How Poppy Playtime made 'free game, paid DLC' work on PC
Also: this week's big Steam starts & lots of discovery news...
[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]
Finishing off the week as GameDiscoverCo gathers for its annual offsite (yes, there’s a SWOT analysis, no, there’s no trust falls), today’s newsletter looks at a creepypasta standout (for free subscribers) and Subnautica 2’s huge Steam debut (for Pro/Plus subs.) And yes, there’s plenty going down in the biz. (When is there not?)
Before we start, is there really a Steam controller Easter Egg that “the controller screams when dropped by about 3 feet (Big Picture Mode, about once every 5-6 drops)”? Yes there is. And is it also the infamous Wilhelm Scream, as used in movies from Star Wars to Indiana Jones & beyond? Absolutely.
[FREE DEMO OF GDCo PRO? You too can get a gratis demo of our GameDiscoverCo Pro company-wide ‘Steam deep dive’ & console data by contacting us today - >95 orgs have it. Or, signing up to GDCo Plus gets the rest of this newsletter and Discord access, plus more.]
Game discovery news: Forza Horizon 6 looms large
Let’s finish up the week by looking at trending news for game platforms & discovery:
According to ICO’s Footprints.gg tracking of ‘trad media’ outlets, racing game Forza Horizon 6 was most-discussed thanks to its launch next week, followed by GTA 6 (trailer rumors that didn’t happen?), Crimson Desert (a new patch), and Resident Evil Requiem (a surprising free bonus roguelike mode.)
More data mining (and insider intelligence) into Xbox’s plans from Windows Central: both Project Saluki, “a brand new Xbox Game Pass tier set specifically designed for the Chinese market” from a gov regulation/taste point of view, and Positron, which “could be some form of disc-to-digital entitlement program.”
Steam’s weird bundle discounting UI - ft. a 393 Euro, ‘1% off’ bundle - has been getting some stick on Reddit, with Hooded Horse’s Tim Bender explaining in the comments: “Oh man, it's actually 52% off, base price is $819… that is telling you "This bundle is 52% off, but right now one game within it is on sale so it's an extra 1% off".”
In the second Bennett Foddy (Getting Over It) mention this week, we liked his depiction of friendslop to PC Gamer: “You definitely feel that [it’s] still very big, and I think it has a lot of room in there. I don't actually think it's a genre… more a production style, or a production constraint”, noting scalability without dedicated servers.
The latest PlayStation Plus Game Catalog additions for May are pretty decent, including Star Wars Outlaws, Red Dead Redemption 2, Bramble: The Mountain King, The Thaumaturge, and a version of PS1 lightgun shooter Time Crisis that includes “the original console-exclusive special stages and all-new gyro aiming.”
Enjoyed this look at the big current Roblox shifts from Max Power Gaming: “Roblox is expanding its rights to UGC & data… ‘ads for everyone’ signals a shift to scaled media… AI moves from supplemental to core infrastructure… safety and moderation are about regulatory positioning… extended services introduce a more SaaS-like cost model.”
Since it’s a platform launch on Steam, we’re keeping an eye on the Source 2-powered s&box, and it does seem like interest is tailing off, with troll-adjacent reviews getting voted up and the devs transparently discussing objections, which include ‘why isn’t this Garry’s Mod 2?’ and AI thumbnail/engagement farming woes. (It’s fascinating, because it’s showing what 100% open ecosystems trend towards.)
Those data-slingers at Hushcrasher have a fresh dev budget analysis, suggesting: “It does NOT cost more to make games today. We just make bigger ones… Across every game category, scope expansion alone roughly doubled costs over the decade.” Lots and lots of numbers in the full piece…
We feature initial CCU (concurrent users) in ‘this week on Steam’ quite a lot, and have been claiming - for games without heavy pre-order or idlers - that ‘Week 1 Steam sales being 20x peak launch CCU’ is a good super-rough guide. (We mention it again because a recent Steam release told us it was fairly accurate for them.)
Microlinks: looks like the Xbox Elite 3 controller design has leaked, with new scroll wheel & ‘cloud mode’ buttons; April’s top mobile games by $, per AppMagic (just shock-acquired by Sensor Tower!) inc. Honor Of Kings & LastWar / Whiteout Survival; how a social deduction web game got to 130k MAU with no marketing.
Our sponsor: The Game Business Live returns
Popular industry podcast The Game Business is Live in Los Angeles on Monday, June 8. Hosted by Christopher Dring and Geoff Keighley, the event will feature interviews with EA president Laura Miele, industry veteran Jason Rubin and analyst Matthew Ball.
The event is part of the Summer Game Fest series of events. Tickets are available now, and GameDiscoverCo readers can receive 20% off, simply by following this link.
How Poppy Playtime made ‘free game, $ DLC’ work
Partly because of its alternative structure on Steam, we haven’t talked about single player ‘abandoned toy factory’ horror x puzzle title Poppy Playtime ($0 + paid DLC) that much since its launch in 2021 as a free game (first on Steam, later on console & mobile.) But four paid ‘chapters’ later, and some impressive grosses, time to check it?
Even if not paying attention, you’ve probably spotted how viral the creepypasta lead character, Huggy Wuggy is. (The New York Times wrote an article on it in 2023, saying: “Huggy Wuggy, a bloodshot-eyed video game character, is a favorite of young children, and knockoff vendors.” It’s just straight-up iconic, in a disturbing way.)
Just to give some further context about the game’s history and where Huggy Wuggy sits, its creator Mob Entertainment was founded by brothers who made 3D animated music videos for YouTube, and the ZAMination folks were also involved. So, already people who understand character design for Internet virality.
The NYT article includes this key passage: “[6 year old fan] Ezra’s father, Gareth Watkins, says he sees Huggy as part of an ‘extended universe’ of children’s internet characters. ‘It’s almost like the stock characters in commedia dell’arte or pantomime: Anyone can pick them up and use them for whatever they like and the audience will understand them,’ he said.”
This is actually a ‘problem’ that multiple of these characters - from Hello Neighbor to Bendy (& The Ink Machine) - have run into. They end up getting used in scads of YouTube videos as a sort of ‘Punch & Judy’-like stock character in Minecraft UGC & CG videos, but it doesn’t always mean people want standalone games featuring them.
But the fame is just so ‘off the charts’ in this case, that the folks at Mob Entertainment are absolutely getting great sales for Poppy Playtime Chapter 5, which debuted as $20 DLC for the free base game on Feb 18th, 2026 and led to a 52,800 Steam CCU peak. Here’s the stats they exclusively gave us on sales/downloads:
Poppy Playtime Chapter 5 - which is only available on PC right now (and will roll out to console and mobile later, if precedent continues) has sold 408,000 copies on Steam and 19,000 on Epic Games Store so far.
Since Chapter 5’s launch in Feb, there have been 2.76 million Steam downloads of the free, base game, Poppy Playtime Chapter 1. (And on Epic Games Store, Chapter 1 has seen 360,000 downloads since Feb. 18th.)
As part of GameDiscoverCo Pro, we’ve estimated the revenue from the four DLC attached to the free base game. And on Steam alone, we have it at >$30m gross, likely a marginal undercount, with Chapter 5’s release the biggest spike so far:
When you add in the console and mobile sales, which also seem sizable (we’re estimating at least 500k units for the console versions of Chapter 4, for example), you may easily be at a $100m franchise from the games (not counting the official merch!)
Anyhow, we chatted to Poppy Playtime game director Bryce Clark about Chapter 5’s release, and here’s some of the things we found out:
The team does parallelize development somewhat to hit yearly DLC releases: Bryce noted that “each chapter has its own dedicated development cycle”, but to hit an annual cadence, “when one chapter is deep in production, we may already be in early planning or prototyping for the next one.”
The free base game & paid DLC works differently on console & mobile: there, the extra chapters are actually standalone apps, as opposed to DLC in a free ‘base game’. (Partly cos they “want to make sure we’re taking up as little space on our players’ mobile devices”.) Nonetheless, the content’s the same, and Bryce says “letting people step into the world first and then decide if they want more felt like a natural fit.”
DLC / ‘chapter’ pricing has trended up over time: if you look at the DLC on PC, you’ll see the Chapter 2 was $10, Chapter 3 and 4 were $15, and Chapter 5 is $20. Bryce notes that “each new chapter has become more ambitious in terms of length, complexity, and production value”, and so the shift up is really due to that.
So what you’ve ended up with is a bit of a unique setup, since the franchise is so huge with kids. It’s a yearly, episodic single-player set of standalone ‘chapters’ or scenarios, each getting absolutely giant YouTuber pickup thanks to the jumpscariness. (Five Nights at Freddy’s is probably the most obvious other franchise, at this point.)
And the Poppy Playtime IP does skew young. GameDiscoverCo Pro’s Steam Fan Snapshot data, across about 400 owners, is underestimating the younger players, we’re sure, but is a good general indicator:
Finally, there is sometimes an interesting question of what players actually want in narrative horror franchises like this. Is it chase scenes for quick adrenaline? Is it puzzles? Is it all of the above? We asked Bryce Clark about the trickiness of designing new chapters for superfans, and he noted:
“Puzzles create tension by slowing the player down and forcing them to think, while chase sequences release that tension in a more immediate way. What we’ve focused on over time is how to blend those elements more seamlessly…
For returning players, there’s definitely an expectation of variety. They want moments of problem-solving, moments of pressure, and moments of discovery. So with each chapter, we’re looking at how to evolve those ingredients without losing what makes them effective.”
So, yep - perhaps we’ve been ‘sleeping’ on this franchise because the ‘free game + DLC’ structure on Steam means it doesn’t always appear in our charts. (Also: the player base is younger and more casual, so it’s less on our radar.) But we do wonder - is there room for more titles in this space, or is it impossible to do another Huggy Wuggy?
Steam this week: Subnautica 2 dredges up gold!
