A 24-hour free giveaway sent Steam's new viral co-op mega-hit to the moon, with 6.2 million owners after its first day

Content Warning
(Image credit: Landfall Publishing)

Smash-hit co-op horror game Content Warning is now a certified viral mega-hit, with over 6.2 million players claiming the game for free at launch.

Content Warning released on Steam earlier this week, a co-op horror game that's effectively billed as Lethal Company, but if you were a bunch of YouTubers attempting to get famous or die trying. Surprisingly, Content Warning launched with a 100% discount, making it free for the first 24 hours for anyone to claim it on Steam.

Publisher Landfall's gamble looks to have paid off big time. Data tracker SteamDB has Content Warning's peak concurrent player count sitting at just north of 200,000, a staggering feat for an indie game that literally no one had heard of before it launched merely 48 hours ago.

Furthermore, Landfall Publishing has announced that Content Warning has now been claimed for free by over six million players. That's 6.2 million players, to be precise, all of which combined for the smash-hit peak concurrent player count of 204,439. For a little context, that's nearly half the peak concurrent player count of Helldivers 2, arguably the hottest game of 2024 so far.

Sadly, though, the free period for Content Warning has now ended, closing out yesterday around 9 am PT/12 pm ET/5pm GMT. As you can see in the tweet below, Content Warning will now set you back by $7.99, and some of the responses to Landfall on Twitter are users bemoaning that they missed out on the giveaway period by mere minutes.

It's worth noting that Landfall is actively working on new improvements for Content Warning right now. In response to a Twitter user asking if the game was Steam Deck Verified, the publisher replied, "Hi! It doesn't have official support yet, but some players have reported it runs OK." The publisher has also said that it's working to address the most pressing bugs before any new features for Content Warning are added.

Check out our guide to all the upcoming PC games that you should be keeping an eye on in the coming months. 

Hirun Cryer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.