Dread Hunger Became So Unexpectedly Massive on Steam That It Had to Refocus Development

ign.com:

There's a chance you haven't heard of Dread Hunger yet, even though it's one of the biggest games in the world right now.

A cocktail of Among Us-like social deduction amid the ticking-clock fear of a survival game, the game has quietly amassed a huge playerbase, to the point where it's been in and around Steam's top 10 most played games for well over a month. That success has been so huge, and so sudden, that developer Dread Hunger Team has had reprioritise development to meet the demand.

While it was available for months in Early Access, where Dread Hunger averaged a few hundred players at one time, the game shot to success around its official release in January, climbing to more than 100,000 players, one million copies sold, and rubbing shoulders with Grand Theft Auto V and Elden Ring on Steam's top ten list for concurrent players.

"The surge in popularity was totally unexpected but extremely exciting", said Romy Gellen, marketing and communications coordinator. "We were stoked that we were starting to see hype building and people catching onto our game as we approached full release."

Dread Hunger is about survival, asking eight players to sail their ship through the 19th Century Arctic, stopping and exploring on foot for fuel, food, and other resources. While this is difficult enough by itself, two of the players become corrupted by evil forces and begin to secretly sabotage the group.

The mix of deception and survival gameplay clearly worked, but the popularity came with challenges, most notably in the form of cyber attacks that forced the Dread Hunger team - made up of about eight people collaborating between developers Digital Confectioners and Slowdrive Studios - to refocus where to put their resources.

"The biggest