Battle Royale – (also) made in Germany: Gunzilla Games promotes the online shooter with YouTube celebrities Off the Grid.
In May 2022, the Frankfurt studio Gunzilla Games will release the Free2Play shooter Off the Grid announced – the first serve towards end consumers took place at Gamescom 2022. Since then there has been radio silence until the first game scenes a few weeks ago in the form of a trailer were published.
At the weekend Gunzilla now has a more detailed insight into the multiplayer universe of Off the Grid possible – and for this purpose three gaming influencers with a wide reach a YouTube video booked: DrDisrespect (4.5 million YouTube subscribers), Clix and ImperialHal. DrDirespect is one of the world’s best-known streamers, but is the subject of regular controversy, which, among other things, led to his Twitch channel being blocked. Most recently he had a public argument with the Starfield-Studio Bethesda.
So now Off the Grid: The battle royale shooter is designed for up to 150 simultaneous players, is based on the Unreal Engine 5 and is scheduled to be released this year for PC, Xbox and PlayStation.
The action game is also being developed in Germany: Although it was only founded in November 2020, Gunzilla Games is now one of the largest computer game developers in Germany: the company employs 80 people in Frankfurt am Main – further branches are in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and in Los Angeles.
Part of the Gunzilla founding team is the former Crytek manager Alexander Zoll, who ran the branch until 2018 Hunt: Showdown-Maker in Kyiv. In May 2022 it was announced that the studio had raised around €45 million from venture capital companies – the money was supposed to flow into the expansion of the GUNZ trading platform. Players collect weapons, clothing and other equipment in the form of unique digital items (NFTs) and can buy and sell the virtual possessions on a blockchain marketplace. The developers emphasize that the use of these game components should be purely optional.
The business model of Off the Grid is therefore very fundamentally different from the monetization of other battle royale titles such as Fortnite, Apex Legends or Valorant, which, among other things, rely on season passes and classic in-game purchases. Gunzilla Games speaks of ‘Battle Royale 2.0’.