GameStop selling NFT games without ‘consent’, claims Dev

GameStop has proven once again with their NFT shenanigans that an unregulated market built on planet-destroying technology is, and this may shock you, not a terribly great idea. In a complete report from Ars Technica, the GameStop NFT marketplace is once again the subject of controversy after an NFT miner on the platform was caught selling NFT-modified versions of HTML 5 games that he himself did not produce and had no permission to sell. . Oh, and here’s the fun part, these games will probably live forever on the blockchain now!

GameStop had one the number of fights IN last years as it has tried to stay competitive and relevant. His latest experiment has been trying to make waves in the NFT space, opening a market for digital assets still being terrible. The market has not been without controversy, including a recent NFT that featured art similar to an image of a person who falls to his death during the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The latest round of nonsense to come out of the store, however, involves a man named Nathan Ello and his Arcade NiFTy NFTs, which aim to provide interactive entertainment for a NFT …but he didn’t seem to stop and ask if he had permission to use games that were developed by other people for this project, much less if he had the right to make money from them.

Speaking of my boxNathan Ello declined to comment for this story.

my box has reached out to GameStop for comment.

NFTs have been subject to theft and questionable ownership for some time. If it isn’t an NFT previously owned by a celebrity being stolenthus throwing intellectual property into a giant gray area, then it is someone building NFT with art that isn’t theirs. The supposed security of NFTs has also been destroyed by phishing schemes AND clever hackers. The secure and traceable future of commerce through blockchain has been highly uncertain and it has been extremely difficult to identify bad actors. And this recent controversy involving GameStop and NiFTy Arcade is just another example of this mess. In the meantime, Industry insists on selling, usingAND praising NFTs regardless of overwhelmingly negative reaction AND humiliating failures.

like Ars Technica first reported today, Ello’s “NiFTy Arcade” NFTs were meant to be “fully playable from an owner’s crypto wallet” or at GameStop’s own marketplace. This at least seems to make a bit more sense than a simple JPEG. Instead of just buying a “link” to an image that you apparently “own” part of, at least you can play a fun little HTML 5 game while it burns your planet.

However, this fun comes with the added bonus that NiFTy Arcade featured games developed entirely by other people who never gave permission for their work to be used in this way or profited from. In fact, many of these games, such as Name of the worm Name can be found on Itchi.io with a very clear Creative Commons license that does not allow commercial uses.

Backlash was fierce, with some developers stating they felt ripped off by NiFTy Arcade. Krystian Majewski, developer of Breakout Herosaid in a statement to Ars Technicathat his work was “sold for profit without my consent”.

Ello has stated on Twitter that in some cases, inconsistencies with the licensing language for other titles probably means he wasn’t wrong in getting them.

like Ars Technica detailed in their report, Ello has suspended GameStop’s marketplace manufacturing privileges and the NFTs in question have been removed from the platform.

Furthermore, through the wonderful magic of NFTs and the powerful blockchain, these created games can simply live forever, where they can be bought and sold on other crypto markets. GameStop’s NFTs use an “Interplanetary File System”, (IPFS) which would sound good if this technology didn’t allow others to continue buying and selling NFTs without any apparatus to check and verify content or any legal issues surrounding them. It’s not entirely clear how GameStop verifies or controls the NFTs that reach its marketplace, though their terms of service state that the buyer is responsible for verifying the authenticity of the NFT, not GameStop:

You are solely responsible for conducting research on an NFT and understanding the seller’s terms and conditions for the potential purchase or sale of the NFT, prior to purchase or sale. Such research includes, but is not limited to, verifying the veracity and veracity of the seller’s claims and description of the NFT, such as ownership, uniqueness, intellectual property, licenses, scarcity, rarity, value and functionality. None of the GameStop entities (defined below) endorse any NFTs or make any claims regarding authenticity, ownership, uniqueness, intellectual property, licenses, scarcity, rarity, value, functionality and/or other attributes or rights thereto. .

But even if there is a complete verification process on GameStop’s end, through the blockchain, IPFS file hashes can be accessed on any active node across multiple servers. It’s a Pandora’s Box of art theft.

That may be the nature of the NFT beast, but GameStop isn’t completely off the hook here. like Ars Technica I understand, you can still use many unlicensed NiFTy Arcade games on GameStop servers. All you need is the correct link and you can continue using these NFTs anyway. Joseph White, creator of the PICO-8 game engine that powers the pixel games that Ello adopted for its NiFTy Arcade games, has spoken out against GameStop, saying Ars Technica that the video game vendor does not provide any kind of clear way to remove an NFT that infringes on the copyrights of others. He has filed DMCA requests, but they seem to have hit a dead end.

my box has reached out to Joseph White for comment.

I guess you have to be a little richer for a DMCA takedown request to have any effect; what a fair system! Maybe if I do some Metallica songs, Lars Ulrich will intervene to put an end to all this nonsense.