Launching in 2018, Among Us had to go through many twists and turns before eventually becoming the talk of the town. When the murder mystery game was initially released, it only had an average player count of almost 50 players.
Who would have thought the same game would have over 3.8 million players two years later? So, let’s study the game’s popularity timeline!
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When Did Among Us Get Popular?
While Among Us came out in 2018, most of the gaming community did not discover it until sometime in 2020, when COVID-19 struck the world. That’s when the game’s popularity kept rising, and it saw new players constantly jumping into the spaceship to catch the impostor. The game’s fame skyrocketed mainly due to Twitch and YouTube streamers and content creators.
They recorded and streamed many exciting and engaging gameplay videos that attracted millions of viewers worldwide, drastically increasing the player count daily. The nature of Among Us, where everyone had to work together and identify the impostors, further added to its charm. The game’s simplicity and crossplay feature made it a hit among the gaming community.
Among Us popularity statistics
Below we have created a table that outlines the timeframe of when the game was popular and which streamers heavily promoted Among Us.
You can clearly see that the player base is slowly declining but the dedicated fans still play the game so it will never fully die and that’s as long as Innersloth is making regular updates.
| Year | Key Events | Notable Streamers | Player Count (Estimate) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Release of Among Us (June 15, 2018) | NA | NA |
| 2019 | Small player base | NA | NA |
| 2020 | Massive spike in popularity due to streamers & COVID-19 pandemic | Sodapoppin, Ninja, Pokimane, PewDiePie | 3.5 million concurrent players (2020) |
| 2021 | Peak of Among Us popularity, updates, and mods introduced | Disguised Toast, Corpse Husband | Decline starts (~500k active players) |
| 2022 | Popularity starts to decline but still a strong player base | Valkyrae, Sykkuno | Stable (~100-200k active players) |
| 2023 | Nostalgic resurgence, collaborations with other games and media | Various influencers | Varies (~50-100k) |
| 2024 | Continued fan base with occasional surges in popularity | New streamers emerge | Unknown but steady |
The Reasons Behind Its Success
One of the main reasons behind the game’s rise to popularity was that it’s a free-to-play game on mobile or $2.99 on Steam, which is enough to motivate players to try it out. However, they found it difficult to leave once they entered due to its entertaining gameplay. On top of this, Among Us doesn’t require any powerful hardware, which is another vantage point for players.
Streamers and content creators in America, South Korea, and Brazil mainly contributed to the game’s initial player growth. The Twitch streamer Sodapoppin was the first American streamer to make Among Us famous on Twitch in July 2020 by getting his friends and fellow streamers to join him.
By the month’s end, the streamer had gotten 631,000 hours of Among Us watch time. Next came the Korean streamer d_obby, who racked up 360,000 hours of watch time. Viral Among Us memes on social media are another major factor behind the game’s increasing popularity. It can be said that a lot of the new players who didn’t come from streams came from memes.
Memes are the inside jokes of social media, so anyone who understands the context behind the meme can understand what it means. Those who don’t get it feel a sense of FOMO, forcing them to check out what it’s about. Among Us also made it pretty easy for meme creators to construct memes around the game by offering up some amazing content from within the game.
Conclusion
That’s all there is to know about the rise of Among Us and the reasons behind its increasing popularity over the years. If anything, it’s only a motivational story for all game developers who might be thinking of giving up simply because their game isn’t doing well at the moment.
While it took Among Us over two years, it did end up getting a large number of players into the game.
If you enjoyed reading this article make sure you make yourself a cool Among Us Avatar and share it with your friends.
