Hi everyone! Time for a big post!
First of all, thanks so much for playing and enjoying Among Us. It's been crazy to see how much more popular Among Us could be than we ever imagined.
Second of all, yes. We're confirming Among Us 2. This post is all about what that means and why we're doing it.
First and Most Important
Among Us 1 servers will stay alive for as long as it has enough players to start games. When we first started, we found that players couldn't really play when the servers had fewer than 30 - 50 players per hour. But lately we have 70,000 - 110,000 per hour. We'd be crazy to shut off the servers on you in 2021! And even if Among Us 2 gets lots of players, we'll just run both at the same time. If Among Us 1 servers shut down, I will open source the code so players can run servers instead.
But why a sequel?
Among Us 1 has been out over two years. It started as a tiny local-multiplayer-only game and has grown and grown and grown. Online multiplayer took 2 months and a total rework to make happen, then 6 months per extra map, and horrible server growing pains along the way. It really was not created to be this big. Because of this, it's extremely hard to add more things without breaking existing things. Frankly, it's terrifying to add in more things because the game is so fragile. Fixing this would require recreating core sections of Among Us, then making sure everything else still works on top. It's actually even harder than just making a new game.
So the first goal of Among Us 2 is to be made to withstand growth. We want to add to it at least as long as Among Us, but with fewer bugs along the way.
What will be in Among Us 2?
Well, first, we plan to basically include Among Us 1 in some capacity. Don't expect us to drag and drop all three maps directly over, but we think it's important to keep the simple play of Among Us with crewmates and impostors. But do expect some new options and balance tweaks. For example, we know very well that 3 impostor needs more than 10 players to be balanced, so 12-15 player games is a goal.
Second, we know that hide and seek is a very popular mode, but it is tough to find or exclude those games. Expect matchmaking to work very differently to better support custom modes and skill levels.
Also, we know that forming groups and making friends is tough. Accounts and friends will be in Among Us 2 straight out of the gate.
Better moderation: We know that hacking, bad behaviour, and toxic language is a problem in Among Us 1 and we definitely don't like it. But we never had the tools to really combat it effectively as a three person team, so expect Among Us 2 to launch with fewer hacks, a report button, moderators, etc.
But we've always known that the thing that would really make Among Us 2 unique from Among Us 1 is more roles. We aren't far enough in the design to confirm any roles or how they will work, but the primary addition for Among Us 2 is more complexity than just Crewmate vs Impostor. This should add a lot more replayability to the game and we're excited to see how we can shake things up for more advanced players.
We have a lot of other things we know players want to see, and a lot of surprises in store as well. So we definitely think Among Us 2 will be worthy sequel. That said, we want to get people playing it quickly, so we will probably start small in Early Access so we can grow Among Us 2 with player feedback. But the above is some of the key bare minimums before we launch at all.
Will it cost extra?
Yes, but.
We know a lot of players just started playing Among Us 1 which makes it look like we're quickly moving to a sequel, so we're going to try carry over some stuff from Among Us 1. We haven't confirmed that we can do any of this yet, but we might:
- Launch with a discount coupon for Among Us 1 owners on Steam.
- Keep Among Us 2 Mobile free but with (removable) ads.
- Have free big content updates like maps and game modes. We're not making that mistake again.
- Have in-game currency so we can break up big cosmetic bundles and let people buy/earn just the things they want.
When will it come out?
We really do not know at all. We just started planning. There is no art, programming or sound done at all. For the record Among Us took about 6 months to enter open beta (early access) and 6 more months to leave open beta. Among Us 2 will probably take at least as long to enter open beta, and will probably spend longer there.
Unlike Among Us 1, we expect to make Among Us 2 for PC first, then port to mobile. This will let us focus on making a great game faster because updates can come out in minutes on PC, where mobile can take hours or even days.
So basically
We're super hype to start Among Us 2. It'll take a while, but we'll make sure it's worth it. We hope you'll stick around to see what we can do.
Oh, also, we're launching merch on Friday August 21 at 12 PM (Noon, PST). Everything is on pre-order, but there will be shirts and a plush crewmate. The best places to hear when it launches are on Discord and our mailing list, but we'll do our best to get the word out.