Among Us is a party game first released in 2018 about a spaceship crew who are just trying to do their mundane jobs—only there are also impostor players sneaking about murdering them and shifting blame onto the innocent. It's like Werewolf in space, yes. Though it didn't set the world on fire at launch, it's recently become a hit with streamers and is currently Twitch's number one game, with 183,000 viewers at the time of writing.
The sudden burst in popularity has caused some server problems for developers Innersloth, a team of three based in Washington. As they tweeted over the weekend, "Among Us servers are filling up again! We're hitting 1.5 million players online at the same time! We're slowly getting the hang of things but please bear with us! We'll get through this."
Although the PC version of Among Us is doing well—it's the number three most-played game on Steam at the moment, with a peak of 182,774 players today—most of those 1.5 million players have come from the mobile version, which is free.
Emma Matthews summed up the popularity of Among Us by saying, "More than anything, Among Us' appeal stems from its focus on the players, and this is one of the reasons why it's not only fun to play with friends, but also entertaining to watch. If you're playing with a group of big personalities, there are bound to be some fireworks. Tensions mount as people become increasingly frustrated about potentially losing, or begin to sweat about getting found out."
Thanks, RPS.
