GameStop Removes $7,500 9/11 NFT After Backlash
Shortly after GameStop launched its NFT marketplace earlier this month, a creator began selling an NFT called “Falling Man” that mimicked the infamous photograph from September 11, 2001. It changed hands dozens of times, eventually fetching hundreds of dollars, until GameStop quietly removed it sometime in the weekend.
GameStop launched its NFT marketplace just days after the last round of mass redundancies at the company’s offices. Users can create and trade autographed JPEGs, with GameStop taking a small cut of each transaction. Since going public, the platform has earned the ailing gaming retailer over $200,000 in estimated commissions. At least $100 of that appears to have come from a 9/11-inspired NFT.
Created by a user named Jules and apparently uploaded to the GameStop NFT platform within a day of its debut, the “Falling Man” NFT features an astronaut between two sets of vertical white and black columns. “This probably fell from the MIR station,” reads a caption referring to a Russian low-orbit space station.
While GameStop’s NFT marketplace mascot is an astronaut, the “Falling Man” NFT is otherwise a ripoff of “The Falling Man” picture. Taken off Associated PressRichard Drew that morning, two planes were flown into the World Trade Towers, killing 2,753 people and injuring thousands more, an unidentified man is shown falling from one of the buildings.
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The 9/11 NFT was first sold on July 12 for 0.02 Ethereum or $29.97, according to the Web Archive’s copy of the listing. Over a dozen more were sold after that, with some users eventually reselling it for over $100. By July 22, one had sold for as much as $749, while the price listed on Jules’ creator page for two of the remaining unsold 9/11 NFTs had risen to $7,492.
NFT was picked up by the blog Web3 works fine on July 23rd, and soon after GameStop showed up to nuke it out of orbit. The listing for “Falling Man” is now gone, including the cached page. Creator Jules, meanwhile, still has a number of other astronaut NFTs for sale that aren’t trying to cash in on 9/11.
It’s not clear how GameStop vets the creators it hosts, the NFTs they make, or if any action was taken beyond removing the one in question only after it began to be criticized online. GameStop did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Jules could not immediately be reached.
While the NFT market in general has crateredSome of GameStop’s most fervent meme stock investors believe their NFT marketplace will be a key part of the company’s turn towards growth. While 9/11 NFT was criticized on social media, GameStop “monkeys” on GME and Superstonk subreddits should go bananas after the Blockbuster Twitter account went on a posting spree. Someone in the community think it means the now liquidated movie rental business will join GameStop’s NFT platform. Blockbuster went bankrupt almost a decade ago.
