GameStop is pulling the plug on its crypto locker after only a year. An alert posted this week to the company’s website (via Game Developer) says GameStop Wallet will be no more after November 1st. The retailer says its decision was “due to the regulatory uncertainty of the crypto space.”
The gaming retailer’s iOS and Chrome Extension lockers, billed as a “self-custodial Ethereum wallet,” will be removed on November 1st. The retailer recommends that customers have access to their Secret Passphrase to retrieve their NFTs by October 1st. “Any customer with access to their Secret Passphrase has the ability to recover their account in any compatible wallet,” the company wrote.
Like many companies in 2021 and 2022, GameStop invested heavily in NFTs in hopes of essentially printing money through digital collectible sales. Backed by a $100 million fund (in partnership with Immutable X) to provide developer incentives, the retailer aggressively pursued a Web3 future under then-CEO Matt Furlong.
But the effort sputtered as consumer backlash grew towards nonfungible tokens. The retailer forged an ill-fated partnership last September with the now-defunct FTX, only to be terminated two months later when the exchange collapsed. GameStop announced additional layoffs in December with Axios reporting that its cryptocurrency division was hit hardest. The company simultaneously backpedaled from its NFT marketplace, with Furlong reassuring investors that it had “proactively minimized exposure to cryptocurrency.” However, he did leave some wiggle room by saying the retailer continued to see a long-term future for “digital assets in the gaming world.” Furlong was fired in June.
