn’t even the first time NFT makers have turned existing games into blockchain tokens, with MetaGravity’s Retro Arcade Collection (opens in new tab) offer this treatment to a selection of older games with a bigger budget.
It’s especially horrifying to see this spiritually numbing GameStop NFT nonsense fester when you remember the company recently laid off a significant number of employees. (opens in new tab)including some of our colleagues from the long-running video game magazine Game Informer.