While GameStop got in trouble for an insensitive NFT listing, the Falling Man NFT was on OpenSea’s platform for over two months.
A recent listing of an NFT on GameStop’s marketplace caused a big fuss in the NFT world. The listing got a lot of negative feedback from the community, which made the marketplace act within a day. This shows how a community can work together to fix a wrong.
How the Gamestop Falling Man Saga began
“Falling Man,” the name of the NFT in question, showed a man in a space suit falling down. The NFT in question looked similar to a famous picture of a man falling to his death from the World Trade Center on 9/11, which has become a symbol of the deadly attacks. Most fans believed the NFT was imitating the 9/11 victim and also breaking the rights to the photo taken by Richard Drew.
In another thread on the meme stock subreddit GME Meltdown, a gamer pointed out that the figure in the NFT is a rendering of an existing 3D model of a Russian flight suit made by an independent artist, which was used without the permission of the original artist.
The GameStop team took down the NFT in the end, and the creator was also banned from minting on the platform.
The crypto community asked GameStop to do more research before letting any kind of art into its store. A fan wrote:
“It’s still not enough. How do you even let this happen? It’s disgusting. There needs to be a review team that checks each NFT for crap like this or stolen art.”
Although GameStop had to deal with the backlash from the community, the incident opened Pandora’s box of evidence showing how most fans use NFTs to make a quick money at the expense of common human decency.
The Journey for “Falling Man”
The “Falling Man” NFT has been for sale on OpenSea, one of the most popular places to buy and sell NFTs, for almost two months.
In January of this year, a doctor tried to sell an X-ray of a person who died in the 2015 Paris terrorist attack as an NFT. The doctor is facing legal and disciplinary actions right now.
Conclusion
At the peak of the bull run in March 2021, digital artist Beeple’s NFT art sold for a huge $69.3 million. This was the start of the NFT craze. Since then, NFT has become the word on everyone’s lips, and every brand and celebrity has joined the trend.
As the ecosystem became more popular, it also became a target for scammers, which led to more copyright violations and fake NFT sales. But the crypto community has always shown the power of the people by working together. In May of this year, the Solana (SOL) community worked together to “scam” a scammer in order to get some stolen NFTs back.