How Among Us managed to become a hit on Steam after two years of unsuccessful stay in the store

The American studio InnerSloth released Among Us in the summer of 2018 on Android and iOS, and the Steam release took place in November of the same year.

For two years, the indie team’s project remained unnoticed by players from North America and Europe, until it unexpectedly shot up at the end of this summer.

On September 5, the peak online Among Us on all platforms reached the level of 1.5 million players (on Steam — 306 thousand). InnerSloth urgently had to cope with the increased load on the servers, because the small studio was not ready for such success.

IGF Festival president and former game designer Simon Carless analyzed the history of Among Us, taking as a basis the comments of one of the developers under the nickname ForteBass. We have chosen the main thing from the material.

What is Among Us?This is an online game in the style of “Mafia”.

Players take on the role of spaceship workers, performing maintenance tasks. At the same time, some of them are “impostors” who are trying in every possible way to interfere with the crew. The task of the team is to track down the impostors and stay alive.

First success outside of North America and Europeaccording to Sensor Tower, before the success on Steam, the number of game installations was approximately 11 million on Android alone;

• The majority of downloads were in Brazil, South Korea and the Middle East, where users most actively made in-game purchases;
• The first audience in Among Us came after Korean YouTuber Kevin Choi found the game on itch.io in December 2018;
• by May 2019, the game had been downloaded 1 million times.
• However, the project did not bring money, since most users played the free mobile version;the turning point was the letsplays of Brazilian YouTuber Godenot with an audience of 3.6 million people, who started playing the Android version;
• “We were thinking about closing Among Us because we didn’t see the prerequisites for its payback.
• But thanks to the Brazilian audience, we started creating new content, which in the end turned out to be the right decision,” recalls ForteBass.Success on Steam and on Twitch

by the beginning of 2020, Among Us had enough content and almost no bugs.

• The developers planned to stop updating the game and focus on new projects, but this news provoked an outflow of players;everything changed after the British streamer Kaif drew attention to Among Us.
• His letsplays with friends attracted a European audience for the first time;In February, Steam noticed the game and offered InnerSloth a promo.
• The developers made a 50% discount, having received a feature and information about the promotion in the social networks of the store;support on the Valve platform played a key role, seriously increasing the visibility of the project in the store and the number of additions to the wish lists.
• As a result, the game generated monthly revenue for two days in a row;after the summer sale and a 75% discount, the game really took off: the fact is that a Twitch employee noticed the project and advised Among Us streamer Sodapoppin, who immediately invited his friends and colleagues to it;
• together they brought the project to a new level of popularity, after which Among Us began to set its own records online and, in fact, found a new life;
• Last week, Among Us took the second line of the weekly Steam chart, and now InnerSloth is planning to develop a sequel.
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• Is there any news?