BattleBit: Remastered and the myth of the overnight indie success

BattleBit Remastered was an overnight success! It came out of nowhere and just went viral! No it wasn’t, and no it didn’t.

There’s this myth that indie developers magically capture lightning in a bottle, throw their game up on Steam, get lucky with timing, grab the attention of some big influencers, and instantly “go viral.” But this is almost never the case!

Most people know that Among Us was out for years before Sodapoppin started the snowball that turned it into a global phenomenon. But that’s the RULE, not the exception, for games that blow up.

Battlebit did not suddenly break out in June of this year. They developed the game unashamedly out in the open, doing live streams (and letting others stream!), posting content on social media, and running small playtests since 2017. They may have been under OUR radar, but by the time they ran a large-scale playtest in January of 2022 (a full year and a half before launch), they had already amassed ~70k wishlists* on Steam!

*note, followers != wishlists, and the wishlist ratio is typically 5-14x followers, so I’m estimating).

This consistent hard work over years gave them the launchpad they needed to enter a serious growth phase (look at the inflection point on their Steam followers chart!).

They continued running larger and larger playtests (consistently getting 20k+ CCU) throughout 2022 and early 2023 until launching into Early Access in June (with probably HALF A MILLION wishlists!), and the rest is history.

Games take TIME to find an audience and find their voice. They need hundreds (or thousands!) of “shots on goal” — chances to grab the attention of the right content creators, or for the right video to blow up on TikTok or Reddit. Time for content to breathe and attract new players over time as the algorithms do their thing.

You are not marketing your game early enough.