Among Us player base has skyrocketed in the past 3 months, going from just over 2,000 average players per day in July, to well over 160,000 as of September. With the game being over 2 years old, why has the player base just started to peak now?
Right place at the wrong time
When Among Us first released back in June of 2018, It was based off of popular games Town of Salem and Gmod’s Trouble in Terrorist Town, where the aim of the game is to figure out who the culprit is by using deductive reasoning before the culprit can kill off the rest of the competition. In theory it should have been a hit from the get-go, but with such an over-saturated market of similar games in the genre, gamers glossed over it and assumed it was just another half-baked indie game wanting to make a quick cash in. Although it did manage to retain a small yet loyal player base of less than 100 players, the games chances of success in the future were looking slim.
Inner sloth, the 3 man development team behind the game stated that they wanted to stick with Among Us longer than they should have and indeed did try to quit several times but could not let it die without a final stand. By the end of 2018, Among Us had been released on steam and had added online multiplayer which was enough to “keep the game alive 24/7” according to Forest Willard, one of the games programmers and business leads.
The game started out with just one map and local multiplayer on Android and IOS, which fans quickly got bored of, so the developers would put out new updates every week, adding new skins and other in game features, eventually leading to 2 new maps.
The twitch revolution
Eventually many popular streamers such as Pokimane and Gaules found out about the game and started to stream it on twitch to their thousands of viewers who have a predominantly young audiences. To capitalize on the new found glory, with the new players slowly coming to Among Us, the development team took it upon themselves to make the game free on IOS and Android (with in app purchases), which brought the playerbase over the 10,000 mark. A decision that was one of the key turning points in the games claim to fame.
The newly found fame didn’t end there, as memes had now started to circulate on the popular forum Reddit where users were uploading twitch montages and meme compilations. The game has a lot of meme potential with players able to pull off a series of ridiculous kills whilst trying to cover their tracks and creating ridiculous cover stories to not be voted off.
Among Us also has a very big following on YouTube channels such as Vanoss gaming, where the sole purpose of their videos is to create a comedic video out of lesser known games such as Among Us.
Hard work pays off
On mobile alone, the game has now been downloaded a staggering 86 million times and has earned over $3.2 million in revenue on the mobile stores alone. With the player base on steam rising in the last 3 months by over 780%, Among Us shows no signs of slowing down.
Without knowing it, The guys over at Inner Sloth studios have created one of the most fascinating social experiments in gaming, all about deception and trust that makes it stand out from the other games in the genre. Among Us is not only a great example of what indie games are capable of, but also what a bit of dedication,love and care can do for a game when in the darkest of times.
The future of Among Us
The Development team stated that they were going to be creating a second game titled Among Us 2 but then stated on their website:
seeing how many people are enjoying Among Us 1 really makes us want to be able to support the game and take it to the next level. We have decided to cancel Among Us 2 and instead put all our focus into improving Among Us 1. All of the content we had planned for Among Us 2 will instead go into Among Us 1.
The team hope to add many new features to the game shortly, including colorblind support, server improvements and a new stage for players to try.