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The holiday season has come and gone, bringing an end to 2020 with it, but that hasn’t stopped Innersloth from launching its own line of Among Us themed holiday merch.
While the timing is unfortunate, the holiday-themed Among Us merch shows that designers are at least invested in coming up with new and original content for fans to purchase.
These designs; complete with presents, decorations, and Yuletide trees were likely intended to make nice gifts for the many millions of Among Us players.
Timing issues aren’t new to Among Us
Anyone interested in picking up a new holiday-themed shirt or sweater for the new year can check out the official online Among Us merchandise store here. There's a special note for buyers in the UK, according to the site’s banner. They will not be able to ship to the United Kingdom due to complications with Brexit.
It’s fair to say that the timing of this holiday merch release is poor, as most people are already moving on from the holidays. For many, the 2020 holiday season was especially rough, and this kind of reminder might end up getting ignored by many.
Among Us has had difficulties keeping up with the pace of the internet at large. For its entire release, Among Us was worked on by just a few passionate developers, and the infrequent updates and releases weren’t a major concern due to the game’s small audience. The fact that Innersloth was updating the game at all was impressive enough on its own.
Among Us is a game that has a playerbase in the millions. With such a massive audience, players are constantly waiting for the next big release or update. Unfortunately, at this time, Innersloth has only added one person to the company, a highly-skilled community manager that has been doing his best to maintain the company’s relationship with online fans.
Growth isn’t always meaningless. Sometimes it’s required
For many companies, corporate growth is seen as the ultimate goal of their labors. This mindless pursuit of growth is much like putting the cart before the horse. By making the goal an abstract concept like “success,” companies and their products can fall into cycles of chasing trends and releasing products that compromise their artistic vision.
But this negative take on growth isn’t the only case. Sometimes growth is necessary to keep up with the rising tide of expectations and workload. This is what happened with Among Us.
Innersloth set out to create a game that matched their hopes and goals, and they were able to do that years ago. They seem perfectly happy to manage and tune their game but seem to be struggling under their own success.
As their players swelled from the thousands to the millions, the expectations placed on this small studio grew with them. If they aim to meet these expectations of quality and development capacity, they will likely need to expand in a big way.
This isn’t an easy thing to do, and it’s important to do right, but failing to grow when it’s needed is just as bad as forcing growth when it’s unsustainable.
Regardless of what Innersloth decides to do with Among Us, it’s likely that they will at least aim to maintain the passion and quality that got them this far, to begin with.
