Among Us is “by far the most popular game ever in terms of monthly players”, according to a new report into its play data.
The InnerSloth-made game, which encourages players to collaborate or deceive each other in an online murder mystery, had roughly half a billion monthly active users in November, research firm Nielsen claimed in its latest digital market report.
However, while Among Us is incredibly popular, its revenue is comparatively modest. “Since Among Us is not heavily monetized, earnings figures are comparatively smaller,” SuperData said.
“The PC version (which has a $5 upfront price) accounted for the majority of revenue from August to November (64%) despite having an extremely small share of the total player base (3% in November).”
Among Us launched free for iOS and Android devices in June 2018 before releasing for PC (£3.99/$4.99) in November of the same year.
However, the game’s popularity didn’t take off until this summer, when it was picked up by popular content creators on Twitch and YouTube.
According to Sensor Tower data, the mobile version was downloaded some 42 million times between August 1 and September 14, 2020, accounting for around 70 percent of its lifetime downloads.
Twitch has played a significant role in the popularity of Among Us. In October, the game drew huge numbers to the platform when US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attracted Twitch’s third-most concurrent single-channel viewers ever.
The politician, who was streaming to encourage young people to vote in the US election, had created her Twitch channel just 24 hours earlier and quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of followers.
The breakout success has inspired developer InnserSloth to expand the game to multiple new platforms this month.
Last week it released a Switch version of Among Us (£3.89/$4.99) featuring cross-platform play and made the game available through the Epic Games Store and Xbox Game Pass for PC.
Microsoft also confirmed last week that Among Us will be released for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox Game Pass for console in 2021.
Fortnite recently introduced a limited time mode called The Spy Within which is inspired by Among Us.
