Web3 Game Off the Grid Attracts Sustained Activity

Off the Grid is a free-to-play, battle royale-style video game integrated with the Avalanche blockchain, and after a red-hot start, the game is retaining a user base of 500,000 unique users as of Oct. 22.

The game’s early access phase launched on October 8 and tallied 850,000 unique addresses at its peak three days later. Upon its launch, the game topped the Epic Games store, surpassing popular titles such as Fortnite.

The battle royale title is built by gaming company Gunzilla, which has raised over $100 million since its initial seed round in November 2020. The most recent raise in March 2024 was for $10 million and led by Ava Labs’ Blizzard Fund and CoinFund. Its launch came with the release of GUNZ, Gunzilla’s “blockchain-based digital economy platform fully built on an Avalanche Subnet.”

The blockchain integration enables current and future features such as in-game assets backed by NFTs, and players are not required to interact with the chain if they don’t want to.

Off the Grid was promoted by some of the top streamers in the world, including Ninja, who boasts nearly 20 million followers on the streaming platform Twitch.

Apixtwts, a crypto-gaming enthusiast, took to social media to commend the game's early performance, saying, “6.6m new addresses interacted with the game chain in two weeks, first crypto game to partner with relevant streamers on a big scale, peaked at 150k Twitch viewers, 3m hours watched in total, 20k unique streamers. Huge first step for the game and a big milestone for the whole industry, higher.”

With the short-term hype and paid promotions cooling off, Off the Grid appears to be stabilizing at an impressive user count for a crypto-adjacent game despite the inevitable barrage of crypto hatred from the gaming community.