Why ‘Off the Grid’ Maker Gunzilla Revived Game Informer Magazine

Gunzilla Games, the studio behind crypto battle royale shooter Off the Grid, announced Tuesday that it had acquired the long-running Game Informer print magazine and online publication, months after it was shut down by its previous owner GameStop.

But why would a crypto game studio purchase a shuttered video game magazine and bring it back from the dead?

In an interview with Decrypt, Gunzilla Games Director of Web3 Theodore Agranat called this move “very crucial” to the studio’s long-term plans— and one that could benefit Off the Grid gamers in the future.

“We are the developer of the largest Web3 AAA gaming ecosystem, and that is GUNZ,” Agranat explained, referring to its dedicated Avalanche L1 network. “We firmly believe that this [acquisition] is a very crucial part of our long-term plans.”

While Gunzilla Games is best known for Off the Grid, a battle royale shooter that launched to substantial attention in early access last fall, its vision is much broader as it seeks to onboard third-party game developers to the GUNZ network—which is launching its mainnet and token on Monday.

As such, Agranat explained that it “makes sense” for GUNZ and Gunzilla Games to have “long-term alignment” with an iconic gaming magazine. Game Informer ran for 33 years before it was shuttered last August.

“We firmly believe that in the future, there [will be] no Web2 and Web3 gaming differences. It’s just gaming,” Agranat told Decrypt. “We firmly believe that in the future, the biggest publishers in the world will embrace blockchain technology, and we want to be positioned as a AAA gaming ecosystem for that future.”

The reboot of Game Informer was met with a wave of delight from some fans, along with a healthy chunk of concern from Web3-skeptic gamers.

Fortunately for those readers, the magazine will operate as an independent entity, according to statements made by both Gunzilla and Game Informer—so much so that Agranat claimed that Gunzilla hasn’t even asked the editorial team if they enjoy crypto games. Agranat said he doesn’t believe that Game Informer or any other gaming magazine would “shadow ban” a good game based on whether or not it used crypto.

“We don’t have an intention to alter our editorial coverage toward a specific area of focus,” Game Informer Editor-in-Chief Matt Miller told Decrypt. “We have always covered all kinds of games that we think might be interesting to our readers, and we have covered games that feature some crypto or NFT elements in the past; we continue to be open to that in the future.”

Gunzilla Games said it would be happy to provide Game Informer special access to its ecosystem that other publications wouldn’t have access to, although Miller explained that this type of coverage would be accompanied by an editorial disclosure.

On top of this, Agranat said that if Game Informer wants to embrace blockchain, GUNZ and Gunzilla’s wider crypto tech stack will be available for the magazine to use at any time. However, Game Informer Executive Editor Brian Shea told Decrypt that the staff “currently have no plans to integrate that technology.”

Agranat also speculated that the acquisition could be beneficial for Off the Grid and GUNZ ecosystem players, suggesting that the premium Off the Grid Pro subscription—which offers exclusive rewards for players—could be bundled with a Game Informer subscription.

“I can envision that it [could] be an additional benefit to our gamers, to have access to this magazine—not having any kind of preconceived notion of what will be written about in Game Informer, because that’s up to the journalistic staff,” he said. “But what is up to Gunzilla is: Where do the subscriptions go? What are the benefits to our gamers that are in our ecosystem?”

This acquisition came amid a busy week for Off the Grid as Gunzilla prepares to transition GUNZ to mainnet on Monday and launch the network’s native GUN token—a major milestone for the game and the broader Gunzilla ecosystem.

Edited by Andrew Hayward