GameStop WTF?!?

Welcome to Lootbox - a weekly newsletter covering the business side of video games. 

If you're not already subscribed... why not? https://lootbox.beehiiv.com/subscribe

What's in this Lootbox?

  • šŸ¤ Unity + IronSource

  • šŸ˜¢ 100 Thieves Drama

  • šŸ™ˆ GameStop WTF?!?

  • šŸ“· Meme

šŸ¤ Unity + IronSource

On Wednesday Unity & IronSource announced a merger deal combining the two companies.  This follows both companies struggling with their mobile ad businesses after Appleā€™s tracking changes implemented last year. Unity (stock ticker: U) dropped -15% on the news of the deal.

The deal announcement wasnā€™t the only Unity drama we saw this week.

Unity CEO John Riccitiello got a lot of heat after an interview with PocketGamer.biz where he referred to devs not focusing on monetization as ā€œf*&$ing idiotsā€. 

He quickly responded to the criticism with a fairly defensive tweet:

But gamers are ruthless and ironically game devs are even more unforgiving. Saturday Riccitiello took to twitter again to express a more thought out apology.

Itā€™s clear the comment was in poor taste butā€¦ likeā€¦

This whole story is comical given the CEO of Unityā€™s biggest competitor Epic Games (Unreal Engine) Tim Sweeney has been fighting a ruthless legal battle with Apple over their monopolistic App Store policies, while still making stupid amounts of money with their Unreal Engine and IP like Fortnite and Fall Guys. Unity on the other hand is bleeding money and their CEOā€™s biggest controversy so far is calling his own customerā€™s ā€œidiotsā€

šŸ˜¢ 100 Thieves Drama

Gaming super brand 100 Thieves raised a $60 Million Series C just 7 months ago and this past Wednesday they announced a large % of layoffs from their media department.

Are the hoodie sales finally drying up?

Not sure but it probably has more to due with their ambition to become a live service game developer.

They announced their Project X a few months ago and recently announced the genre of their first video game will be a first person shooter. This isnā€™t surprising considering 100 Thieves founder Nadeshot used to play Call of Duty competitively and has most recently been obsessed with VALORANT. 

Layoffs have rippled through lots of different industries this year, and its always tough reading all the personal stories involved.

šŸ™ˆ GameStop WTF?!?

The stock made popular by a Reddit fueled short squeeze in 2020 finally unveiled its turnaround plan last week and youā€™ll NEVER GUESSS what it is.

šŸ„

NFTsā€¦ 

Theyā€™re doing NFTsā€¦

Itā€™s just another boring useless NFT marketplaceā€¦

Thats right, the once beloved (ok not really, they never gave enough in-store credit for my used video gamesā€¦ what a rip off) video game retailer is once again late to the party. Theyā€™ve been selling physical video games at physical retailers in a time when gamers can buy and download straight from their couch. The launch of their NFT marketplace is another ā€œwe have no idea what weā€™re going to do to make money anymoreā€ moment given NFTs were soā€¦ 2021. 

Also their new CFO of 1 year also left.

But hey, at least the domain name is easy to remember. If you love jpegs go visit nft.GameStop.com

šŸ“· Meme

Thanks for Reading :)

Feel free to share this with your friends and lmk what you thought of today's issue on Twitter @triviatroy