Who would have known; Among Us, the game which came from nothing and became everything, is for all intensive purposes dead? The small independent game initially released June 15, 2018, with no substantial feedback. The game quickly began gaining traction in mid-2020, which of course was the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Near the end of 2020, creators even managed to program their own game modes and features using modifications for the device.

It is a long chronology of events, but the underlying effect was the death of the game which came as early as the first month of 2021. According to Cole Lombard, “I think the game came to die as a result of the lack of original content. There was no way three maps would satisfy millions of people for that long.” Throughout the resurgence of 2020, the game received little-to-no truly expansive updates. Not to mention, the game also suffered from extreme hacking throughout its lifetime, and most players dropped the game because of this.

However, perhaps the final nail in the coffin was the games’ content itself. Among Us was effectively a dead horse that almost every content creator was beating, from YouTube to Twitch. People simply would not let the game go quietly. William Tuzas shared, “I think because the lockdown is over, people don’t have to stay inside and play games anymore. So I think most people resumed their normal lives rather than play the game.”And so it was that Among Us would truly be its own undoing, as fans milking it like the village’s dilapidated, dysentery-suffering cow. 

Quite similar to Fortnite, the game’s fanbase, which has mostly annoying children under the age of 12, was simply too much. As is similar with both games, the fanbase was infiltrated and utterly drowned out by toxic and unintelligent gamers. The fact of the matter is, things are not beautiful because they last forever, things are beautiful because they happened. The world should very well remember Among Us as the game that brought gamers together to find two killers, not the game that tore the fan base apart on account of the hacking.