Among Us

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About

Among Us is an online multiplayer murder mystery video game developed by American game studio Innersloth. The game involves 4-10 players (crewmates) attempting to identify and eliminate the randomly selected imposters, who must kill everyone before the crewmates complete their tasks. It is similar to the games such as popular hidden role games like Mafia and Town of Salem. Among Us exploded in popularity in July and August 2020 after several popular Twitch streamers began playing it.^[1]^[2]

Development

Among Us was developed by Innersloth and released on October 28th, 2018. On the same day, they posted the release trailer on YouTube (shown below).

Fandom

The subreddit for the game grew from 27,000 subscribers on September 3rd, 2020 to 194,0000 subs on September 17th.^[3] From late June to mid September, Among Us amassed over 1.1 million followers on Twitch from streamers playing the game and increasing its popularity.^[4] The game went from an average of 460 Twitch viewers in June^[5] to more than 53,000 average viewers in August.^[6] In the same period, it went from 600 average players on Steam to 25,000 average players. Among Us reached 1.5 million concurrent players on September 5th.^[7]

Initial Popularity

Among Us received attention after Brazilian YouTuber Godenot uploaded a Let’s Play of the game on May 24th, 2019 that gained over 550,000 views in fifteen months.^[8] He uploaded additional Let’s Plays of the game, with the most viewed uploaded on May 31st garnering over 2.2 million views (shown below, left).^[9] On June 14th, Egyptian YouTuber EstubeGaming uploaded a video playing thet game that received more than 3.3 million views (shown below, right).^[10]

In August and September 2019, several Arabic-speaking and Brazilian YouTubers uploaded Let’s Play videos of Among Us that have received millions of views, including BanderitaX,^[11] AboFloh,^[12] LipaoGamer,^[13] and Rima.^[14] On September 20th, Brazilian animator Coelho uploaded an animated sketch of Among Us that garnered over 5.7 million views in eleven months (shown below, right).^[15] Arabic-speaking YouTuber oCMz أوسمز collaborated with Saudi YouTuber BanderitaX in a video that gained over 7.7 million views (shown below, left).^[16]

Second Wave

From late 2019 to mid-2020, several English-speaking streamers and YouTubers helped to popularize Among Us with their audiences, most notably British YouTuber and streamer Kaif. On December 23rd, 2019, Kaif began streaming Among Us, gaining 750 average viewers throughout his first stream.^[17] On January 8th, 2020, Kaif uploaded an Among Us gameplay video to YouTube that received over 1.8 million views in almost nine months (shown below, left).^[18] Kaif continued streaming Among Us on Twitch and uploading edited gameplay videos to YouTube, raking in millions of views. Following Kaif, on March 18th, YouTuber NoBeans uploaded his first Among Us video, garnering over 250,000 views in less than six months (shown below, middle)^[19] Swedish YouTuber Teos began streaming the game on Twitch on April 22nd.^[20] His first YouTube upload of the game on May 2nd has gained over 550,000 views (shown below, right).^[21]

Swedish streamer and former professional Dota 2 player AdmiralBulldog started streaming Among Us on May 7th.^[22] In early July, many Korean streamers started playing the game, with it peaking at 33,000 viewers on July 9th.^[23]

On July 15th, Twitch streamer Sodapoppin streamed Among Us at the recommendation of Twitch employee Pluto.^[24]^[25] Other streamers such as Pokelawls, Andy Milonakis, and xQc joined him.^[26] After this, streamers like xQc, Disguised Toast, Mizkif, Rubius, and Ludwig Ahgren began playing the game in August 2020, causing the popularity of Among Us to skyrocket.^[6]^[27]

Among Us VR

Among Us VR is an upcoming virtual reality video game in the Among Us series. Among Us VR is a standalone game and features the same gameplay as its predecessor but is played in the first person with a VR set, such as the Oculus. It was announced in December 2021 at the Game Awards. A release date has not been set.