Goose Goose Duck smashes Among Us’ players record

And it's all K-Pop's fault

Marco Wutz | Jan 5, 2023

Goose Goose Duck smashes Among Us’ players record /

You might ask yourself what the heck a Goose Goose Duck is, and you’d not be alone. To make it short: Goose Goose Duck is a social deduction game that is very much like Among Us, the hit game of 2020 that made even your grandma understand what “sus” means. But it has ducks. And geese.

Propelled by the power of K-Pop – or rather, a stream by K-Pop star Kim Tae-hyung of BTS – the game broke into the most-played charts of Steam late last year. The sudden surge in popularity has turned out to be more than a temporary boost for the game’s numbers: Players are actually sticking around. For the developers, this caused some problems with server stability in recent days. That’s another thing it has in common with its inspiration.

On January 5, 2023, Goose Goose Duck actually managed to break Among Us’ record for concurrently active players on Steam, reaching 563,677 users at its peak. Do the math yourself on how much more that is than Among Us’ 447,476 users in September 2020. Let’s just say it’s a whole lot more and K-Pop is not even at fault this time.

All quips about the similarities aside, Goose Goose Duck expands on the concept of Among Us quite a bit, adding additional game modes and roles, which make it a far fresher experience for seasoned players of the genre.

Released on October 3, 2021, and developed by Gaggle Studios, the game is available for free in several languages.

Published Jan 5, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg