Fall Guys case study: how viral marketing, streamers and world of mouth impacted title's explosive growth

In a new study, Newzoo dissected the key components to Fall Guys‘ massive success. Key success factors include a deal with Sony, promotion via streamers, viral marketing, and community engagement.

Fall Guys developers used the so-called growth hacking, a set of marketing tools aimed at the rapid growth of the audience and its further retention, usually on smaller budgets.

Free on PS Plus at launch

Fall Guys became available on the Sony’s subscription service on the day of release on August 4, allowing each subscriber to play the title for free for a month;
Deals with platform holders has long been used by developers and publishers. In this case, the deal helped Fall Guys reach its initial audience;
in August, the game’s MAU on PlayStation reached 17.9 million. This allowed Fall Guys to become the second most played game on the console (right after Fortnite);
At the same time, many Fall Guys players also played free-to-play titles like Fortnite and Apex Legends.

Collaborations with streamers

small and “weird” projects are often inherently watchable and thus ideal for for promotion on Twitch;
users like watching the streamer’s reaction to in-game situations, which contributes to engagement and activity in chats;
On July 24, Mediatonic sent out the codes to popular streamers, a day before the open beta;
certain streamers enjoy a lot of trust with the audience, which is why the streams of the then unknown Fall Guys attracted many viewers;
at the start of the beta, streamers sent beta codes to viewers. However, the demand was so great that Mediatonic had to do another beta test for everyone else;
Fall Guys became the second most popular game on Twitch and YouTube in the first month after release, with a total of 113 million hours viewed.

Viewership on Twitch and YouTube

Success on PC and word of mouth

Fall Guys quickly grew an audience on Steam thanks to its immense popularity on streaming sites and word of mouth;
during the first week after its release on PC, the game sold 2 million copies;
the game was quick to jump in — the average Fall Guys session was 33 minutes;
just like on consoles, the title’s audience also actively played popular free-to-play games.

Viral marketing and community engagement

During the beta, the developers asked to retweet the announcement posts in exchange for additional keys;
Mediatonic managed to quickly amass a large audience in social networks and forums: 1.4 million followers on Twitter, 247 thousand on Discord, and 191 thousand on reddit;
to retain the audience, the developers directly communicated with the players and came up with various activities;

Attractiveness for brands

Fall Guys‘ style, accessibility and lack of violence made big brands pay attention to the game;
KFC, Walmart and even Russia’s Sberbank have already posted their cosmetic designs.;
this opens up great opportunities for Mediatonic to collaborate with global companies — both with advertisers and charities.