Cheap co-op games are topping Steam's charts
Friendslop is players' slang for cheap, chaotic co-op games made to play with friends and watch on streams. They sell for $5 to $10, are made by small teams, and since 2025 have been among the best sellers on Steam, the main PC games store.
Latest figure · 2026 so far
350 thousand players at once
The record so far in 2026, set in June at the launch of Meccha Chameleon. A write-up of the same post by Game World Observer gives 366,000.
Where it stands
R.E.P.O. and PEAK, at $7.99 each, were among Steam's best-selling new games of 2025. PEAK was built mostly in a month by seven people for under $200,000. The wave grew in 2026, and Chris Zukowski's count finds each new record crowd larger than the last. Players leave fast: AppMagic finds about 3% still playing after a month, and GameDiscoverCo's Simon Carless compares hits to lightning strikes. Copies are not revenue, and at these prices a chart-topper can sit well down the earnings table.
Each record crowd has been bigger than the last: 197,000 in 2023, 281,000 in 2025 and 350,000 in 2026. These are three peaks, not yearly totals, and the numbers fall away between them. The count was made in July 2026, before How to Fish drew 374,000 players on its own in August.
*The record so far in 2026, set in June at the launch of Meccha Chameleon. A write-up of the same post by Game World Observer gives 366,000.
SourceHow To Market A Game, Chris Zukowski (30 July 2026)
| Year | People playing friendslop games on Steam at once, thousands, at each record up to July 2026 |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 197 |
| 2024 | n/a |
| 2025 | 281 |
| 2026* | 350 |
Timeline
2023
A horror game made by one person sells an estimated 10 million copies
Lethal Company, a co-op horror game by a single developer, takes off on Steam. Working from its review count, Ryan Rigney estimates it has sold more than 10 million copies and earned more than $100 million within three months.
2024
Co-op games are 5% of releases and 46% of copies sold
VG Insights finds that games with cooperative play, where players work together, made up 5% of the games released on Steam in the first part of 2024 and 46% of the copies sold. The number of co-op games released in a year went from 388 in 2019 to 799 in 2023.
GameDev Reports, Dmitriy Byshonkov, on VG Insights (4 July 2024)
2025
Seven developers build PEAK in a month, for under $200,000
Three developers from Aggro Crab and four from Landfall rent an apartment in Seoul for a month in February and build most of PEAK, a co-op climbing game, there. The whole project costs less than $200,000. Aggro Crab had turned to a small project to avoid burnout and the need for outside funding.
Someone coins 'friendslop' as a joke
A user on X posts pictures of Lethal Company, R.E.P.O. and Content Warning with the line 'I call this genre of game Friendslop'. The name sticks to cheap, chaotic co-op games meant to be played with friends and watched on streams.
PEAK sells a million copies in six days
PEAK launches on 16 June at $7.99, having been announced less than a week earlier. It sells 100,000 copies in a day, a million in six days and 4.5 million in three weeks, by its developers' count.
An $8 game is the best-selling game of the year so far
Alinea Analytics estimates that R.E.P.O., which costs $7.99, has sold 16.4 million copies by the end of July, more than any other game in 2025. The five best-selling new games on Steam in the first half are all co-op games. Games with a co-op mode took $4.1 billion on Steam in those six months, the highest half-year on record, though that total includes big-budget games.
The year's Steam charts confirm it
GameDiscoverCo's list of the best-selling new Steam games of 2025 by copies has R.E.P.O., PEAK, Schedule I and RV There Yet? in the top ten. It calls the rise of friendslop one obvious megatrend.
An investor asks the industry to drop the word
Binni Erlingsson of Behold Ventures writes that calling the games slop devalues their developers' skill, and asks the trade to kill the term.
2026
A hide-and-seek game by two developers sells 10 million copies in three weeks
Meccha Chameleon, a paint-and-hide game built in two months by two Japanese developers, launches on 9 June. By the end of the month it has sold more than 10 million copies and taken more than $50 million, on GameDiscoverCo's estimate.
Copies on Roblox draw more players than the original
Within weeks, near-exact copies of Meccha Chameleon appear on Roblox and Fortnite. Kotaku reports that the Roblox copies together have more people playing at once than the original, with one of them near 50,000.
A co-op fishing game passes 370,000 players at once in five days
How to Fish, published by its own developers, reaches 373,971 simultaneous players on Steam five days after launch. That is more than double PEAK's record of 170,759.
Consequences
012025
Cheap games are out-earning some blockbusters
Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics writes that budget indie games are generating more revenues than some big-budget ones. R.E.P.O. and Schedule I together took more than a quarter of a billion dollars in the first half of 2025.
022025
Studios are swapping long projects for short ones
Chris Kerr of Game Developer reports that Aggro Crab made PEAK after deciding to pivot away from larger projects, to avoid burnout and to stop depending on outside money. A small team can now try an idea in weeks and find out quickly whether it sells.
032026
Mobile studios are moving to Steam
Rhys Elliott notes that Dear Passengers, a friendslop game from a Ukrainian studio that used to make mobile games, gathered 1.5 million wishlists in a week with no paid marketing. Savvy mobile developers, he writes, are eyeing up Steam, using TikTok and X in place of paid advertising. Small specialist publishers are moving fast to build portfolios of these games.
042025
A generation raised on Roblox wants cheap games to play together
The investor Binni Erlingsson argues that players who grew up on Roblox and Minecraft will keep wanting cheap social games, and that the current gaming landscape is not fully ready to catch them.
Objections
Counterpoint2026
Players do not stay
AppMagic finds that only about 3% of people who try a friendslop game are still playing it 30 days later. The figure for Phasmophobia, an older co-op hit, is 5.3%, and for Dead by Daylight 11.3%. Each hit fades within months, which is why the chart of records says nothing about how many players remain between them.
GameDev Reports, Dmitriy Byshonkov, on AppMagic (22 April 2026)
Counterpoint2026
The hits are lightning strikes
Simon Carless, who tracks these games, warns that there are very few middling friendslop hits, unlike in some other spaces. A developer, he writes, has the same chances of making it work as being struck by lightning. The successes are visible, and the many failures are not counted.
Counterpoint2026
Nobody publishes a friendslop number, and copies are not cash
The $4.1 billion often quoted covers every Steam game with a co-op mode, including $70 blockbusters. No one publishes a revenue figure for friendslop alone. Alinea points out that copies do not equal cash: in mid-2026 Meccha Chameleon was the year's top game by copies sold and only eighteenth by revenue on Steam. Alinea's own advice is that the takeaway is not to go and make a friendslop game.
What to watch
2026
Whether a wishlist hit converts
Late 2026, when Dear Passengers is due. With more than 1.5 million wishlists, it is the first test of whether a friendslop game that was hyped in advance sells like the ones that arrived by surprise.
2026
The year-end Steam charts
Mid-December 2026, when GameDiscoverCo usually publishes its list of the year's best-selling new games. Four friendslop games made the top ten in 2025.
Further reading
- DataGameDiscoverCo: Most successful new releases on PC and Consoles in 2025gamedevreports.substack.com
- AnalysisWhat developers can learn from indie social co-opgamedeveloper.com
- ReportingCalling games like Peak and REPO ‘friendslop’ devalues the developer, investor saysgamesradar.com
Where to follow it GameDiscoverCo's annual PC and console sales roundups, Game Developer's design desk, PC Gamer, AppMagic retention studies