Two weeks ago GameStop's NFT marketplace launched its Beta mode and within 48 hours torched the transactional volume of Coinbase's marketplace that has been live for two months. For a company that was near bankruptcy and then turned into the face of the meme stock craze launching an NFT marketplace that can displace a company as established as Coinbase at its own game is impressive. GameStop's ability to do this seems to have caught people off-guard regardless of how they think or feel about the business decision made by the business leaders at GameStop.
While being successful in the first couple of weeks does not mean that a product will be viable long-term this is where I would argue the opposite for GameStop. Being a publicly traded company decisions and choices by a company's leadership are crafted in part due to how the stock price is doing. GameStop's stock is doing well in an environment that is going to cause anyone to face significant hardships. Given the stock market facing significant headwinds, crypto being in a bear market, and Coinbase's recent marketplace launch creating a new definition of falling flat on your face it was a daunting task. GameStop was also launching a Beta version which resulted in the marketplace lacking in functionality. The only NFTs that were up for sale were on the Ethereum blockchain and well as they were not going to have game functions at all instead it was just going to be crypto art.
Yes, you read that correctly this version of the marketplace is not even aimed at the customers that GameStop hopes to one day capture it is aimed at collectors. The idea behind the NFT marketplace for GameStop came from the belief that NFTs are going to have an increasingly important place in gaming going forward. The first play-to-earn games are already here and some of them managed to make significant sums of money last year. GameStop plans to be the one-stop shop for all gamer's needs when it comes to the blockchain. This means it is going to need to build out other blockchains, recruit game developers and gamers to use their platform, and ideally form exclusive partnerships with some of these games to make GameStop's marketplace the official second-hand marketplace for certain games.
All of this publicity has not been without some controversy. While GameStop does have a system in place to approve people to sell NFTs an NFT slipped through that caused quite a bit of outrage. Called Falling Man it was hard to not see the image that has resonated in people's minds ever since the September 11th attacks in New York.
The NFT may not be an exact copy and the artist could have meant something entirely different by it but it is strikingly similar to the photograph that captured how horrific that day was. Understandably as GameStop was making headlines this NFT was found by members of the public who expressed their outrage at its listing. This caused GameStop to react and remove the NFT from its marketplace and when people looked into it further OpenSea took one on the chin as it had been listed for over 2 months on their platform! Both of these marketplaces are centralized so removing NFTs for sale should not surprise or outrage anyone and I think that for GameStop this being uncovered showed how they were much more receptive to people's feedback than OpenSea is giving them an extra little boost.
GameStop has already done more with their marketplace than I think people expected from them and has surpassed expectations thus far. Now, will they be successful and become the huge NFT marketplace that they want to be? Only time can answer that but they are off to a great start. If they can sign exclusive partnerships with some of the big games that are going to release NFTs then I think their marketplace can only go up from here as they return to their old business model of buying and selling games but with the modern twist of it being NFTs for those games.
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