Gunzilla Games partners with Avalanche on 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 make Off The Grid.

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

Other gaming 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 give players the option to get involved in play-to-own mechanics by offering verifiable transparency. The platform will be first 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 narrative through their 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 granting them complete ownership over their in-game items in the form of NFTs.

More projects building 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,” explained Vlad Korolov, CEO of Gunzilla Games, in a statement. “By building GUNZ, we aim to revolutionize the gaming landscape with a transparent in-game asset management system by providing a number of market-standard features for game developers who are creating their economy on blockchain.”

Avalanche launched in September 2020, ushering in a new era for blockchains with near-instant transaction finality. 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 allowing the network to scale nearly infinitely.

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

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

Gunzilla’s team comes from various familiar studios and publishers, including Ubisoft, Electronic Arts (EA), Blizzard Entertainment, THQ and more. Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director and producer Neill Blomkamp joined Gunzilla as chief visionary officer. In addition, the team features 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 across our four offices in Frankfurt (HQ), Germany, Kyiv, 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 gaming 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 the company wanted to provide the same functionality to other projects who want to build their games and economy on our chain, adding the possibility of launching its own subnet on Avalanche

Back in 2019, the Gunzilla team got together and realized they wanted to create 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 encompassing all our favorite elements,” Korolov said. “One of the aspects which we wanted to bring into the battle royale genre was storytelling — we wanted to develop a narrative-driven game that would immerse our players into the universe we created. To do this, we knew we needed to onboard renowned creators like Neill Blomkamp and Richard Morgan, that 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 added another layer allowing our players to own, trade, or sell all 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 $46million to continue supporting the development of GUNZ.

Other major participants include Justin Kan, co-founder of Twitch, 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.