Web3 Gaming

Battle Royale Game ‘Off the Grid’ Adds Trump and Harris Skins Ahead of Election

Buzzy battle royale game Off the Grid has added player skins inspired by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris skins, each featuring comical voice lines, in its latest “Save Democracy” content pack—just four days before the U.S. presidential election.

The content pack grants buyers player skins based on the respective presidential candidates, with each face looking like a rubber Halloween mask. The pack is also bundled with two “Epic” weapons, as well as character emotes that show the character either building a wall or tossing a molotov cocktail.

Both skins come with custom voice lines performed by soundalike actors, delivering comical lines such as Trump saying “I feel like a democrat” when he’s injured, or Harris quipping “Tax that fucker” when shooting at an enemy. The skins are available to players who pay for a premium Pro subscription, and can be accessed by decoding hex boxes provided to subscribers via the game’s Hexes menu.

Previously, the game featured a skin based on popular streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins amid sponsored gameplay streams timed with Off the Grid’s early access launch. Alongside deals with other top-tier streamers such as Tim “TimTheTatman” Batar, this paid push helped get the game in front of millions of mainstream gamers.

Off the Grid, an Avalanche-based shooter that recently debuted in early access, is one of the first crypto games to get so much attention from traditional gamers, quickly becoming the top free-to-play game on the Epic Games Store.

However, the initial hype appears to be cooling, with fewer players looking for online matches amid growing complaints about lingering issues. However, with the launch of this new content pack, there is now a lot of buzz on social media. Some have said the move shows that Off the Grid is “leaning into the culture,” while others have labelled it as “genius marketing.”

This content pack also came the day after a patch that attempted to fix some of the major pain points that players had been reporting. Most notably, the patch notes claim that optimization would be improved by 40%, depending on a user’s hardware. This comes after many PC players complained about the game’s poor performance.

Developed by Gunzilla Games, Off the Grid enters players into a reality show that removes their limbs and replaces them with robotic ones that have special abilities, tasking them to fight ‘til the death. The extraction-style battle royale shooter is currently live on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, as well as on PC via the Epic Games Store. Off the Grid has yet to frontline its crypto features, however there are plans to implement an NFT marketplace, as well as a GUN token on a dedicated Avalanche subnet called GUNZ.

For now, these plans appear to be in the distant future, with no firm timeline for when they will be implemented. That said, the GUNZ testnet has been racking up millions of wallets and daily transactions, which appear to be related to player activity.

Terron Gold