Stephanie Douse 
Video game company GameStop is launching a new NFT marketplace in the second quarter of the year for crypto enthusiasts.
Despite GameStop’s poor fourth-quarter financial results, there was at least one bright spot for crypto aficionados.
The company announced in its financial reports that the much-anticipated NFT marketplace will start “by the end of the second quarter of the fiscal year 2022.” GameStop now has until June 30 to fulfil its pledge.
With the first allegations of a crypto-centric recruiting campaign surfacing last spring, the reveal of GameStop’s NFT push has been surrounded by hints and riddles. The project will also be based on Ethereum, according to a teaser site from May, but it was unclear how that would look at the time.
GameStop partners with ImmutableX
GameStop announced cooperation with ImmutableX, a layer-2 scaling solution for rapid transactions on Ethereum, to aid with its NFT launch last month, making its approach into the field much more obvious.
The partnership with ImmutableX also included a $100 million incentive fund to encourage game developers to use GameStop’s NFT platform. Despite the marketplace’s opening being confirmed, GameStop’s stock (GME) fell 9.6% in after-hours trading last night.
The bearish reaction is most likely a reaction to the company’s lacklustre performance; in Q4 2021, GameStop reported a loss of $147.5 million, a dismal result given that the company earned $80.3 million in the same quarter the previous year.
The stock of the video game store gained headlines in 2020 as one of the key assets propelling the financial markets’ meme stock mania.
Other stocks, such as Blackberry, AMC Theaters, Nokia, and Bed Bath & Beyond, rose sharply as new investors poured money into them. Some of these companies have also taken advantage of this momentum to venture into the crypto frontier.
The forthcoming NFT launch by GameStop is one example, but the AMC Theater chain has already begun taking crypto payments for ticket purchases, including meme token Dogecoin. They even gave away free NFTs to stockholders.