Four years ago, British game dev studio Kinetic Games put out a phenomenalspooky titlethat brought haunted houses to the comfort of your home.
What started as a quaint exercise in digital ghost hunting quickly became a global phenomenon, makingPhasmophobiaone of the most popular games in the world in 2020.
Leading the Steam best-selling list for three weeks in the middle of theCyberpunk 2077pre-release hype is a major achievement, but equally big is repeating that sales success four years on.
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After finallymaking it to the PlayStation 5 and the XboxSeries X|S on October 29 of this year,Phasmophobiahas joined the million-sale club on consoles.
The game took little over a month to cross that line, and a lot of the credit here goes to the developers for making sure the experience stays virtually unchanged despite the change in platforms.
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Last week, Bloober Team’s senior narrative director Barbara Kciuk explained inan interviewwith TheGamer whythe horror genre offers such fantastic returnsrelative to other types of media.
While major titles like the Silent Hill 2 Remake pull all the stops to deliver in visual fidelity, it is the small time developers like Kinetic Games that make horror feel like alchemy.
By most accounts, including the public Trello board, releasing the early access ofPhasmophobiatook a single developer and two years of work.
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Four years later, the game has sold north of 22 million copies across platforms at $20 per unit.
Kinetic Games has expanded quite a bit since 2020, but remains a small team with 14 employees as of this year.
While only the studio has the exact figures, public estimates like that of theSteam Revenue Calculatorput Kinetic’s net revenue forPhasmophobiaat over $123 million. That is without factoring in console sales.
Good Co-Op Means Evergreen Spooky Fun
What keeps a game likePhasmophobiarelevant is thatits gameplay loop stays freshthanks to clever level design, and the co-op element adds an extra layer of unpredictability.
A peek atthe Steam chartsshows thatthe game managed to cross the 50,000-player mark in November 2024.
This surge is below the peak in the first two months, where Phasmophobia hit over 100,000 concurrent players, but it is the 7th best month in the game’s history.
The success ofPhasmophobiaand Kinetic Games serve asa reminder that making good games has more layers than just throwing money at the problemthenfiring staffif it underperforms. For that, we salute them.
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