Amidst the growing popularity of "friendslop" games on Steam, many developers are starting to wonder: how saturated is this niche, and is it too late to enter it now? Gaming marketing expert Chris Zukowski attempted to explore the situation.
Meccha Chameleon
Zukowski shared his observations in a blog post on How To Market A Game.
- Zukowski noted that while the number of "friendslop" games continues to grow, so does the audience for these titles. There are ups and downs, but the overall trend is upward.
- For a while, it seemed that the "friendslop" niche had reached its peak on Steam in March 2025 — shortly after the release of R.E.P.O. At that time, the combined online presence of all "friendslops" on the platform surpassed 280,000 users. This wasn't surpassed by the release of RV There Yet? or Peak. However, in June 2026, Meccha Chameleon debuted, and the number jumped to 366,000 users. It's possible that it could rise again in the future.
- Users of "friendslops" constantly switch from one game to another. According to the expert's estimates, the most popular projects at launch typically capture over 50% of the audience, then their share decreases to about 10% within three to nine months.
- Zukowski pointed out that some games, even at their peak, did not capture more than 10% of the "friendslop" audience. Nonetheless, they cannot be called failures. As an example, he cited Mage Arena: at its peak, it only had 11.75% of all Steam users playing "friendslops," which didn't prevent Mage Arena from selling 624,000 copies and earning $3.69 million in its debut week.
- In Zukowski's opinion, one cannot judge the saturation of a genre solely based on the number of game releases. He noted that since the beginning of 2026, 67 battle royale games, 785 RPGs, and 1,087 incremental games have been released on Steam — each of these categories had titles managing to earn around $4 million. Therefore, a large number of games does not automatically mean there is no money to be made, just as a small number of games does not indicate an open market.
- Zukowski prefers to think of "friendslop" not as a niche saturated with games, but as a category with content-hungry gamers ready to switch to new games every few months.
"The games industry is a random, hit driven business. Don’t just look at the top game. Don’t just look at that one weird seemingly low-quality game that went viral and made millions. Instead look at HOW MANY other games earned a decent amount. Was it a fluke that one funky-looking game did well? Or is there a real trend there?" concluded Zukowski.