House Flipper 2 peaks at 15.5k concurrent players on Steam, one of best launches for Polish publisher PlayWay

House Flipper 2, the long-waited sequel for successful sim game from PlayWay, has just launched globally. Let’s take a look at its metrics and compare them to other titles in the Polish publisher’s portfolio.

Just like the first game, House Flipper 2 is focused on house decorating and renovating, but offers improved graphics, new gameplay mechanics, a new story campaign, and the Sandbox Mode that allows players to construct building from scratch.

Released on December 14, the title received positive reviews from critics, with an average Metascore of 81 (the first House Flipper only received 67/100 at launch). At the moment of writing, it also holds a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, with 89% of the 723 user reviews being positive.

According to SteamDB, House Flipper 2 peaked at 15,500 concurrent players, which is a promising start. For comparison, the first game reached just under 11k at launch in May 2018, but peaked at 15,910 CCU two months ago. So the sequel has every chance of surpassing this mark.

Less than 24 hours after launch, House Flipper 2 already ranks 3rd in peak CCU among all games published by PlayWay — behind the first House Flipper and Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 (22.5k CCU).

Other titles in the top 10 are the publisher’s main hits such as Thief Simulator (7.1k CCU), Mr. Prepper (6.9k), and Contraband Police (8.1k CCU). The latter is a border guard inspector sim, which not only sold 250k units in less than a month, but also saved Polish studio Crazy Rocks from bankruptcy.

Top 10 PlayWay games by peak CCU (via SteamDB)

The first House Flipper was developed by Empyrean Games, an indie studio based in Kraków, Poland. PlayWay served as its publisher along with Frozen District, a Polish studio that PlayWay owns a majority stake in (81% as of 2016). All three companies also worked on the sequel.

House Flipper has become one of the cornerstones of PlayWay’s success, selling over 5 million copies globally. Having received multiple DLCs over the years, it currently holds a 93% rating on Steam, and House Flipper 2 is also designed with long-term content support in mind.

Founded in 2011, PlayWay is focused on mid-budget titles, mainly in the simulation genre. It is known for testing ideas and concepts on social media before even getting its games into full production. As the publisher’s head Krzysztof Kostowski explained in 2021, any developer from across all studios the company has a stake in can propose a game in an internal Discord group. If it gets approval from 10 devs, the project enters pre-production.

Making games based on how potential players react to social media ads is an approach typically used by mobile publishers, but it seems to be working perfectly for PlayWay. The company’s portfolio includes dozens of titles (even more in its pipeline!) developed by relatively small teams and focused on the right genres.