In our recent state of web3 gaming report we touched on Perion’s ecosystem development with the recent launch of their XP.gg platform aiming to capture the attention of gamers with a web3 reward layer. However, beyond this, Perion is also a leading active investor in web3 gaming ventures, as a result of their active investments in the space their PERC token presents an opportunity for wider exposure to the growth of the web3 gaming ecosystem. Recently one of the ventures that Perion backed in its early stages, Gunzilla’s ‘Off The Grid’ has found major success and has brought popular attention to web3 gaming as well as the PERC token more specifically as a way to gain exposure to the project. 

 

Off The Grid

Off The Grid is a free-to-play cyberpunk battle royale shooter game in early access being developed by Gunzilla Games with support from well known director Neill Blomkamp (director of popular films such as District 9 & Elysium). Gunzilla incorporates an avalanche based subnet to facilitate in-game item trading in a fully chain-abstracted manner. This allows users to have ownership over virtually every asset in the game including all of the in-game weapons used and their customisations, as such this creates an atmosphere allowing for meta building and gameplay optimisation facilitated through open trade. Because of this the game has the potential for significant revenue generation and a sticky player base if the game is regularly updated with new content as each item will allow for completely new combinations of gameplay. This will continue to add cumulative complexity to the game as it ages.

We have previously seen this play out with popular shooter game franchise Counter-Strike to a lesser extent where trading has become a dominant part of the game on just a purely cosmetic basis. Currently the counter-strike market is host to roughly US$5 billion in items that are traded on peer-to-peer markets. Off The Grid takes a similar approach however has tokenised the approach and attaches unique gameplay propositions to many of the items., In Off The Grid items can currently be traded using their in-game currency GUN through an NFT marketplace. GUN tokens and NFTs are generated by players through in-game activity. Players can also boost their GUN earnings through a subscription/battle pass model which accelerates the rate of GUN earnings through gameplay. 

Note: GUN is not yet listed on secondary markets

 

The game recently surged in popularity after sponsored streams with popular streamers such as Ninja and Nadeshot. This caused the game to momentarily skyrocket to the #1 most downloaded game on the Epic Games storefront and have a peak viewership of 154,440 live viewers on streaming platform Twitch. As of the time of writing the game now sits at #11 on the Epic Games store and has garnered more than 2.2 million hours in watchtime across Twitch streams alone in the last 7 days as of the time of writing.

What This Means For Perion

As a result of this phenomenal uptake for Off The Grid, it left many crypto users wondering how they can gain exposure to the project. However because the GUN token is not yet tradeable and the only exposure available is through validator NFTs that were made available in the private market as part of Gunzilla’s raise it made the opportunity elusive. This left Perion’s PERC token as the only liquid token to have exposure to Off The Grid’s recent growth. Perion had previously invested in Gunzilla Games. Perion’s governance decisions means that a percentage of all gains made by the Treasury are subject to buyback PERC tokens upon realisation of early venture gains. This factor caused the PERC token to momentarily skyrocket ~305% on October 15 as the market had pent-up demand for speculative exposure to the success of Off The Grid. Moving forward we believe this is a sustained positive event for Perion as the validator NFT entitles them to a share of Off The Grid’s revenue. 

Why Does This Matter? 

Off The Grid’s success first serves as validation to Perion’s mission in aligning with the web3 gaming industry by backing the best and in doing so returning value to token holders. Larger than this Off The Grid demonstrates that the popular web3 gaming narrative that one breakout game can change the crypto landscape isn’t just a meme but a reality. It is estimated there are only 30-60 million monthly active users in web3 as according to a16z’s 2024 state of crypto report and we have already seen that through the GUNZ blockchain 7.8 million wallet addresses have been created, thus validating that it really only does take one breakout game to significantly increase the active web3 user base. While wallet addresses are not a perfect proxy for actual active users it does give an idea of how influential games can be in growing the active web3 user base. Arguably Off The Grid has served to become one of the most meaningful mass onboarding experiences for web3 in recent time. 

 

Disclaimer: PERC is a portfolio holding of Apollo Crypto

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