Anticipated first-person shooter Shrapnel launched is now available in early access via the Epic Games Store, and starting today at 4pm ET, the game will launch its servers for the first time for anyone who purchased one of the Extraction Pack access keys (which start at $20).
We posted our Shrapnel preview today after playing during an exclusive session last week, and we came away impressed by this small chunk of the blockchain-based extraction shooter. But there’s another potentially compelling reason to jump in this weekend: a chance to win a share of a promised $100,000 worth of SHRAP tokens.
Shrapnel developer Neon Machine says it has stashed away some $3 million worth of SHRAP (based on the market value of the token, $0.22 at time of writing, per CoinGecko) to incentivize play over the course of the PC game’s early access release, and it will give away the first $100,000 worth during the three-day SHRAPNEL Training Exercises 1 (STX) event.
The Avalanche game will give out crypto rewards to the top 1,000 finishers in a leaderboard competition, determined by placement at the end of the event. The servers will be online from approximately 4pm to midnight ET on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
The first-place finisher will receive $10,000 worth of SHRAP, the runner-up gets $5,000, and the third-place finisher will receive $2,500. The amounts continue to tick down, with the bottom 500 finishers each taking away a $50 share of the Avalanche-based tokens.
How does it work? Leaderboard placement is based on how much Sigma players can obtain and successfully extract over the course of the three-day event. Sigma is a glowing green material that spills out from the meteors that crash down on the game map, and each crash site is sure to fuel a feeding frenzy of players seeking to boost their placement.
Don Norbury, the Shrapnel Studio Head, told Decrypt’s GG during the session that he’s excited to see how the Sigma-based showdown affects players’ tactics during matches. Will they grab what they can and gradually take the first extraction ship out, aiming to amass a sizable tally over time? Or will they risk sticking around for a later ship to stash more each match?
“Will somebody get some Sigma early and then take that early extraction every time, and they’re trying to just nickel-and-dime it every session?” Norbury said. “Other players might be trying to get 200 or 300 Sigma out of each session so that they can rapidly climb the leaderboard. This is all part of the player strategy that I’m really interested to see how it plays out.”
A competitive first-person shooter with crypto rewards? Norbury said he’s optimistic that the studio’s concoction will fuel exciting gameplay.
“We want the tension to go up. We want them to feel like the stakes are going up,” he explained. “Because if they can get to the extraction point and get out, that suddenly climbs them up the leaderboard and puts them in a position to be in the prize pool. I’m really interested to see how even things like that modify player behavior.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
