Among Us Hits Rock Bottom...
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #85 - It's Still a Money Game. Check out the full article for more insights.
Remember Among Us!, the casual game that exploded "overnight" last year? It's been an interesting example of how games that aren't hyper-casuals with hyper-ad spend and AAAs can still succeed on mobile.
But the initial spike is really just the beginning...
I've covered Among Us! a whole bunch of times in the newsletter since last August because there was a lot to look at. For a bit, Among Us! felt a lot like Zoom. A lockdown baby that's turned into a monster (the good kind) because people couldn't see each other IRL.
But luck only brought the game so far. Lack of updates, improvements, and any sort of push from the team behind it meant that it's really at the mercy of players. That might sound great to an indie dev, but really, it's not how you'd build the next Angry Birds. And that's a shame because they have the perfect characters for plush dolls!
According to our app intelligence, last October, Among Us! had 69M downloads and more than $8.5M in net revenue. Fast forward a year, and in September, both numbers dwindled to 9.5M downloads and just 157K in net revenue. That's a dip of more than 85% in downloads and 98% in revenue.
A plunge is a more appropriate way to describe this. I'd even go as far as calling it a total loss. Extreme but true.
Getting something to succeed is hard. Taking something successful and maintaining its success is harder. Only the first one can happen by luck. It's easy to look at big games like Candy Crush and attribute their success to a big ad campaign, but that's just naive.
What you need to know: Among Us!, the casual game that everyone played for a little last summer, has lost most of its momentum. Downloads are down 85% while revenue is down 98%.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
