Gamestop: Games sold on NFT marketplace without developers’ knowledge – News

In July of this year, Gamestop launched the beta of its own marketplace for trading non-fungible tokens online. Sales made on the platform in the cryptocurrency Ethereum earn the game retail chain 2.25 percent in transaction fees.

Ars Technica now reported on the NiFTy Arcade Collection, which set itself apart by offering “interactive NFTs”. This meant that they were small HTML5 games playable on the Gamestop platform or in the wallet. The crux of the matter: The creator of the NiFTy Arcade Collection was not the originator of the games. Rather sold Nathan Ello Games available for free online. Opposite to Ars Technica Ello stated that he wanted to show the potential of NFTs beyond static images and was looking for open source games that can also be used for commercial purposes. It was like with arcade titles Galactic Wars, Worm Nom Nom or Great disc box but not the case. These and various other games sold by Ello are based on the PICO-8 retro engine.

Affected developers complained that Ello didn’t even contact them before putting their games up for sale, as did PICO 8 developer Lexaloffle a.k.a Joseph White denounced the behavior. White also criticized Gamestop for the fact that posted NFTs do not seem to be checked and that there is no reliable and straightforward procedure for removing copyright-infringing material.

Only after the criticism did Ello offer to pass on the income to the developers. It is currently blocked on Gamestop’s NFT marketplace and the titles are being removed (at least as far as it was possible when the NFTs were implemented on the blockchain) until the questions about the rights to the games are resolved. At the moment, the store’s website is generally unavailable. Ello, meanwhile, has also put the NiFTy Arcade Collection up for sale on another platform, albeit with different games where he previously had profit-sharing agreements.