Multiple former staffers at Gunzilla Games, the studio behind the web3 battle royale Off the Grid, have gone public with claims that the company stopped paying them, in some cases for months at a stretch. CEO Vlad Korolev has responded, but his denial raises more questions than it answers.
What the former employees are actually saying
The allegations surfaced on LinkedIn, where former senior animator Paul Creamer posted that Gunzilla had not paid him since October 2025. He claimed some colleagues had been waiting even longer, and described a December call in which Korolev personally told his department that invoices would be settled soon, that the company was profitable, and that staying quiet was the right move.
"He was not being truthful," Creamer wrote, adding that the company had begun removing posts about the situation and ignoring follow-up questions.
Former head of talent acquisition Anna Savina posted a similar account, describing "a significant outstanding debt that covers several months of my professional life" after three years at the studio. QA engineer Oleksii Zhestianenko said he was laid off at the end of August and still has not received final pay. Senior QA engineer Anton Palii wrote that he went five months without payment, and that after confronting Korolev directly, he was terminated and remains unpaid. Former QA staffer Illia Metelskyi said he quit after the second month of delays, was cut off entirely, and received a promise from HR five months after leaving that pay was coming. It never did.
That is a lot of people, with very specific timelines, all telling the same story.
Korolev's response and where it gets complicated
Korolev addressed the situation in a post on X, framing much of it as an attack by people who want to see Gunzilla fail. "While people who have never played OTG and have never built a business sit and spread FUD to farm a few views," he wrote, the studio would keep building for its players.
Here's the thing: the original reporting characterized Korolev as calling unpaid contractors "haters," but Korolev has since clarified that he was referring to "a new narrative from haters" about the payment situation, not labeling the contractors themselves as haters. The distinction matters, even if the overall tone of his statement was dismissive toward the claims.
On the substance, Korolev acknowledged that "some payments may be scheduled in a way that works for the company's cash flow," while insisting that full-time official employees had never had salaries delayed by more than a week across six years of operations. The problem is that Savina, whose LinkedIn profile describes her as a full-time employee of Gunzilla, says otherwise.
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Korolev's denial specifically covers "full-time official employees," but at least one person making payment allegations, former head of talent acquisition Anna Savina, appears to fall into that category based on her LinkedIn profile.
The Off the Grid context
Korolev spent a significant portion of his statement defending Off the Grid's position in the market and the studio's broader mission. The game does pull several thousand concurrent players on Steam daily, though its user reviews sit at 55% positive. The game is also available on Epic Games Store, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, so Steam numbers are only part of the picture.
Off the Grid integrates web3 mechanics through its Gunz token, which is used on the NFT marketplace OpenSea. The token's value dropped sharply after launch and has not recovered meaningfully, which may be part of the financial pressure the studio is navigating.
Korolev also noted that one of the loudest voices among those complaining had been repaid immediately after finishing their contract, and Savina did update her original LinkedIn post to say her personal situation had been resolved. That is a partial resolution for one person, not a rebuttal of the broader pattern.
The studio also recently revived Game Informer, which added to its public profile but presumably also added to its operating costs. Whether that decision is connected to the payment delays is unknown.
For players who have been enjoying Off the Grid, the immediate game experience is unlikely to change overnight. But the financial and workplace situation at the studio behind it is clearly more strained than the CEO's statement lets on. Keep an eye on the latest gaming news as this story continues to develop, and check out reviews if you want a clearer picture of where Off the Grid actually stands as a game right now. Make sure to check out more:
