A German studio releases its shooter on Steam, and it already has over 11,000 players. Nevertheless, the game also receives significant criticism, which is reflected in user reviews.
Which game is being referred to? Off The Grid is a free-to-play battle royale shooter from the developer studio Gunzilla Games, which is based in Frankfurt am Main.
The game features a cyberpunk setting with a story by Neil Blomkamp. He has made a name for himself as the director of District 9 and Elysium.
Off The Grid has been available in the Epic Games Store since October 8, 2024. On July 17, 2025, the release on Steam followed, where the game was able to kick off strongly.
You can watch a new trailer for the game here:
11,000 players on Steam with balanced reviews
How did the release go? The day after the release, the game reached its current peak of about 11,800 concurrent players on Steam (according to SteamDB, as of June 18, 11:40 AM). So far, 312 players have left a review, of which 65% are positive.
The Steam ratings are overall “balanced” and that couldn’t be more fitting: On one hand, players praise Off The Grid for bringing fresh air to the battle royale genre. On the other hand, however, there is also heavy criticism of the game.
This is what players praise:
- “After getting PTSD from playing way too much Warzone, PUBG, and Apex, I decided this give this one a try and yes it felt weirdly different but in a good way.” (LazyQueen on Steam)
- “Game is not perfect, but I want to mention that concept and original idea of this game is something really new for battle royales genre that stuck on the same place.” (Stormbringer on Steam)
- “The weapons feel great, movement is fluid, and the whole vibe of the game is just… cool. I really appreciate the direction the devs are taking with the narrative elements, too — you can tell there’s depth coming.” (paliy on Steam)
Criticism primarily concerns the still poor performance and the high number of bots. Furthermore, the monetization model of the game is a major topic. Off The Grid debuted in the Epic Games Store with the note that the shooter utilizes blockchain and NFT technologies. Whether this also applies to the release on Steam is unclear: No such notice can be found there. While some players believe the Steam version is decoupled from that, others are convinced of the opposite.
- “Performance is ass. Unless you have the configs from Alpha where you can kill all video settings and make the game run great, you are stuck with trash performance.” (Sapca11 on Steam)
- “If you want to play against bots, and I mean ONLY BOTS, then this is the game for you. Won 4 games in a row against only bots. Allegedly 8000 people are in-game according to Steam, 7998 of which are bots.” (Wabø on Steam)
- “To upgrade, craft, or even stay competitive, you’re nudged actually, let’s be real pushed to interact with their token ecosystem. But it’s all hidden under abstract currencies, wallet pop-ups, and off-platform shops.” (obamarunts on Steam)
In total, players point out various points for and against the game. Whether you give the F2P shooter a chance is entirely up to you.
NFTs in video games are hardly seen nowadays, but a few years ago they were all the rage. Many players did not like that at all. Even Ubisoft has attempted this several times, as seen here: Ubisoft has secretly released a new shooter – but it relies on a technology that gamers hoped had died in 2022
