The NFT coin has been discovered in the new GameStop NFT Marketplace selling versions of HTML 5 games that it did not create and did not have permission to sell, according to an in-depth report.
Report (via Ars Technica) that the Nifty Arcade group provides “interactive NFTs” that can be played entirely from the crypto wallet or GameStop Market itself, but these games were created and offered for sale without the permission of their creators.
Tens of thousands of dollars earned before the platform’s Nifty Arcade profile was suspended is still in the hands of the man behind the account, and while NFTs are no longer listed on the market for sale, games are still available on GameStop servers and “perhaps now functionally impossible to remove” .
Speaking directly to Ars, Nathan Elo, creator of Nifty Arcade, said his collection had grown because he wanted to “highlight potential use cases for NFTs beyond still images.” When asked about newly created NFT versions of games already playable online for free, his response was confused, with Ello choosing to focus on his “intent to create and deliver games playable in NFT markets and NFT wallets,” blaming “the convenience” of being able to People are allowed to play the game directly from their own wallet without accessing its page as a reason behind their decision.
The first three games in the Nifty Arcade collection brought Ello 8.4 Etherium (about £11,566 at the time) in direct sales, but Ello admits he did not seek permission from the original creators of two of those games – Ver Name And the Galactic Wars. Ello claims to have tried to compile the collection by finding “repositories of open-source games approved for commercial use,” but the games are clearly listed with licenses that prohibit commercial use on sites like itch .io and Lexaloffle.
For anyone curious about the Galactic Wars license. https://t.co/8jnBsgz1jI pic.twitter.com/w0TdReWWbv
– NiFTy Arcade (NiftyArcade) July 15 2022
Ello has since taken to Twitter to make his case, noting that Galactic Wars has been listed with an “unauthorized” tag “proposing a public domain version.” The game assets are now listed on this page under a Creative Commons non-commercial license, but archived copies of the listing do not contain this asset license disclaimer.
Galactic Wars Tena’s creator Borja “Volcano Bytes” spoke to Ars and said, “This guy hasn’t called me to ask me anything. He just took my game and sold it. He went on to say, ‘If you want to profit from my work, I think you should at least ask.'” »
After pressure from the creators, Ello said it “offers 100% of the initial market revenue from all NFT sales to original developers” for embedded games. That wasn’t enough for most people, especially since it was included after the fact with hero escape Developer Krystian Majewski said, “Even if someone wanted to return the money they earned from my business, it would be in the form of some Crappy Crypto anyway.”
Although GameStop has removed Ello’s profile and listings, the NFTs can still be sold or traded in other markets, and the games that NFTs refer to are still on GameStop’s servers. Anyone with the correct link can ask the GameStop servers to provide a playable, license-free copy of games created by Ello.
Ello is still working with GameStop to get his account back, but he says he’s relaunch the Nifty Arcade collection with a new line of games that have licensing and revenue-sharing agreements.
The developers acknowledge that Ello is to blame for reproducing their content without permission, but also say GameStop should take responsibility for creating a “platform and incentive structures for this kind of predatory practice”. De Tina said, “They can have any verification process, but they only want their money and their commissions or their revenue shares, I think… the ‘Power of the Creator’ is wrong.”
Majewski concluded, “Herein lies the real evil of NFT projects like this. It’s all ‘Exploit first, ask questions later’.”
In other news, after two days of qualifying matches in Nottingham, the four local nations have qualified for the Commonwealth Esports Championship.