In its first five days since launching into early access via PS5, Xbox, and Epic Games Store, Off The Grid has sparked more life into the web3 game sector than any other title for years.
It’s topped the download charts on Epic Games Store and currently sits at #7 in terms of most played games, behind Valorant but ahead of Naraka: Bladepoint and Farming Simulator 22.
One particular enthusiast is Limit Break’s Gabe Leydon, who likened it to the early Axie Infinity boom, commenting on X, “Web3 finally has its new “Axie” moment with Off The Grid. Very inspirational!”
As for Wolves DAO member 1mpal, he estimates that developer Gunzilla is spending at least $1 million per day on marketing. A notable mention has been promotion of the game by top streamers including Ninja, which has encouraged wider adoption.
According to Gunzilla Games’ director of web3 Theodore Agranat the game has been streamed over 1 million hours from 3,200 mainly organic streamers since launch.
Of course, not every industry heavyweight has responded with unconditional praise. Although calling it “interesting to follow” and likely to “bring some fresh eyes into our industry”, Sky Mavis’ co-founder and COO Aleksander Larsen takes a more cautionary stance.
Taking to platform X, he commented that Off The Grid “doesn’t utilize the full advantages of web3. This has in the past proven to be challenging for users as they experience a lot of onboarding issues but not enough benefits.”
He goes on to explain that in terms of Sky Mavis, the company remains more interested in working with web3 games of deeper economies and calibre. In short, he clarifies that “I think we need to build better foundations on the economy side before spending years and hundreds of millions on graphics.”
Which bring us to the game’s GUN token. Not yet live on the Avalanche-based Gunz mainnet, the game doesn’t directly rely on token performance, nor has it played a vital role to building up a strong following pre-launch. As such, it strongly contrasts the way many play-to-earn developers have promoted their games and tokens. Instead, Gunzilla’s main objective has been the actual game.
So although its blockchain elements are not a main feature (yet), metrics like daily onchain transactions are still an indicator of a game’s performance.
On 7th October, daily transactions recorded were around 140,000, increasing to 1.5 million during launch day 9th October, and has since more than doubled to hit 3.6 million. In total, 5.5 million wallets have been created on the blockchain.
You can keep an eye on these via Gunz’s block explorer.
