VanEck invests in Web3 gaming startup Gunzilla

VanEck's Matt Maximo views cryptocurrency as enhancing gaming experiences and monetization.

VanEck's private cryptocurrency fund has invested in Gunzilla Games, marking the asset manager's second bet on Web3-enabled gaming, the company announced on October 31.Gunzilla has created Off the Grid, a “dystopian cyberpunk shooter,” according to a post by VanEck's Matt Maximo on the X platform.

Players have the opportunity to acquire Gunzilla's native GUN token while playing the game. Maximo made the following statement: “We see cryptocurrency as a tool to enhance gaming experiences and improve monetization strategies.”

Konvoy, a venture capital firm, reported that gaming startups raised a total of $517 million in the third quarter of 2024. According to Parallel, VanEck invested in Parallel in March. Parallel is a Web3 card game where the blockchain represents traded cards as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Additionally, Parallel completed an initial funding round of $35 million with funds from Solana Ventures and Coinbase's Base Ecosystem Fund. According to Maximo, “Gamers have been building systems to enable selling in-game items for decades.”

He also mentioned that the peer-to-peer gaming marketplace known as Steam has witnessed more than $32 billion in trading volume.”The desire of gamers for transparency and control over in-game items can be satisfied by blockchain technology,” Maximo commented further.

Users can earn GUN tokens while playing Off The Grid, which they can use to unlock in-game items that they can store in Web3 wallets. In addition, players can utilize GUN tokens to make purchases of in-game things directly on the Web3 marketplace that Off The Grid provides.

According to Maximo, Gunzilla operates its marketplaces on the GUNZ subnet of Avalanche. Maximo stated that the blockchain component of Overwatch is a technical answer to the problem of creating a marketplace for players to trade cosmetic items.

Steam and other companies pioneered this extremely successful paradigm. Gunzilla recruited director Neill Blomkamp and novelist Richard Morgan, renowned for his work on Altered Carbon, to spearhead the creative design of Off The Grid.

According to the fund's website, VanEck founded the Digital Asset Alpha Fund in 2022 with the goal of investing in liquid tokens using traditional valuation methods.