Among Us's explosion in popularity is an interesting phenomenon. It originally released in 2018 to little fanfare, but it faced a sudden burst of popularity last year, to the point where it is now one of the biggest games in the world. To celebrate this unprecedented leap in players, the official Among Us Twitter has released some numbers regarding its popularity on Twitch, and they are nothing to sneeze at.
Among Us is developed by Innersloth, a small group of people who said they were caught off guard by this sudden jump in popularity. Despite this, the developer has worked hard to provide updates for millions of fans worldwide. In the meantime, it has released a tweet describing the game's enormous streaming numbers within the last three months of 2020.
In the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, Twitch viewers watched over 221 million hours of Among Us. These streams contained over 103 million unique viewers, across 1.22 billion viewing sessions, with 4.32 million hours broadcast total. Additionally, 1.06 million unique broadcasters played the game, across 4.85 million broadcasting sessions. These numbers are truly telling of how much this game has resonated with people all around the world. The Nintendo Switch version sold three million copies within its first month on sale, which is especially impressive when considering the mobile release is completely free.
As massive as these numbers are, they are not at all surprising. Among Us is an accessible concept for a game, and it can be infinitely replayable depending on who players team up with. Part of this appeal will often be in watching others play it; seeing well-liked internet personalities deceive each other can often be darkly hilarious.
With the game's popularity among teens and children, streaming the game has even become a political outreach tool for politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC's stream of Among Us received 4.5 million views back in October, acting as an engaging and entertaining way for her to spread the message to vote.
While Among Us isn't seen as constantly throughout the Internet as it was earlier on in its resurgence, make no mistake that the game is still popular. Even after Among Us' player count went down in the month of December, it is still one of the most popular games out there. Many may try to claim that it is a "dead game" by now, but if these streaming numbers are any indication, that is far from the truth.
Among Us is available now on Mobile, Switch, and PC. An Xbox Series X|S release is planned for later in 2021.