Stephanie Douse 
Rumours are bad but might in some ways be good, the stock price of GameStop (GME), a popular video game retailer, jumped nearly 13% in one day amid online rumours of a partnership with Microsoft to work on Non-fungible tokens (NFT).
According to TradingView data, GME is currently trading at $115.60 as of market close on February 8 and has also held around that level in after-hours trading.
About Gamestop (GME)
GME began February at roughly $100 and has been surging this month as a result of GameStop’s collaboration with Immutable X, a Layer-2 Ethereum scaling solution focusing on NFTs, to construct its future NFT marketplace.
GameStop is also launching a $100 million grant program for NFT content creators and tech innovators in IMX tokens as part of the agreement.
The Rumour about GameStop and Microsoft partnership
According to recent reports circulating on Reddit and Twitter, GameStop and Microsoft may collaborate to provide NFT integrations into existing games as well as develop new NFT-focused games.
Earlier today, the Twitter user “P MackD” shared a photo with compiled screenshots of tweets from Immutable X and Microsoft executives cryptically posting the “probably nothing” meme regarding the major GameStop partnership.
Yorke Rhodes III, the director of Microsoft’s blockchain division, specifically mentioned Xbox, Microsoft, and GameStop in his tweet, possibly implying that the tech giant is involved in the Immutable X and GameStop collaboration behind the scenes.
While the specific nature of the three parties’ relationship is unknown, a Feb. 6 post on the r/Superstonk Reddit community detailed noteworthy speculation of what the cooperation could involve.
Bamfcoco1 mentioned the firm’s turn-based player vs player collectible card game Hearthstone as something ripe for NFT integrations via Immutable X and GameStop in response to Microsoft’s big $69 billion acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard.
The Redditor said that Hearthstone’s dwindling user population, from around 23.5 million to 3.5 million, was due in part to the high prices of card collection and a lack of actual ownership over the user’s assets, both of which could be addressed by NFT integrations:
“With the ability to freely mint and trade NFTs on Immutable X’s platform, it’s a no brainer. GameStop could launch Hearthstone on their brand new Web3 platform by simply making an NFT for every card and then distributing them accordingly to users’ existing card collections. It’s about as easy as it would get.”
Web3 and NFT-related news appear to have a significant impact on GameStop’s stock price. In early January, it was reported that GME’s stock jumped 26% in after-hours trading following the announcement of the company’s new NFT business.