GameStop to compete with Meta and dominate Web3 gaming in the metaverse

Facebook rebranded itself to Meta to broaden its reach beyond social media into areas like virtual reality (VR). The move provided a boost to NFT and gaming tokens, many of which posted double-digit gains overnight. 

Facebook changes name to Meta, eyes dominance in metaverse

Facebook's name change to "Meta" attempts to steer the social media and tech giant toward the rapidly growing gaming and NFT ecosystem. 

Facebook announced the shift to a new brandname in a tweet:

Play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity androle-playing NFT games like Crypto Blades have amassed millions of online players in the past few months. 

The overall market capitalization of gaming tokens is $19.2 billion at the time of writing, based on data from crypto data aggregator CoinGecko. Facebook's rebranding announcement triggered a rally in most GameFi tokens, increasing the market cap by over 14% overnight. 

Colin Wu, a Chinese journalist, observed that Facebook's name change had an immediate and significant impact on overall game concept tokens in crypto. 

Tokens of Axie Infinity (AXS) and The Sandbox (SAND) posted 11% and 23% gains overnight. Before Facebook's rebranding announcement, GameStop, an American gaming merchandise retailer, revealed plans to build an Ethereum-based Web3 arm based on a job listing post. The post  looks for someone with "experience with Ethereum, NFTs and blockchain-based gaming platforms" for its "Head of Web3 Gaming" role.

GameStop's entry into NFT gaming and the metaverse is likely to intensify the competition. Meta and GameStop would compete with Guild Partners and Immutable X, the other key players in the metaverse race. 

Raoul Pal, founder and CEO of RealVision.com, believes that "Meta" will take the crypto industry mainstream Pal states that Meta (previously Facebook) would onboard millions of people to distributed ledger technology.