Phasmophobia
GameBy Kinetic Games
Documents about Phasmophobia
Exit Games’ $55m Stake Buyback, Gardens’ $35m+ Round and Fireshine’s $4m Fair Games Acquisition
The gaming industry experienced a week of notable financial activity, with 13 tracked transactions totaling $100.3 million.
- Exit Games bought back a 10.5% stake from Firy (formerly Skillz) for $55 million in cash, simultaneously terminating the licensing agreements established in 2021.
- Gardens raised over $35 million in a Series B funding round led by Lightspeed, bringing the studio's total capital raised to more than $70.8 million since 2021.
- Fireshine Games acquired Danish developer Fair Games, the studio behind the 2.5-million-copy-selling game Necesse, for $4 million upfront with potential earn-outs of up to $2 million plus revenue-based incentives.
AppMagic: Friendslop Games in 2025 and Their Retention
The 2025 landscape for "friendslop" games—a genre characterized by cooperative, social-focused gameplay—reveals a market defined by high initial sales volume but notably low long-term player retention.
- The 'friendslop' genre is characterized by high initial sales volume, with four of the top ten best-selling Steam games in 2025 falling into this category, including R.E.P.O. (18.5 million units) and Peak (15.4 million units).
- Long-term player retention for the genre is notably low, with an average 30-day (D30) retention rate of approximately 3%.
- Friendslop retention rates significantly trail established multiplayer titles, such as Dead by Daylight at 11.3% D30 retention and Phasmophobia at 5.3%.
ARC Raiders Has Sold 2.5M Copies
The extraction shooter ARC Raiders achieved significant commercial success following its October 30, 2025, launch, selling 2.5 million copies and generating over $100 million in revenue within its first week.
- Embark Studios' ARC Raiders has reached 2.5 million copies sold, with the majority of the player base on Steam (1.7 million or 69.2%), followed by PlayStation (400K+ or 17.3%) and Xbox (300K+ or 13.5%).
- The decision to launch ARC Raiders as a premium paid title rather than free-to-play has proven successful, with the upfront cost contributing to higher player retention and commitment.
- ARC Raiders differentiates itself in the extraction shooter genre by emphasizing cooperative gameplay and social interaction, which has helped lower the barrier to entry compared to more punishing titles like Tarkov.
Using Streaming to Create Perennial Sellers on Steam
This analysis examines the role of live-streaming in sustaining long-term sales for premium PC games on Steam, specifically focusing on titles released between 2019 and 2022.
- AAA games like Elden Ring (14.2K average daily copies), Cyberpunk 2077 (12K), and Phasmophobia (11.5K) maintain perennial seller status by leveraging post-release events, DLC, and critical acclaim to drive long-term sales.
- Large-scale streamer engagement, such as xQc’s Battlefield 2042 stream, can significantly revitalize sales for underperforming titles, with that specific event correlating to a jump from 30K to 150K monthly copies sold.
- Prestige awards, specifically winning Game of the Year at The Game Awards, act as a primary catalyst for sustained interest, embedding titles like Elden Ring and It Takes Two into ongoing gamer discourse long after their initial release.
Alpha: The Tik Tok Music Arbitrage & The Western Game Dev Divergence
The gaming industry is currently undergoing a significant structural shift, characterized by the decline of traditional AAA blockbuster models and the rise of lean, independent development teams.
- Small-scale Western developers are achieving massive commercial success, with titles like Lethal Company (10M+ units), Phasmophobia (25M+ copies), and Project Zomboid (10-20M units) generating hundreds of millions in revenue with minimal team sizes.
- Magic Tiles 3 achieved record revenue and a 30% increase in return on ad spend by replacing expensive licensed music with viral, royalty-free tracks from TikTok’s commercial library.
- Hollow Knight: Silksong became one of the largest indie launches on Steam, reaching over 453,000 concurrent players within hours of its release.
Halloween Fuels Horror Games on Live Streaming
The live streaming industry increasingly leverages Halloween as a strategic marketing period to drive engagement, mirroring trends in film and music.
- Horror games generated 836 million hours watched across Twitch, YouTube, and Kick over the past 12 months, despite accounting for only 1.2 million hours of total airtime.
- Halloween significantly boosts engagement, with horror game viewership doubling from September to October 2024 and accounting for 4.7% of all live-streaming viewership during that month.
- Dead by Daylight is the dominant title in the genre, accounting for 28.5% of all horror game viewership over the past year with 238 million hours watched.
Companies behind it
As the documents state it.