GameStop is adding another arm to its struggling business model. The company is getting into NFTs.
GameStop seems to be the last place people think would want to sell NFTs. But when other gaming companies like Square Enix and Ubisoft jumped on the controversial blockchain bandwagon, it made sense for the video game retail chain to join the trend.
The company posted a cryptic tweet on the official GameStop NFT account on Thursday with only two letters: “gm!” It’s obviously an acronym for “good morning,” but it’s the first (and so far only) tweet posted on the page since it went live in March. The simple tweet is already igniting controversy among fans who don’t want to see it saturate the gaming industry with more blockchain technology. However, the tweet served a dual purpose: It both signaled GameStop’s stock market win with a 3.45% increase earlier in the day, according to Seeking Alpha, and teased its NFT marketplace.
GameStop’s NFT marketplace is a platform for in-game digital assets that is built into an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency platform called Immutable X in order to sell the NFTs for a low price. It was slated to launch by the end of July, but Robbie Ferguson, the co-founder of Immutable X, indicated last month that it may launch four to eight weeks sooner, which puts the date somewhere between June 1 and June 3o.
Robbie Ferguson has tweeted that 4 major marketplaces are integrating with @Immutable in the next 8-12 weeks.
If one of those is GameStop NFT, this would place a launch date between June 1st and June 30th, 4-8 weeks sooner than #GME’s launch deadline of July 31st, 2022. https://t.co/8aDOjedMOa
— GMEdd.com (@GMEdd) April 7, 2022
This news comes just as GameStop found itself embroiled in a legal labor scandal. Polygon reported that a former GameStop worker filed a class-action lawsuit against the company for allegedly violating New York labor law. The suit claims that GameStop paid him and other employees every two weeks instead of weekly as required by New York Labor Law Section 191 since 25% of their job requires manual and physical labor.
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