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Recently, new data showed that Among Us has managed to reach half a billion monthly players, with the overwhelming majority of them playing on mobile devices.
However, this data revealed that the PC community for Among Us is merely a microcosm of the overall Among Us playerbase, coming in at around 3% of the total player count.
What makes this number so incredible is that despite accounting for such a small portion of the Among Us community, PC players seem to have the most online representation, and make up a majority of the game’s overall revenue.
Three percent of Among Us players make up 64% of the game’s revenue
This incredibly stark split between the PC community’s size and how much they contribute to the profitability of Among Us is due to how the game is monetized on each platform. Among Us on PC comes with a $5.00 price tag which includes a few hats and items which are optional add ons for mobile players.
Mobile players have the option of playing Among Us for free with in-game advertisements which can be disabled by making an in-app purchase. However, these adverts are generally unobtrusive and easy to ignore, making the game generally seamless to play free of charge.
However, while this makes the game easy to access for hundreds of millions of players, it does have an outsized effect on the total revenue of Among Us.
But is that a bad thing?
It’s hard to imagine how a game can have half a billion monthly players without also being a multibillion dollar company with the resources to monetize and manage it, but Among Us shows how money really isn’t everything.
Among Us is a passion project in the truest sense of the word, developed by fewer developers than most hands have fingers, and while it has found incredible success, it doesn’t print money in the same way that other multiplayer giants are eager to do.
When compared to another multiplayer giant like Fortnite, it’s easy to see how the two games approach monetization differently. Fortnite has a seemingly endless flood of content and products to buy. New skins, old skins, dances, sprays, wraps, emotes, bling, and more—it would be possible for a player to spend thousands of dollars on Fortnite and barely scratch the surface of what the game is willing to sell.
Additionally, while Fortnite is technically able to be played free of charge, it puts a considerable amount of effort into getting players to make a purchase at some point during gameplay, usually through sales, limited time offers, and events which give players a small amount of digital currency to encourage them to buy.
Among Us, by comparison, has a base price and a finite amount of content for players to purchase if they want, and doesn’t seem to put considerable effort into convincing players to buy anything.
Purchasing everything Among Us has to offer on Steam when the game isn’t on sale will total $23.92, a modest amount considering how massive the game has become.
Among Us rejects the corporate business model
Players are probably used to these kinds of massive games following a typical corporate business model which operates with just one goal in mind, generating as much profit for the company as possible.
While it’s refreshing to see a game willing to put accessibility and drive above outright profitability, it’s likely that the sudden and massive success of Among Us will prompt InnerSloth to find new ways to earn revenue off of their passion project.
As for exactly what that will look like, only time will tell.
