Around two weeks ago, there seemed to be an explosion of interest in Off the Grid, a new battle royale set in a cyberpunk world that a number of top streamers were playing. What often went unsaid, however, was that this was actually a web3/crypto-based game, a genre that has performed very badly in the mainstream market. But with the launch of Off the Grid into Early Access, that community believed they had finally found a huge mainstream hit at last.
So, where is it now?
What seems pretty clear is that Off the Grid paid big money for sponsorship deals with streamers like Ninja and TimtheTatman as a huge initial booster. Those streamers played the game and hyped it up, as you need to do in sponsored deals, and something like a video where Tim calls Off the Grid the “Best New BR” has the #OTGpartner sponsored hashtag attached to it.
I’m not calling out these streamers. Deals are deals. But I do believe this artificially inflated the idea that Off the Grid had arrived on the scene as some big game-changing hit. Many of the people I saw hyping it up online (who were not sponsored) were not gamers, but web3/NFT guys. While you could play the game ignoring those elements, it seems, the shooter itself may not be able to stand on its own once these deals fade.
As it stands, without any big streamers to prop it up, Off the Grid has fallen well outside the top 100 most-viewed games on Twitch, and last I looked it had 1-2,000 or so viewers, a sharp drop from 150,000 or so when the big streamers were playing. We cannot get Steam player data for the game because Steam has banned web3/crypto/NFT games. Rather, you’ll have to head to the beloved Epic Game Store to play on PC. While there were articles as recently as 48 hours ago extolling that Off the Grid had reached #1 on the free-to-play portion of the Epic Store, looking now, it’s down to #11.
Yes, it’s Early Access, but this entire genre is essentially Early Access games, or at least that’s what they often call themselves. Could it catch on over time and get more players after this initial promotion period is over? Sure, never say never. But I think we need to push back on this idea that this was some blockbuster web3 megahit when the initial interest was clearly heavily driven by a large-scale paid campaign. Ninja’s and Tim’s last stream was Fortnite.
Yes, Off the Grid probably has the highest mainstream profile of any web3 game I’ve seen. It even annoyed Dr. Disrespect who tweeted about the interest in the game when everyone made fun of his own web3-based shooter he was previously working on (he was then fired from his own company after admitting to inappropriately contacting a minor). Off the Grid got attention, that’s true. But it paid for it. And now it’s going…where, exactly?
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