Blockchain gaming is on the rise but that hasn’t burnished its bad reputation. Dogged by complaints about technical complexity and emphasizing finance over fun, traditional gamers have stayed away in droves.
Now a new arrival to the battle royale genre called Off The Grid aims to lure them in by emphasizing pure play and simplifying on-chain transactions.
Developer Gunzilla Games has its eye on the middle ground, integrating crypto trading but without mucking-up gameplay mechanics or discouraging console use.
There are trading opportunities in-game and out thanks to a range of NFTs and the game’s native GUN token, which is listed on Binance and other big exchanges.
Is Off the Grid poised make crypto’s marriage with multiplayer gaming a net gain’?
In development since 2022, Off The Grid has been one of the most highly anticipated crypto games of 2025. With creative direction by District 9 filmmaker Neill Blomkamp, the cyberpunk-themed multiplayer combines elements of battle royale and extraction shooter.
Excitement around the parallel launch of the game, and the GUNZ Avalanche l1 blockchain it runs on, have helped Gunzilla raise $30 million from CoinFund, Republic Capital, Morningstar Ventures, and Avalanche’s Blizzard Fund in 2024.
It’s 60-hour narrative combines player vs. player (PvP) and player vs. environment (PvE) gaming. Vital in-game items like weapons and upgrades are represented as non-fungible tokens (NFT) that can be traded on crypto marketplaces.
The Blockchain interface is activated separately from gameplay. Players use it to sync in-game items on-chain, verify ownership, and engage in permissionless NFT trades.
One month in, Off The Grid’s blockchain benefits have drawn a mixed reception.
The game has generated more than 14.5 million wallets on Avalanche and boasts more than 500,000 daily active users. Yet GUN — released in tandem with the GUNZ blockchain’s mainnet go-live on March 31st — quickly lost a quarter of its value over questions about the timing of its eventual in-game integration.
From a day-one high of of $0.115, the token had sunk to around $0.06 at time of writing.
Gaming influencers have been more upbeat. In a pre-launch YouTube stream, popular streamer Ninja told his 23.8 million subscribers that ‘Off The Grid is fun, man’.
“I played it for a couple of hours obviously before I was able to get a super sneak peek before I said ‘yes’ to the hashtag ad and to allowing my skin in the game.”
Elsewhere, gaming influencer Tim “TimTheTatman” Betar has called the game “fun” and “fresh.”
With steady growth in unique active wallets (UAW) but low transaction volume, blockchain gaming is waiting for a breakout. Off the Grid may turn out to be a winner, but for now it’s a single player against an opposing team of traditional titles generating billions in annual revenues.
Still, gaming is ripe for disruption. The industry has been in the doldrums of anaemic growth since 2021 — with more of the same forecast this year.
Could seamless in-game crypto transactions return it to double-digit CAGR? To convince players to move away from winning titles like Valorant and Counter-Strike — or convince traditional game publishers to embrace blockchain — they’ll have to see the upside of melding fun with fortune.
