Off the Grid maker and Game Informer owner Gunzilla Games accused of missing staff salary payments

Former and current staff at Gunzilla Games, publisher/developer of blockchain game Off The Grid and owner of US games publication Game Informer, say that the company has not been paying salaries for months.

Workers at the company have taken to social media to complain about this, including talent acquisition lead Anna Savina, who – as spotted by Insider Gaming – publicly said they had experienced “significant salary delays” with no explanation. Savina subsequently updated her post to say that the situation has been resolved.

In the comments on Savina’s post are other Gunzilla staff. One former worker, principal hard surface artist Oleksandr Linovichenko, who left the company in October, says he has not been paid for his work in August and September. His situation is echoed exactly by fellow former principal weapon and hard surface artist, Anton Kharyn.

Elsewhere, Canadian contractor Paul Creamer has said that he has not been paid since October 2025. Despite this, he worked at Gunzilla until December, on the presumption that he would be paid for this work.

“Upper management promised that these delays were temporary and growing pains tied to being a new company with a new game,” Creamer wrote.

Creamer and Savina’s LinkedIn posts were subsequently tagged as violating the platform’s “Professional Community Policies”.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, former and current staff allege that this situation has been going on for some time. Ukrainian staff said they had not been paid for around six months. Some are owed four or five months’ salary.

International contractors were the next group affected and, like their Ukrainian counterparts, said they had been told repeatedly that their money will be paid shortly, some since October 2025.

Staff in the UK and Germany have been paid throughout, though Gunzilla’s UK arm has periodically paid staff late. At the time of writing, some UK and German staff have not been paid for their work in March.

Workers in the UK said they have also experienced issues with pension payments. Between May and September, Gunzilla failed to make contributions to pension pots, team members said, despite these being deducted from staff’s pay slips. Staff say that the company has blamed this on its payroll provider and said it was “aggressively” trying to rectify the situation. In October, the studio backpaid outstanding contributions, but since November, no further payments have been made to staff pension pots.

Gunzilla UK also changed its name to Geofvision on April 6, per Companies House.

Contractors who have been let go by Gunzilla also told GamesIndustry.biz that their final payments have been delayed. In some cases, workers only received money they were owed after threatening legal action. Multiple complaints and allegations against the company have been posted on a Ukrainian games industry forum.

Staff say that internally, management is acting as if it is business as usual, but the payment issues are now so widespread that unpaid staff have made a custom emoji in Gunzilla Slack channel depicting a beggar asking for change. Often, posts from Korolov in Slack see more people reacting with that emoji than replying.

Gunzilla was founded in 2020 with $25 million in funding from VC firm GameGroove, headed up by former Crytek Kyiv CEO Alexander Zoll, who took on the role of chief strategy officer at the developer.

The company has offices in Frankfurt, Kyiv, LA and London. Debut title Off The Grid, a third-person battle royale created in partnership with District 9 director Neill Blomkamp, was announced in 2022.

The game promised extensive Web3 integration with “optional” NFT-based item trading, and reportedly sold access to in-game valuation nodes to investors in 2022. The game was originally planned to launch in 2023, but entered Early Access in October 2024. Gunzilla acquired Game Informer in 2025, after the magazine was closed by previous owner GameStop, and rehired the previous editorial team.

GamesIndustry.biz has reached out to Gunzilla Games for comment.