Ya’ll ever see a videogame skin so bad you’re forced to immediately go to sleep? My eyes rolled all the way back in my head perusing the day one store offerings of Off The Grid, an NFT-powered battle royale that launched yesterday on Steam after a stint in early access on the Epic Games Store.
For the low price of 74 GUN (Off The Grid’s premium currency that’s also a crypto token, yuck) you can grab the “PC gamer set,” characterized by a heavy-set dude with a neckbeard, bad skin, and a keyboard and mouse strapped to his chest.
Completing the look is a “Can it run Crysis?” sticker slapped on the tac vest, evoking the ancient internet meme of 2007.
“More precise than WASD on Cherry Blues and icier than water-cooled GPUs, Overlocker’s been training his whole life for this chance to prove that aim beats hours,” reads the skin’s description. Sick.
Going for a lot more dough on the Off The Grid marketplace are the “Blue” and “Red” sets, which feature Trump and Kamala masks (as spotted by Kotaku). Trump’s vest has a “Stop Woke” sticker, while Kamala’s has a “Legalize It” weed sticker. Cool.
These were presumably released during the game’s early access period last year, though the Trump skin in particular is going for 3,600 GUN on the player-driven marketplace (nearly $200 if you were to buy currency directly from the game client). That’s nearly five times the price of the Kamala skin.
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Then there’s this Ninja set, which I mention only because it’s a surprisingly realistic rendition of a Twitch streamer I haven’t thought about in years.
Developer Gunzilla Games seems to have avoided Steam’s ban on NFT and crypto games by not featuring crypto market hooks directly in the client. We’re still figuring out how Off The Grid’s traditional live service model intersects with its out-of-game crypto marketplace.
Even if I didn’t know Off The Grid was an NFT thing, its dumpster edgelord humor (the work of Chappie director Neil Blomkamp’s involvement) would be the first nail in the coffin. In my first 30 minutes playing with randoms, the in-game announcer called us “regurgitated cum bubbles,” compared discounted store prices to “cum stains on a whore’s panties,” and warned us that our “safe space is shrinking,” referring to the battle royale circle getting smaller.
Off The Grid launched to a meager player count and mixed reviews, with players citing bad performance, “crypto BS,” and decent shooting.