Gunzilla Games partners with Avalanche on the blockchain gaming platform

Gunzilla Games, an independent triple-A game studio, launched GUNZ, a blockchain-based digital economy platform fully built on an Avalanche Subnet. Gunzilla will use it to create Off The Grid.

This subnet has been customized to enable seamless gameplay, use only in-game tokens for gas (transaction) fees, and provide an intuitive, rewarding user experience for both Web3 and traditional players.

Other game studios will be able to leverage the GUNZ software development kit (SDK) and white-label components, such as a built-in companion app, marketplace, and non-fungible token (NFT) minting engine, to build and launch their own projects on GUNZ.

Designed with the gaming community and blockchain enthusiasts in mind, GUNZ aims to empower players to get involved in game-to-own mechanics by offering verifiable transparency. The platform will first be integrated into Gunzilla Games’ upcoming Battle Royale 2.0 game, Off The Grid (OTG).

Off The Grid aims to shake up the battle royale genre by emphasizing storytelling and digital ownership, allowing players to influence both gameplay and narratives through in-game decisions. GUNZ strives to be one of the first player-friendly crypto economies in a triple-A game, aiming to empower players by giving them complete ownership of their in-game items in the form of NFTs.

More projects that build on GUNZ will be announced soon.

“Our partnership with Avalanche not only allows us to leverage its highly scalable and secure blockchain infrastructure, but also ensures a seamless, low-latency gaming experience for our players,” Vlad Korolov, CEO of Gunzilla Games, explained in a statement. “By building GUNZ, we aim to revolutionize the gaming landscape with a transparent in-game asset management system by providing a variety of market-standard features for game developers who create their economy on the blockchain.”

Launched in September 2020, Avalanche ushered in a new era of blockchains with near-instant final transactions. Today, Avalanche supports more than 500 applications and secures billions of dollars in value, all while having minimal climate impact, Ava Labs said. Avalanche also supports subnets like Gunz – custom, app-specific blockchains that allow the network to scale almost infinitely.

The collaboration between Gunzilla Games and Ava Labs, the lead developer of Avalanche, is another great recent example of game leaders recognizing the power of Avalanche Subnets to deliver the best gaming experience, the companies said.

“Gunzilla Games has ambitious plans to migrate the best of Web2 games to Web3, while delivering the top quality gamers demand,” Ava Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer said in a statement. “Off The Grid Subnet and Web3 publishing stack are fantastic additions to the new wave of Avalanche games.”

Gunzilla’s team comes from various well-known studios and publishers, including Ubisoft, Electronic Arts (EA), Blizzard Entertainment, THQ and more. Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director and producer Neill Blomkamp joined Gunzilla as a visionary boss. In addition, the team includes industry veterans such as Richard K. Morgan, the author of the Altered Carbon series, which has since been adapted into an award-winning Netflix show, and Timur Davidenko, who led the development of CryEngine as technical director and worked on Far Cry, Warface and Crysis.

The company has 190 full-time employees spread across our four offices in Frankfurt (HQ), Germany, Kiev, Ukraine, London and Los Angeles.

In an email to Gunzilla, Korolov said: “When we were looking for the best partner to set up our blockchain platform and ecosystem, Avalanche was the only company that allowed us to build our game layer 1 solution where we could have zero transaction fees , secure and proven source code, eco-friendly protocol and the ability to pay gas fees in our native token.”

He also said that the company wanted to provide the same functionality to other projects that want to build games and economy in our chain, adding the possibility of launching their own subnet on Avalanche

Back in 2019, the Gunzilla team came together and realized they wanted to make a game that would push the evolution and growth of the genre to new heights.

“We then took inspiration from games like PUBG, Apex Legends, The Division and Uncharted to create a game that encompasses all of our favorite elements,” said Korolov. “One of the aspects we wanted to bring to the Battle Royale genre was storytelling – we wanted to develop a narrative game that would immerse our players into the universe we created. To do this, we knew we needed to bring in well-known creators who Neill Blomkamp and Richard Morgan, who would bring our universe to life.”

He added: “But we didn’t stop there; as gamers, we understood the importance of having true ownership over the items you work so hard to acquire. This is why we’ve added a new layer that allows our players to own, trade or sell all of their in-game items.”

Gunzilla closed two investment rounds, with the first raising $25 million. The second round was led by Republic Capital and closed in August 2022. This round raised a total of $46 million to continue supporting the development of GUNZ.

Other major participants include Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, Griffin Gaming Partners, Animoca Brands, Jump Crypto, RW3 Ventures, CoinFund, Shima Capital, Dominance Ventures, GSR, Kucoin Labs, Spartan Investment Group, Blizzard, Digital Strategies, Morningstar Ventures, Gamegroove Capital, Formless Capital, NGG and Huobi Group.