[UPD] Content Warning tops 140k concurrent players, becoming another April Fool's success for TABS maker Landfall
Landfall doesn’t just make April Fool’s jokes, but always releases actual playable projects on this special day. This year, the Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS) developer hit the jackpot by launching goofy co-op horror Content Warning.
Content Warning’s free launch in numbers
This section has been updated to add information about the game’s downloads. Plus, its player count started growing again shortly after the original version of the article was published.
UPDATE 2 (April 3): Landfall announced that Content Warning was claimed for free by over 6.2 million players in 24 hours. The game also peaked at 204,439 concurrent users on Steam.
Content Warning came out on April 1, or as the studio calls it, “Landfall Day.” It is a co-op game where players search for creepy stuff, film it on camera before they run out of oxygen or die, and then try to escape and upload the footage to go viral.
The project was made by five members of the Landfall team: Zorro Svänderdahl, Erik Skog, Philip Westre, Wilhelm Nylund, and Petter Henriksson. The last three are also the studio’s co-founders.
Looking at the graphics and gameplay mechanics, Content Warning strongly resembles the vibes of Lethal Company, a massive Steam hit made by solo dev Zeekerss. The twist is that Landfall’s “jokey” project is free to keep for everyone for the first 24 hours (after that, it will cost $7.99).
“We do this as a special treat to our community so that as many people as possible will have the chance to play the game,” the studio said.
As a result, Content Warning caught the attention of many players. It currently has an “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating on Steam, with 96% of its 7,590 user reviews being positive. Landfall also announced that the game has already generated over 4.5 million downloads in less than 24 hours, thanking players “for filming scary stuff with us.”
WOW!!! 🎉
We’re now at a 100K+ active players and 4.5M+ owners of Content Warning!!!
Thank you all for filming scary stuff with us! 👻♥️ pic.twitter.com/hEUwf1kUUr
— Landfall (@LandfallGames) April 2, 2024
Content Warning quickly peaked at 86,385 concurrent players (via SteamDB) before slowing down a bit. The count started growing again just a few moments ago, having already surpassed the 140k mark.
The 141k peak puts Content Warning as the 6th most played Steam release of 2024 in terms of peak CCU. It has every chance to surpass Enshrouded (160.4k CCU) and break into the top five. These are some really impressive results, and it will be interesting to see whether it manages retain the audience after the April Fool’s free offering ends.
- Palworld — 2.1 million CCU;
- Helldivers 2 — 458.7k CCU;
- Last Epoch — 264.7k CCU;
- Dragon’s Dogma 2 — 228.5 CCU;
- Enshrouded — 160.4k CCU;
- Content Warning — 141.6k CCU;
- Granblue Fantasy: Relink — 114k CCU;
- Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor — 56.9k CCU;
- Supermarket Simulator — 51.3k CCU;
- Tekken 8 — 49.9k CCU.
Landfall is no stranger to launching games on April 1
The studio has been releasing games on Landfall Day ever since 2016’s Clustertruck. Even its biggest hit, TABS, launched in Early Access on April 1.
Some of those games were twists on popular genres, such as Totally Accurate Battle Zombielator (an homage to DayZ) or Totally Accurate Battlegrounds (a PUBG parody). The latter was free to download in the first 100 hours, generating over 3 million downloads.
On April 1, 2022, Landfall launched Knightfall: A Daring Journey, a co-op horse racing battle royale title, which was free to claim in its first 24 hours. And last year, the studio released 23 free prototypes, including an airship builder, RTS card game, and PvP top-down shooter.
Interestingly, Content Warning has already become Landfall’s biggest launch in terms of peak CCU. In less than 24 hours, it attracted more concurrent players that all-time highs of Totally Accurate Battlegrounds (29.4k CCU), TABS (13.6k CCU), Stick Fight: The Game (5.1k CCU), and Knightfall (3.3k CCU).
