GameStop announces more layoffs, including crypto wallet engineers

GameStop has announced laying off more employees. Reports state that the team behind developing a crypto wallet for the video game retailer was the most affected by the layoffs that come as the company readies to release its earnings report.

GameStop lays off more employees

The Lead Software Engineer at GameStop, Daniel Williams, confirmed the recent layoffs in a LinkedIn post saying that the company was laying off more employees. Some employees that would be laid off include employees in ecommerce products and engineers.

Several former employees at the video game retailer have also admitted to these layoffs by updating their LinkedIn profiles. One of the laid-off employees is Brandon Jenniges, a blockchain and iOS engineer, who confirmed being affected by the layoffs.

A senior reporter at Kotaku, Ethan Gach, also confirmed the development in a tweet saying that the CEO of GameStop, Matt Furlong, had confirmed these layoffs in an email sent to the company’s employees.

In the email, Furlong added that the company was receiving clarity on the correct number of employees that were needed to achieve the company’s profitability goals and the desired growth levels.

It is not the first time that GameStop is laying off employees this year. The last round of layoffs happened in July this year after the former CFO of the company, Michael Recupero, left the company. At the time, the company did not reveal the number of employees that were let go. Nevertheless, GameStop has joined the growing list of tech companies forced to lay off employees this year amid uncertainty.

GameStop’s NFT marketplace

GameStop is already venturing into the Web3 space. The company launched a marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) earlier this year. This marketplace focuses on digital collectibles created on the Ethereum blockchain, especially those created in the Immutable X sidechain.

In May, the company also announced the release of an Ethereum wallet. This wallet is similar to MetaMask in that it is a plugin on the web browser. However, the company’s focus on the digital wallet could be slowing down, given the recent layoffs that have seen several employees working in this digital wallet being let go.

On the other hand, the NFT marketplace launched by GameStop is yet to gain traction despite the buzz that the announcement of the launch created among the crypto community members.

By October 31, DappRadar reported that the GameStop NFT marketplace had only reported $29 million in trading volumes since the platform launched in July. The NFT sector is highly competitive, with some of the oldest and largest marketplaces scooping the largest share of the trading volumes.

OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace by trading volumes, rakes in over $6 million in NFT trading volumes each day despite the ongoing market. Besides OpenSea, the other leading NFT marketplace is Magic Eden, with notably high trading volumes.