A decade ago, creating a successful online multiplayer game required a large company’s worth of expertise to handle networking, graphics, and marketing and distribution—the list goes on. This year, one of the top-selling PC games, Lethal Company, was developed and released by an individual known only as Zeekerss.
Zeekerss stands on the shoulders of giants, of course: They built their co-op sci-fi horror game using the sophisticated Unity game engine, and distributed it via Steam. But their success shows the vast scale that one ingenious solopreneur can achieve in the modern video game industry. Lethal Company, which retails online for $10, has sold an estimated 9.4 million copies since it was released in October and counts more than 66,000 average daily players.
Social media fell in love with the game’s absurd mix of comedy and horror: Players must work together to salvage scrap on abandoned moons until monsters find, chase, and devour them, quickly destroying any team loyalty in the process as players run for their lives in paroxysms of giddy cowardly fear. The game’s jump scares (death comes in the form of snare fleas, bunker spiders, eyeless dogs, and a beast known as the thumper) have propelled its virality on Twitch and TikTok worldwide, and serve as a parable for the perils of being a company man.
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