Image via Skog, Zorro, Wilnyl, Philip, & thePetHen.
There’s a new Steam game going viral, and its name is Content Warning. Launching as a free-to-keep title on April 1, the co-op title saw nearly 204,440 concurrent players.
Additionally, it was picked up by 6.2 million people (at time of writing). “Never did we imagine that we would get over 200K concurrent players,” said publisher Landfall, “and over 6.2 million owners of the game in 24 hours!”
While it’s now $8, that doesn’t appear to have hurt Content Warning’s prospects. Currently, it’s got around 125,000 players and is among Steam’s top sellers, below Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Destiny 2.
Content Warning is similar to Lethal Company in that it tasks players with working together in horror scenarios. Here, though, players have to do things to go viral and become internet famous.
Horror games and virality
Horror games have become popular to stream since the original Five Nights at Freddys took off with younger audiences. A game built around that concept has the potential to hit big, especially since so many got to test the waters (and keep it) at no charge.
It may be some time to determine how much of a success it is financially, but Content Warning has done what it set out to do and captured players’ attention.
Between this and last year’s investigation into Sonic the Hedgehog’s murder, surprise releases on April Fools are becoming a worthwhile (and viral) endeavors.
About the Author(s)
Contributing Editor, GameDeveloper.com
A Kansas City, MO native, Justin Carter has written for numerous sites including IGN, Polygon, and SyFy Wire. In addition to Game Developer, his writing can be found at io9 over on Gizmodo. Don’t ask him about how much gum he’s had, because the answer will be more than he’s willing to admit.
