Off The Grid is a new cyberpunk third-person battle royale game where 150 players compete in either PvE or PvP. Co-created by Neill Blomkamp of District 9 and Elysium fame, and boasting a development team whose combined previous experience includes Far Cry, Call of Duty, Uncharted, Crysis, The Last of Us, and Halo, Off The Grid has just launched into early access via the Epic Games Store. While there are NFTs in Off The Grid, the studio behind it, Gunzilla, claims that interaction with and use of these NFTs is entirely optional. Exploring how blockchain elements and cryptocurrency work in Off The Grid, however, there are questions regarding how and to what end the game is designed.
The early-access version of Off The Grid lets 60 players (150 is the player count for the eventual full release) fight one another across a single map. Following a series of playtests, it’s now launched on the Epic Games Store and consoles, and a full campaign is expected to arrive later on, as well as additional maps, multiplayer modes, and further customization options. Visually, it’s very impressive. In a dystopian world ruled by corporations, willing participants are taken to a remote tropical island to fight to the death over extremely valuable cyber augmentations and limb replacements. Going up against battle royale game giants like Fortnite and PUBG, Off The Grid outwardly appears to be a credible contender.
Regarding the NFTs, players can discover small boxes called Hexs when they compete in matches. Inside the Hexs are in-game items such as weapon skins, clothing, and modifications. These items can be listed on GUNZ, a blockchain platform specifically created to support Off The Grid and its sister mobile game, Technocore. When players trade their in-game items, they get the similarly named GUN, a new crypto token which, as of this writing, is not available outside of the GUNZ test net.
That might sound straightforward and similar to other games such as Counter-Strike 2, which have their own economies based on the exchange of digital items. In Off The Grid, however, Hexs – those boxes that contain the in-game items that can be traded for GUN coin – can only be opened and validated at specific areas within the game world itself, called nodes.
Imagine you find a Hex and you want to take what’s inside and trade it with other players. Before you can do that, you need to go to a node and submit your Hex. The node will then verify that the Hex is genuine and assign a unique virtual signature to every item contained within, thus minting them as legitimate NFTs. The node’s owner will receive a commission in GUN coin for this service.
To try to understand this system in more detail, PCGamesN contacted representatives for Gunzilla who explained that the game’s development team is currently occupied with the launch and unable to respond to questions.
According to other sources, including YouTuber ‘CryptoStache,’ who owns a node in Off The Grid and spoke with PCGamesN directly, there are 10,000 nodes available for use in the battle royale game. However, these are reportedly not available for general purchase – if anybody playing the shooter wants to own a node now, they would have to buy one directly from a private owner.
The same sources claim that the main sale of Off The Grid nodes occurred in 2022, and that they were purchased by early investors and venture capitalists. Those investors will be able to earn quantities of GUN coin via commission – node owners receive a percentage of the transaction fees every time a player processes a Hex using their node. There are different categories of node, which can process Hexs of varying rarities. According to sources, some Off The Grid nodes were purchased by investors for around $2,000 / £1,530.
Currently, GUN coin is available only on the GUNZ test net and all tokens earned by nodes during this test phase will be wiped out when the coin launches onto the main net. Off The Grid players can naturally earn GUN coin by collecting Hexs and minting them as tradeable NFTs, but the advantage of owning a node is that it is in operation 24 hours a day and does not require the owner to spend time playing Off The Grid at all.
In terms of the early-access launch, Off The Grid is already attracting some serious attention. As of this writing, it has a higher viewership on Twitch than Destiny 2, Roblox, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – even Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins, one of the most famous and popular streamers across multiple platforms, has been playing Gunzilla’s debut. YouTuber Timothy ‘TimTheTatman’ Betar, whose channel has more than five million subscribers, has also streamed the game.
The inclusion of cryptocurrency and NFTs in videogames often inspires some skepticism from players, and occasionally from us, especially considering that Bored Ape, perhaps the best-known NFT, has lost a significant amount of its value during the last three years. While there are a number of blockchain and NFT-based games available on PC or due for release in the near future, Off The Grid has drawn more attention than many of these contemporaries. As such, we feel it’s important that you understand its approach and how it could factor into your time with what’s shaping up to be a surprise free-to-play hit.
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