GameStop has proven once again with their NFT heck that an unregulated market is built on planetary destruction technology and this may shock you, not a great idea . Thoroughly report from Ars TechnicaThe GameStop NFT marketplace was once again the subject of controversy when an NFT miner on the platform was caught selling NFT-ified versions of HTML 5 games that he himself did not create. out and not allowed to sell them. Oh, and here’s the fun part, these games are probably going to be forever on the blockchain right now!
GameStop had a number of struggles In Lately year as it tries to stay competitive and relevant. Its recent experiment is to try and generate waves in NFT space, launching the market for digital assets while still horrible. The market is not without controversy, including a recent NFT whose art resembles the image of a person falls to their death during the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. However, the latest wave of nonsense came out of the store, involving a man named Nathan Ello and the NFTs NiFTy Arcade his own, intended to provide some interactive fun for an NFT… But he didn’t seem to stop and ask if he was allowed to use games developed by others for this project. no, much less if he has the power to even monetize them.
Talking to KotakuNathan Ello declined to comment for this story.
Kotaku Have reached out to GameStop for comment.
NFTs have been subject to theft and questionable ownership for some time. If it’s not an NFT formerly owned by a celebrity is stolenthus throwing intellectual property into a huge gray area, then it someone is casting NFT with artwork that isn’t theirs. The NFT’s supposed security was also broken by scam conspiracy and smart hacker. The secure and traceable future of commerce through blockchain is very insecure and it’s hard to identify the bad guys. And this latest controversy involving GameStop and NiFTy Arcade is just another example of that mess. Meanwhile, industry insist on sell, useand praise NFT even though overwhelming negative reaction and humiliating defeat.
Like Ars Technica First reported today, Ello’s NFT “NiFTy Arcade” is meant to be “fully playable from the owner’s crypto wallet” or on the GameStop marketplace itself. This at least seems to make a bit more sense than plain JPEG. Instead of just buying a “link” to an image that you seem to “own” in some way, you can at least play a fun little HTML 5 game while burning the planet.
However, that fun comes with the added bonus that NiFTy Arcade’s featured games are entirely developed by other people who have never allowed their work to be used in this way or profiteering. In fact, many of these games, such as Worm Nom Nom can be found on Itchi.io with a very explicit Creative Commons license not allowing commercial use.
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The backlash was fierce, with several developers stating that they felt ripped off by NiFTy Arcade. Krystian Majewski, developer of Breakout Hero, said in a statement to Ars Technica, that his work was “sold for profit without my consent.”
Ello has stated on Twitter that in some cases, inconsistencies with licensing language for other titles surely meant that he did no wrong in just taking them.
As Ars Technica detailed in their report, Ello has had his minting privileges suspended on GameStop’s marketplace and the NFTs in question have been taken down from the platform.
On top of that, through the wonderful magic of NFTs and the mighty blockchain, these minted games might just live on forever, where they can be bought and sold on other crypto marketplaces. GameStop’s NFTs use an “Interplanetary File System,” (IPFS) which would sound cool if that tech wasn’t enabling others to continue to buy and sell NFTs with no apparatus to check and verify the content or any legal issues surrounding them. It’s not entirely clear how GameStop verifies or spot checks the NFTs that arrive on its marketplace, though their terms of service states that the buyer is responsible for verifying the authenticity of the NFT, not GameStop:
You are solely responsible for doing your research on NFT, as well as understanding the seller’s terms and conditions for a potential purchase or sale of NFT, before buying or selling. Such research includes, but is not limited to, verifying the veracity and authenticity of the seller’s claims and descriptions of the NFT, such as ownership, uniqueness, intellectual property, paper permission, scarcity, rarity, value and function. No GameStop Entity (defined below) endorses any NFT or makes any claim of authenticity, ownership, uniqueness, intellectual property, license, their scarcity, rarity, value, functionality and/or other attributes or rights.
But even if GameStop has a thorough vetting process, through the blockchain, the IPFS file hashes can be accessed on any active node on multiple servers. It was a theft of Pandora’s Box.
That may be the nature of the NFT monster, but GameStop isn’t entirely optimistic here. Like Ars Technica discovered that you can still get a lot of access to unlicensed NiFTy Arcade games on GameStop’s servers. All you need is the correct link and you can still continue to access these NFTs. Joseph White, creator of the PICO-8 game engine that powers pixel games that Ello appropriated for his NiFTy Arcade games, spoke out against GameStop, saying Ars Technica that the video game retailer does not offer any explicit means of taking down an NFT that infringes on someone else’s copyright. He has filed DMCA requests, but they seem to have hit a dead end.
Kotaku has reached out to Joseph White for comment.
Guess you have to be a little richer for a DMCA takedown request to have any effect; What a fair system! Maybe if I liked some Metallica songs, Lars Ulrich will be participating to put an end to all this nonsense.
