[STEAM] Amid the friendslop renaissance, $5 co-op fishing game hits 370,000 peak players on Steam in 5 days

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I'd like to imagine the folks at Dazed Games, the indie studio behind

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, are kicking back with a cooler full of brewskies, angling for salmon in a crystal clear alpine lake in Sweden where they're based. In reality, they're probably hard at work keeping servers stable trying to manage the absolutely staggering amount of players logging on every day to instead catch virtual fish with their friends. How to Fish is huge, it's everywhere, and seemingly everyone is playing it right now.

According to

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, which provides numbers tracking the amount of people playing a given game on Valve's platform, How to Fish managed a ridiculous new player peak of 373,971 just five days after its launch. In case that number alone doesn't tell you how shockingly hot this game is right now, let's quickly compare it to another fairly recent Steam-exclusive (for now) co-op game often categorized, lovingly or otherwise, as friendslop.

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and remains an incredibly popular online game to play with friends,

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. With an

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of 170,759 from about a year ago, How to Fish has managed more than double its highest player count ever. And it's worth noting that Peak benefits from publishers in Aggro Crab and Landfall games, while How to Fish is self-published.

Meanwhile, Big Walk, the other big friendslop(ish) game of the moment, currently has an all-time peak of 46,409, but that's less of a useful comparison since Big Walk is available on a bunch of other platforms, making its actual comprehensive player figures harder to track. Regardless, it's staggering to see these micro-budget games hit numbers usually reserved for the biggest AAA releases, and it's proof in the market value of simple, mindless fun with a modest price tag.

Here are the

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to play right now.

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