As of May 2025, R.E.P.O. is the most played new release of the year across all platforms, with an estimated 16.5 million players scavenging the remnants of humanity. No other game, new or existing, has attracted more new players in 2025. But what does this mean for the industry, and what trends are fueling the rise of games like R.E.P.O.?
In this Spotlight, we use our Platform data to take a closer look.
Here is the TLDR:
- Revenue: R.E.P.O.’s low $9.99 price point lowers the barrier for group buy-in, often turning one sale into multiple, making a $10 purchase effectively worth $30–$50. Higher pricing risks losing the entire group, not just a single buyer.
- Engagement: At its peak, R.E.P.O. averaged nearly 11M Monthly Active Users (MAU) over two months, ranking 10th across all platforms, but has now fallen to 6.3M MAU. Lethal Company, a similar game, but which notably had monthly content updates, experienced roughly 50% lower player churn than R.E.P.O., which had no content updates over the same period.
- Play time: R.E.P.O. ranks 27th in 2025 by total players but has a relatively low average monthly playtime of just 6.1 hours. Yet its 96% Steam rating shows players are happy to drop in for a few hours of unique, social co-op fun, without the pressure of long-term engagement.
- Overlap: Players drawn to co-op titles like R.E.P.O. are price-sensitive, with sub-$15 pricing key to securing group buy-in. This poses a challenge for AA and AAA studios eyeing the co-op trend. Tools like Steam’s Family Share may limit sales but offer a low-friction path for players hesitant to take chances on a new game at a higher price.
R.E.P.O. (Retrieve, Extract, and Profit Operation) is a cooperative online survival horror game developed by Swedish studio Semiwork. It launched in early access on Steam on February 26, 2025, and currently holds a 96% “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating across more than 159,000 user reviews.
The game tasks players with extracting physics-based loot while navigating dynamic enemy encounters. Features such as proximity chat and emergent gameplay have contributed to its viral appeal on social platforms. It shares gameplay DNA to titles before it, such as Lethal Company and Phasmophobia.
The first content update was released in the beta version of the game on May 30, 2025, introducing a new level, weapons, items, enemies, and quality-of-life improvements. No official timeline has been announced for the update, nor has a formal roadmap to full release been announced.
The insights featured in this article are based on proprietary data from the Newzoo Platform: PC & console player engagement estimates for 37 markets (notably excluding China and India) and digital revenue estimates for 6 markets (USA, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain).
Group-friendly pricing drives viral adoption
Despite strong unit sales, R.E.P.O.’s $9.99 price point, a key factor for its success, also limits its revenue potential. Since its late February launch, the game has generated $63.2M across the six markets we track year-to-date, ranking 28th overall in 2025 and 10th among 2025 releases. This performance comes from a single platform as R.E.P.O. is only available on Steam in early access.
So, when we compare it to other PC titles, R.E.P.O.’s rankings improve dramatically, ranking 12th in total revenue year-to-date and fourth among 2025 PC releases. In March, when the game was at its peak, R.E.P.O. was the second-highest grossing PC title, trailing only The Sims 4, even outperforming established titles like Fortnite and Counter-Strike.
After launch, R.E.P.O. followed a similar growth curve to Lethal Company, both far surpassing Content Warning. However, unlike Lethal Company, R.E.P.O. saw declining revenue in month three. This may be driven by the absence of content updates. For comparison purposes, Lethal Company’s developers released a content update in each of their first three months following its launch.
As new content has yet to officially arrive, Semiwork seem to have lost some of their momentum. Without a formal roadmap, and R.E.P.O.’s pay-to-play model, we don’t expect monthly revenues to grow meaningfully. While future updates may offer a modest revenue boost, we anticipate a continued revenue decline similar to that of Lethal Company.
That said, this should not be interpreted as a failure on the developer’s part. R.E.P.O. is not a live service game, and we are not holding it to that standard. Rather, this highlights how rapidly player attention can shift without continued post-launch support.
While priced at just $9.99, R.E.P.O.’s co-op focus means most purchases are social in nature - few players buy the game alone. The low cost lowers the barrier for entire friend groups to join in, often turning a single sale into three or more. Effectively, this $9.99 title can becomea $30-$50 value when group buy-in is achieved. A higher price point would risk losing the whole group and its potential revenue.
R.E.P.O. attracts one of the highest player bases in the first four months.
R.E.P.O. launched in late February with 330K MAU before reaching 11.3M MAU in March, and 10.4M MAU in April. At its peak, it ranked #10 by MAU across all platforms we track (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch) despite being available only on Steam. While it declined in May to “only” 6.3M MAU, R.E.P.O. has amassed an impressive 16.5M lifetime players across the 37 markets where we track player engagement.
To put this into perspective, since April 2020 (when Newzoo began collecting data), R.E.P.O. has the 17th highest average MAU in its first four months, with six of those titles being free-to-play titles(F2P) or titles with F2P game modes. For reference, Lethal Company was only two slots down at 19th.
In terms of lifetime users, R.E.P.O. has amassed 16.5M players in its first four months, putting it at 14th since Newzoo began recording data. While seven of the titles in front of it are free-to-play, R.E.P.O. still outpaces several major free-to-play PC releases over the same timeframe, including The First Descendant (13.5M), Delta Force (8.2M), and Once Human (7.6M) on PC.
For further context, Lethal Company and Phasmophobia reached 15.4M and 15.2M players, respectively in their first four months. Additionally, Schedule I, which has only been available for three months, has accumulated 9.5M players, though we do not expect the title to accumulate any substantial players in June, based on Schedule I’s growth trajectory.
The impact of consistent updates on engagement
As a rule of thumb, all games lose players in the months following launch, updates or not. While this is expected, R.E.P.O. and Lethal Company offer a useful comparison: two similar games with two different post-launch strategies.
Though both performed similarly at launch, by month four, we can see the effects of those two strategies become clear. R.E.P.O., which lacked content updates, saw a -37% drop in MAU. Lethal Company, which released monthly updates, declined by just -16%. While this is only one comparison and should not be generalized, this side-by-side illustrates how regular updates may reduce player churn by as much as ~50%.
Longer-term data reinforces the link between updates and engagement. Between months 10 and 20, Lethal Company saw MAU rise 11% in months with updates and fall -17% in months without. Phasmophobia showed a similar, albeit more stable pattern (+6% with updates, -8% without). When Lethal Company stopped updating after month 14, Returning MAU fell -74% over six months, stabilizing at ~500K. Phasmophobia, still seeing regular updates, saw just a -24% drop over the same time span, holding steady near 2 million MAU.
MAU New closely followed the trajectory of total MAU. Zooming in on months 14 to 20 (no updates period for Lethal Company), we observe a decline in MAU New of -82% for the title while Phasmophobia’s MAU New in the same period declined -51%. Even after 4.5 years, Phasmophobia’s MAU New remains above Lethal Company’s May 2025 level.
Play Time: In for a good time, not for a long time
Year-to-date, R.E.P.O. players have logged 225 million hours of playtime, ranking 27th across all games and second among 2025 releases, trailing only Monster Hunter Wilds. Its second month marked a peak of 109 million hours, far surpassing the horror genre average of 6 million and placing it 20th overall for that month.
Despite this impressive total, R.E.P.O. has the lowest average monthly playtime (6.1 hours) among the top 25 titles released in 2025. Even at its March peak, players averaged just 9 hours, 2 hours less than any title in the top 20, with The Sims 4 being the closest at 11 hours per month.
This low average is driven by a heavy skew toward short engagement: R.E.P.O. significantly over-indexes in the 1–5-hour playtime bracket. The average player logs in 3.6 days per month and plays around 99 minutes per session, highlighting a pattern of brief, infrequent play.
Rather than indicating disinterest, this behavior reflects a more social, drop-in experience. Players appear to treat it as a shared experience with friends, jumping in for a few short sessions, then moving on. This aligns with trends seen in other recent titles, like Lethal Company and Content Warning. The 96% positive Steam rating reinforces that players value this format, finding satisfaction in short, high-quality play over long-term commitment.
Who is playing R.E.P.O. and what else are they playing?
When we look at our Player Overlap Index (how likely R.E.P.O. players are to play other titles), we find that players gravitate toward socially focused, co-op games. Nearly all the top 10 overlapping titles are under $20, with only Outlast Trials as an exception. The first AAA-priced title, Sea of Thieves, appears at #27. Only two free-to-play games, Marvel Rivals and The Finals, crack the top 25; the rest are all priced under $30.
This suggests that players drawn to games like R.E.P.O. are not deterred by a small premium price—but are sensitive to higher price points. This may become a problem for AAA studios who may want to capitalize on the growth of co-op gaming we pointed out in the PC and Console gaming report we published earlier this year. Price sensitivity is a particularly important factor for these types of games, because it requires everyone in a friend’s group to agree on the purchase, a much easier feat when the price is under $30.
There are options available with features like Steam’s Family Share program that allows friends of one player to all play the game with only one player having that title. While they may reduce total sales, they lower the barrier to entry—allowing friends to try a game risk-free. For studios focused on long-term engagement and viral word of mouth, these tools may be more valuable than protecting every individual sale.
What R.E.P.O. teaches us about Co-op success
The game’s $9.99 price point lowered the barrier for entire friend groups to join in. While this limits revenue per unit, it drove adoption and virality. Developers aiming for co-op-driven word of mouth should understand that in these cases, the “sale” is not just one player, but often the entire group. A higher price point risks losing not one sale, but many.
R.E.P.O.’s performance also reinforces that high engagement does not always require long sessions. The average player clocked under 10 hours, but still rated the game overwhelmingly positive. This suggests that shorter experiences, especially those designed around social drop-in/drop-out play, can drive strong engagement and revenue, without demanding long-term commitment.
Keeping a regular cadence of content updates translates into not only better player retention but into attracting new players to the game at a higher pace.
Both R.E.P.O.’s monetization strategy and low time demand pose a challenge for the traditional AAA monetization models. As co-op gaming continues to rise in popularity, studios should rethink pricing, in-app purchase strategies, and accessibility features like Family Share to meet the expectations of this growing game type. R.E.P.O. may not be built for long-term retention—but its success signals that more compact, socially-driven co-op experiences are on the way.
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