 |
| Image: InnerSloth |
In November, almost half a billion users played Among Us
- Tech backbone
In November, Among Us had the most monthly players for a smartphone game ever, beating giants such as Pokémon GO and Candy Crush Saga, with around half a billion people officially playing it. The game is "by far the most popular game ever in terms of monthly gamers," according to Nielsen's SuperData.
The achievement is even more impressive when there are only four workers at InnerSloth, the organisation that makes Among Us. That's around 125 million players per person working on a game. It has been seen to be so successful that the studio agreed to postpone a sequel that was in the works and simply put all of its resources into developing the original. It also attracted the attention of sitting Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who livestreamed herself playing it for an audience on Twitch that peaked at over 400,000 viewers to try and persuade people to vote.
Carter Rogers, Principal Analyst at SuperData, said in an email to The Verge that the next-most famous game just clocked in at 300 million in terms of monthly active users. Rogers states that by a combination of "point-of-sale and event data from publishers, developers and payment service providers," Nielsen reaches its estimates. Among Us' release on the Nintendo Switch was recent enough that in Nielsen's review it had no appreciable effect on the overall numbers of the game.
The fact that there were 500 million players in Among Us demonstrates the excellent scope you can achieve by having a free game that runs on mobile devices. Just three percent of those 500 million players have played the PC version, according to SuperData. Cyberpunk 2077, to put the figure in context, is one of the most hyped AAA game releases we have seen in a long time, and this month it sold 13 million units.
Of course, there's a significant price gap between the games (Among Us is free on phones, and $5 on PC), but it shows that the audience for mobile games is much greater than other formats. InnerSloth works to make sure everyone Among Us maintains some lasting power by continuing to bring new material to it, such as the new tasks of the Airship chart that will be introduced early next year.
