In 2022, GameStop entered the NFT market with its proprietary wallet. It was a late and botched debut, with a platform that never really took off among users. It is therefore not surprising that, just over a year after its launch, GameStop is about to close its NFT wallet once and for all.
Rumors about GameStop’s farewell to NFTs and the world of cryptocurrencies in general have been going on for a few months now: in both cases they are markets that never took off among gamers and which, indeed, have drastically contracted during 2022, to the point that today, after a year and a half of slow recovery, their values have not yet returned to the highs of the end of 2021.
After the resignation of GameStop CEO Matthew Furlong and with stocks in free fall, the retailer American video game has decided to end support for your wallet and for NFTs from November 1, 2023. The news came via a banner on GameStop Wallet, which simply explains that “GameStop Wallet support will end on November 1, 2023”.
Fortunately, users will be able to obtain and transfer their NFTs starting October 1, 2023, provided you remember theirs passphrase secret. “Any customer with a valid passphrase will be able to recover their account and transfer it to one of the compatible wallets”. Since the GameStop Wallet is based on the Ethereum blockchain, fortunately, transferring non-fungible tokens shouldn’t be too difficult.
In light of this bitter ending, we can conclude that GameStop’s experiments with NFTs have been a 100 million dollar hole in the water. The project not only never took off, but it has attracted harsh criticism from customers of the chain specializing in video games. Furthermore, the company failed to make smart decisions in the industry, partnering with FTX three months before its collapse and the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, one of the heaviest scandals in the crypto industry until today.