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VanEck’s private crypto fund has invested in gaming startup Gunzilla Games, marking its second investment in a Web3-focused gaming firm. Gunzilla Games is developing “Off The Grid”, a game where players can earn GUN tokens. VanEck had previously invested in Parallel, a Web3 card game with NFT-represented in-game cards. VanEck’s Matt Maximo believes crypto could make games more profitable and exciting, and suggests blockchain can provide transparency and control in gaming. He revealed that in “Off The Grid”, GUN tokens can unlock extras, purchase items on Gunzilla’s Web3 marketplace, and provide a marketplace for trading cosmetic items.

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The private crypto fund from VanEck has invested in the gaming startup Gunzilla Games, making it the second time they’ve backed a gaming company focused on Web3. Gunzilla Games is behind Off The Grid, a cool game set in a dystopian cyberpunk world where players can earn GUN tokens, according to VanEck’s Matt Maximo.

Maximo thinks that using crypto could potentially make games more exciting and offer better ways to create profit. The gaming industry itself has been doing well, with startups bringing in $517 million just in the third quarter of 2024, as noted by venture capital firm Konvoy.

Earlier in the year, VanEck invested in Parallel, a Web3 card game where in-game cards are essentially represented as NFTs. That funding round added up to $35 million and included monetary contributions from Solana Ventures and Coinbase’s Base Ecosystem Fund.

Maximo shared that gamers have been trying to figure out ways to sell in-game items for a long time, and the Steam’s gaming marketplace alone has had over $32 billion in trading volume. He believes that blockchain technology could really deliver what gamers want- transparency and control over their in-game elements.

In the case of Off The Grid, gamers can earn GUN tokens to unlock game extras that can be kept in Web3 wallets. These GUN tokens can also be used to buy game items directly in the game’s Web3 marketplace. Maximo explained that Gunzilla’s marketplaces function on an Avalanche (AVAX) subnet dubbed GUNZ.

Maximo called the blockchain aspect of the game a technical solution for creating a marketplace where players can trade cosmetic items, a model that’s worked successfully for platforms like Steam.

Big names like Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon, and director Neill Blomkamp have also been enlisted to head the creative design for Off The Grid.

Back in 2022, VanEck rolled out its Digital Asset Alpha Fund aiming to invest in liquid tokens using traditional valuation methodologies.

Source: Cointelegraph