If you’re an avid Steam-er, you might see the game Goose Goose Duck floating around the platform’s Most Played list. Well, if you’re wondering why a social deduction game featuring geese and ducks suddenly rose in popularity, you have a BTS member to thank—V.
In November of 2022, BTS member V—real name Kim Taehyung—started streaming gameplay to fans through Weverse, a Kpop social platform that had a few controversies due to it kicking out Kpop stars not associated with HYBE. The games he played included Fall Guys, Among Us, and Goose Goose Duck—with the latter being the lesser-known game.
The game was originally released in October 2021, after an Early Access launch six months earlier. It lets players take on the role of geese, trying to root out the masquerading duck (or other bird) among them. It works a lot like the other popular social deduction game, Among Us—but with cute little birds.
According to Polygon, Goose Goose Duck was the No. 3 most-played game on Steam on Thursday, reaching a peak of 563,677 players and pushing past Steam favorites like PUBG: Battlegrounds, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Apex Legends. It is also currently the number 1 most popular free game featured on the platform. Since V’s boost on stream, the game’s peak player numbers tripled by the end of the year.
The recent success has been so overwhelming that the game page posted about a server outage on 2 January 2023. According to them, a “250k increase” of its “already massive player base was too much”.
“We’re working on increasing capacity as fast as we can and will keep everyone updated. We apologise for the inconvenience, we’re all working hard to make sure everyone can play,” they wrote.
Goose Goose Duck shares Among Us’s “overnight success” thanks to V’s gameplay streams. And with BTS currently on hiatus, V might also help boost other obscure games into instant stardom.
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