GameStop NFT Sells Stolen NFT Indie Games

GameStop NFT is in deep trou­ble as reports claim sales of five stolen NFT Indie games worth $14,000 on GameStop NFT mar­ket­place. To add to its woes, sev­er­al reports fur­ther claim that at least two titles were sold with­out any autho­riza­tion. Let’s delve deep­er into the periph­eries of blockchain and try to unfurl the chain of con­tro­ver­sy that has been built lately.

Massive Blow to GameStop NFT

GameStop has suf­fered a major set­back so far as its bid to take on the lead­ers of the NFT mar­ket­place is con­cerned. Often dubbed as the king­pin of the glob­al retail gam­ing indus­try, the Grapevine-head­quar­tered com­pa­ny has been des­per­ate­ly try­ing to emerge as the undis­put­ed chal­lenger in the domain of NFT games. Numer­ous GameStop col­lectibles have helped the com­pa­ny grow sub­stan­tial­ly in this par­tic­u­lar domain over the last few years. But it couldn’t stay away from con­tro­ver­sies and the lat­est addi­tion to that infa­mous list seems to be quite alarming.

Going by ear­li­er trends, the stake­hold­ers of GameStop will try to bury their face in the sand. Undoubt­ed­ly, it won’t be of any help and might turn out to be the spoil­sport for GameStop NFT mar­ket­place. The alle­ga­tions are way too seri­ous to be ignored this time. After burn­ing its fin­gers by orga­niz­ing the sale of an NFT adap­ta­tion “of a famous image of a 9/11 vic­tim falling”, now GameStop NFT has host­ed a sale of stolen NFT Indie games.

GameStop NFT sells Stolen NFT Indie games, rais­es seri­ous ques­tions regard­ing intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights infringe­ment in the NFT ecosys­tem. [Image Cred­it: Ven­ture Beat]

GameStop is at their wit’s end as despite sus­pend­ing the account of Nathan Ello, who brand­ed him­self as the ‘own­er’ of these NFT games, from the GameStop NFT mar­ket­place, buy­ers  still have access to the stolen NFT Indie games. Ques­tions are being raised from all quar­ters that with­out hav­ing the required the license of the PICO‑8 engine, involved in cre­at­ing the five games, how GameStop allowed Nathan to sell these games on its marketplace.

GameStop’s Recent Surge

GameStop seems to be on a ram­page with all guns blaz­ing as it con­tin­ues to push the lim­its thanks to a sharp increase in the sales of GameStop col­lectibles in the recent times. Experts believe that this an inte­gral part of GameStop’s ploy to pose an open chal­lenge to OpenSea, cur­rent­ly rat­ed as the biggest NFT Mar­ket­place on the internet.

Worrying Signs

Non Fun­gi­ble Tokens have man­aged to attract a lot of new buy­ers in the past two years, espe­cial­ly after the out­break of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. Its world has been stretched to new hori­zons as now NFT assets include much more than JPEG images – rang­ing from music & movies to games and a whole lot of oth­er dig­i­tal assets. With the grad­ual growth of per­mis­si­ble assets for NFT trans­ac­tions, the wide­spread con­cern over own­er­ship and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights, is ris­ing by leaps and bounds. In such a sce­nario, the lat­est GameStop NFT con­tro­ver­sy rais­es the alarm and calls for prompt action.

It’s high time the author­i­ties across dif­fer­ent NFT mar­ket­places come up with strict reg­u­la­tions and ensure tighter scruti­ny to force the var­i­ous play­ers to close­ly adhere to the guide­lines. Oth­er­wise, it would not only put the cre­ators’ prof­its at stake but will turn the NFT ecosys­tem upside down.