GameStop layoffs additional employees, including crypto wallet engineers

In advance of its impending earnings report, the retailer of video games GameStop reportedly fired a second group of workers today, according to reports and social media posts from those who were affected. According to Axios, the staff responsible for the company’s cryptocurrency wallet was particularly heavily impacted.

Lead software engineer at GameStop Daniel Williams wrote on LinkedIn earlier today that “another huge wave of layoffs at GameStop is presently in action,” adding that “many of them” were ecommerce product and engineering staff. Williams continued, “A company announcement is scheduled for later today.”

Brandon Jenniges, an iOS and blockchain engineer, said that he was impacted by the company’s decision in a LinkedIn public status update that was shared by a number of former employees today.

This year, GameStop created an NFT marketplace that focuses on the Immutable X sidechain and the Ethereum ecosystem as a whole. The business announced the release of its own Ethereum wallet in May. This browser-based plugin is comparable to MetaMask.

Late this afternoon, Kotaku senior reporter Ethan Gach reported that GameStop CEO Matt Furlong had confirmed layoffs in an email to staff members.

Furlong allegedly stated in the email, “We’ve continued to obtain clarity regarding the right level of corporate staff needed to achieve our profitability and growth goals.

The business will release its fiscal third-quarter earnings report on Wednesday, December 7.

When CFO Michael Recupero left GameStop in July, the retailer last conducted layoffs, though it didn’t say how many employees were let go.

The NFT market hasn’t had a big impact on the industry. Since its inception in July, the NFT analytics platform DappRadar stated that only $29 million worth of trades had been generated on the site. For reference, even in a bear market, OpenSea, the largest marketplace for Ethereum NFT trading, consistently attracts more than $6 million in daily volume. GameStop’s NFT activity is no longer being monitored by DappRadar.