Among Us-like becomes one of the biggest games on Steam after BTS's V streams it

Goose Goose Duck, a post-Among Us take on the social deduction genre, is suddenly one of the biggest games on Steam - and that popularity seems to have been kickstarted by a livestream from K-pop sensation V from BTS.

Goose Goose Duck launched in October 2021, well after the peak of Among Us fever had passed. It's very similar to Among Us, right down to the visual style - except for the part where the crew of adorably stubby astronauts have been replaced by mischievous ducks. Its main advantage over its inspiration is an even bigger variety of game modes and options.

While the game never reached the same heights of megapopularity that Among Us did back in 2020, it's been popular since launch - in fact, for much of the past year, Goose Goose Duck and Among Us have had pretty similar player counts on Steam, as SteamDB shows.

But suddenly, in November, Goose Goose Duck started rising from its usual daily concurrent player peaks, which were in the 4k to 5k range. On November 18, it reached 10k. 25k on November 25. 50k on November 30. Today, December 6, that concurrent player count reached 166,452.

It's tough to track down all the factors leading to a game's sudden jump in popularity. A November 10 update for Duck Duck Goose introduced some notable new features, but there was nothing out of line with what had been in previous patches. Then I found this.

That's Kim Taehyung, better known as V of BTS fame, playing Duck Duck Goose with fans on a November 14 live stream. The extremely sudden jump in popularity makes a lot more sense now. Dread it. Run from it. K-pop stans arrive all the same. And now, at the time of writing, Goose Goose Duck is the seventh-biggest game on Steam.

Among Us has become a terrible art tool and the devs love it.