Schedule I's solo smash hit & the rise of the 'crewlike'

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[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.]

Congratulations, you’ve quested as far as Friday, game discovery adventurers. Now you have to guess the name of the troll who guards the bridge to make it across to the weekend. (Given that description, presumably he’s a ‘platform gatekeeper’, *rimshot*.)

Talking of mythical quests, given the popularity of Western ‘social deception’ video games like Goose Goose Duck in China, we recommend reading Adrian Hon’s new piece on the Chinese ‘jubensha’ scripted murder mystery craze. It’s a great view on the “distributed cognition and group sensemaking” that makes these social interactions tick.

Game discovery news: Assassin’s interest high?

Let’s finish off the week by a look at the notable game discovery and platform news - yes, we just cover that, not ‘everything else’ - for the last few days:

• Looking at Footprints.gg’s top ‘trad media’ mentions from March 19th-25th, Assassin’s Creed Shadows gets a lot of the love, followed by Minecraft (movie hype and new content), Switch 2 (duh), and the still-hot Monster Hunter Wilds. (Notice there’s nothing on Schedule I, showing ‘trade’ vs. ‘new’ media diffs.)

• Nintendo’s final Switch 1 Direct streaming showcase (press deets) had some neat game showcases, including Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, and Marvel Cosmic Invasion. There was also some small print hinting that some existing Switch games will get enhanced ‘Switch 2 Editions’, which… makes sense?

• But the big Nintendo platform announce - before April 4th’s Switch 2 reveal, and besides a Nintendo Today! smartphone news app - is Nintendo’s new ‘virtual game cards’, a solution to waning physical sales and multi-device sharing that “will allow players to ‘load’ and ‘eject’ digital games via a dedicated management screen.”

• Feedback on this new Switch ‘virtual game card’ feature is it’ll be good for family groups. One Ars Technica commenter says: “I and my 3 kids all have Switches, and family library sharing has been the biggest weakness of this platform vs Steam or the Play store.” (Easier digital game sharing also helps with Switch 2 upgrades…)

• Final numbers on GDC 2025 were that there were “nearly 30,000 registered attendees”, as it confirmed GDC 2026 for March 9th-13th in San Francisco. (Similar #s to 2024 - not sure if ‘including 6k GDC Nights attendees’ is doing any work here, or if attendance just had a newer or one-day Expo bent.)

• The latest Chinese gov game approvals finally includes “Black Myth: Wukong, which added a PS5 release to its already existing ISBN for PC.” (Yes, Black Myth has sold nearly 4 million PS5 copies in China - per GameDiscoverCo estimates - without official government approval, thx to gray-market consoles.)

• Full-service ‘global game developer’ Virtuos commissioned a study with Newzoo on why Switch (and Switch 2?) might be an under-served porting opportunity for larger games. It’s effectively a services pitch, but also has some interesting data, noting Skyrim, The Witcher 3, and Diablo II all did decently on Switch.

• Now that everything is an Xbox (not just dubious fridges), mobile game controller add-on firm Backbone has launched Backbone One - Xbox Edition, translucent green-stylee, with an Xbox button on the controller - and is designed to play Game Pass Cloud titles easily from your phone.

• Here’s some interesting research - partly using GDCo data - from ex-Riot insights director Christian Yoder - showing that when sentiment analyzing YouTube trailer videos, “comments like, “The 3D just ruined it…’ just don’t seem to have any bearing on whether the game will do well, at least when looking at smaller indie titles.”

• Amazon’s Luna cloud gaming service has announced “a “multi-year” deal with EA which will see Amazon Luna adding Dead Space and the two “Star Wars Jedi” titles, Fallen Order and Survivor. ‘More games’ are said to be coming soon, and EA titles are available on all platforms where Amazon Luna is streaming.”

• Here’s more from MPG on the success of ‘moving base’ Roblox game Dead Rails, also redolent of ancient Roblox hit Build A Boat For Treasure. Talking of which, we all need to pay more attention to the Roblox top CCU charts - look how well ‘fishing adventure’ Fisch is doing recently (#3, 276k CCU), given it’s only a year old..

• Microlinks: PlayStation Plus’ monthly games for April 2025 are RoboCop: Rogue City, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Digimon Story; streaming showcase The Triple-I Initiative is back on April 10th with “30+ game announcements in 45 minutes”; PC/Game Pass Ultimate folks are getting new F2P game bonuses from Heroes Of The Storm, Naraka: Bladepoint, Smite 2, The Finals & more.

Schedule I’s solo smash & the rise of the 'crewlike'

By way of context, we posted this on LinkedIn yesterday: “Valve has just given solo indie megahit Schedule I a rare editorial 'front-page takeover' feature on Steam, two days after its release. Why?

”Well, the goofy first-person co-op drug dealer sim hit 68,000 CCU within 2 hours of its debut, thanks to massive influencer play, and recently peaked at 190k CCU. It's currently #8 across all of Steam on Most-Played Games by CCU And yes, it’s chiefly made by one Australian dev, who stands to make tens of millions of dollars in Schedule I's first month.”

So, on the one hand, this is crazy. But on the other - we already knew that Schedule I’s ‘Free Sample’ demo started blowing up with influencers at the beginning of March - the game made our unreleased Steam ‘trending’ chart multiple times this month.

And if you look at some of the underlying inspirations for this game, you can see why it’s gone so huge. Here’s some of our main conclusions:

• Schedule I has a great twist on the ‘first-person leveling-up’ simulator grind: since Supermarket Simulator unlocked a perfect combo of resource management and small business grind in Feb. 2024, there’s been a series of ‘simulator’ games that are easy and intuitive to control, and have the gameplay loop dialed-in.

• Ever since Breaking Bad, the ‘drug dealer sim’ angle seems a tad more human: there’s def. immorality in a game where you deal illegal substances. But PlayWay-ish hit Drug Dealer Simulator always felt more grim and fiddlier than Schedule I, which has South Park-ish characters and wit. (Also, weed is legal some places! Though Schedule I also has you dealing meth and cocaine later in the game, hm.)

• Co-op adds way more streamability and depth to a single-player experience: Schedule I plays really well solo, as YouTubers show. But it’s getting a lot of added juice (ha ha) and influencer reach from super-entertaining co-opgameplay. Your fave streamers hiding in a dumpster from the cops? Perfectly delightful!

In many ways, Schedule I is pitched perfectly between the ‘first-person job simulator’ genre (Supermarket Sim, TCG Shop Sim) and the co-op ‘hang out with your crew’ horror adventure sim (see co-op horror smash R.E.P.O, which is also at 190k CCU right now.)

So Schedule I is super easy to play - with a good, clear UI. But it still has some entertaining complexity - a GTA-style ‘Wanted’ status, lots of buildout possibilities for your stash house. This makes it an experience that’s accessible to basically all adults. And the fact all your favorite streamers are having hella fun in it? Yep.

So we’d actually like to propose a new game subgenre here: the ‘crewlike’. Our definition of a crewlike is simply ‘any first-person game where you’re hanging out and voice chatting with your crew, while jointly accomplishing in-game goals’.

Even if you don’t have a crew to play Schedule I with, it’s clear that its co-op mode makes it way more watchable and streamable on social video. And that’s one of the things fueling its tremendous growth - besides its slightly taboo subject and its well-designed core gameplay loop. (GTA has drug dealer roleplay too, by the way.)

The biggest takeaway? Tyler, the dev of this game, made it in Unity in ~3 years as a solo project. The democratization of game engines makes building a giant hit as a solo dev 100% possible, even with tricky tech like online co-op. And with audiences not being worried about graphical fidelity in this genre, the field’s super wide open.

[ADDENDUM: the dev had an interesting Reddit post about the game’s name, before it blew up. He asked: ‘I’m a bit worried that the name ‘Schedule I’ is a bit niche or vague and may be limiting my audience.’ His fellow Redditors said: ‘I think you’re probably overthinking it’. I will say SEO is pretty bad for the word ‘Schedule I’ tho, haha, since it’s insufficiently unique. But look, who cares if everyone just comes to Steam and searches for the game name?]

This week on Steam: a triumvirate of big launches!

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