The gaming community seems to have a love/hate relationship with GameStop. While on the one hand, they complain about high prices, bad working conditions, and low trade-in rates, they can't imagine a gaming industry without them. GameStop's brick and mortar stores seem like they've been on the brink of collapse forever now, which has finally spurred the company to try and get with the times. But unfortunately, not in a way that most gamers will appreciate.
GameStop has announcedꦜ that it is setting up a $100 million fund for game developers looking to get into the NFT market. This will be in aid of getting the devs to sell tokens through its own service, which it is setting up in partnership with NFT company, Immutable.
GameStop's NFT marketplace will sell game assets such as skins and weapons (thanks, ). Which, you know, is something we can already do without having to write a disclaimer about how it won't be that bad for the planet. So it's like microtransactions, but with extra steps (and the added bonus of being bullied for owning it).
The fund is live now, and developers can apply as long as their gaming project uses Web3 technology. But given how quickly these sorts of projects have been scrapped recently following ♚community backlash, it might not be the soundest investment.
Despite pledges of being carbon neutral, it is worth noting that Immutable bases its own platform on the Ethereum blockchain - which is incredibly power-hungry. place Ethereum's annual energy use at more than would be required to power the entirety of Belgium for a year. This will potentially change with the release of Etherium 2.0 - a blockchain said to be much more environmentally friendly - but that is yet to be rolled out.
It remains to be seen if GameStop can stick to this carbon-neutral pledge for its own project. As we reported earlier today, Ubisoft's similar promise has delivered questionable results at best, as its NFT partner has been found to use the very blockchain that the gaming giant had previously criticized for being bad for the environment. This doesn't pertain to Ubisoft's own collection, but it is being done by an NFT company that it's investing in. Considering GameStop is also partnering with another company to make its crypto project happen, it will be interesting to see if the retailer can avoid similar controversy - other than the one it's facing for doing NFTs in the first place.
