When Among Us reached the 1.5 million players mark earlier this month, we and numerous others in the gaming community were left astonished. But now, the insanely popular online multiplayer has crossed over 3 million concurrent players. The game’s lead programmer, Forest Willard, recently revealed that around 3.8 million players were playing the game simultaneously in the last weekend alone. Furthermore, according to official reports, more than 60 million gamers have played Among Us daily. And if that is not mind-blowing enough for you, reportedly, the game is close to reaching 100 million downloads. Plus, if the current trend is any indication, the number will only increase from here onwards.
Suffice to say; the numbers are massive even for an AAA title. But to achieve such numbers with an indie game that is not even a recent release is a very rare feat. Among Us, released back in 2018. Back then, the game did not have a significant impact and pretty much faded into obscurity until a few months ago.
In case you don’t know, Among Us is a local multiplayer video game available on mobile and PC. It features a group of crewmates in space; however, some infiltrators have hidden in the group as imposters. Gamers are randomly assigned the role of crewmate or imposter, and depending on the role, players have to either survive or kill the crewmates.
For a game that has such an exciting premise and gameplay, it took Among Us quite a while to properly take off. Upon release, it barely got any attention, and even big-name developers were not interested in the project. However, recently, multiple factors have come together to propel the game to fame. During the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, Among Us provided gamers a new way to connect and have fun with friends. Furthermore, many Twitch and Youtube gamers played the game on their streams with friends, thus exposing a large section of the gaming community to the fun of playing such a game.
Among Us undoubtedly has a promising road ahead of it. Plus, with many AAA game publishers circling the title, it will be interesting to see how Innersloth Games takes the game forward. The developer has recently revealed that they have scrapped plans for a second game and invested all the new assets into the original game.
