When Stumble Guys Overtook Fall Guys: An Unexpected Twist

Introduction

The rise and fall of video games can be as thrilling as the games themselves. One such saga involves the popular game Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, which took the gaming world by storm in 2020, only to be challenged by its clone, Stumble Guys. This narrative explores the journey of Fall Guys, its challenges, and how Stumble Guys emerged as a formidable competitor.

The Initial Success of Fall Guys

In the summer of 2020, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout released worldwide to critical acclaim. The game was an innovative take on the already oversaturated battle royale experience in that instead of eliminating your opponents through conventional methods, you instead defeated them by completing races, winning challenges, and finishing objectives. Fall Guys initially started life in 2018 as a clone of the infamous Japanese game show Takeshi's Castle, but the team behind it, Mediatonic, quickly expanded its premise into a gigantic player-versus-player experience set with a multitude of its own mechanics, such as 60-player lobbies, complex character customization, unique obstacles and mini-games, and full physics. Hence the name.

Development and Launch

Fall Guys spent only a year in development before officially being revealed at E3 2019 during the Devolver panel. Alongside the announcements also came a cinematic trailer, a release window of 2020, and the two systems the game would be exclusive to: the PlayStation 4 and PC. Just like the announcement said, after only two years in development, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout released worldwide on August 4th, 2020. To say its launch was a success would be an understatement. Within only 24 hours of its release, the game had amassed an astonishing 1.5 million concurrent players spanning across only two systems, achieving 520,000 hours of concurrent watch time on Twitch. Fall Guys had quite literally exceeded everyone's expectations, including the developers. 

The insane influx of players caused the game servers to completely overload, meaning that tons of people, despite owning the game, were unable to log in and play it on the day it launched. This issue of overcrowding got so bad that the game servers on the PlayStation had to be temporarily taken offline in an attempt to remedy the strain being placed upon them. But this slight hiccup in the weeks following its release didn't really hinder the game too much. One month after its launch, Fall Guys reached the insane milestone of 10 million copies sold just on Steam alone, as well as taking the record for the most downloaded PlayStation Plus title in history, an achievement it still holds to this day.

Challenges Faced by Fall Guys

It's fair to say that people were enamored with the game. Its vibrant world, chaotic gameplay, and wacky design entertained millions for hours on end. Surely, with the seemingly perfect formula that the game had crafted, nothing could go wrong. As the months went by, Fall Guys had three major issues that people began to take notice of: countless game-breaking glitches, an epidemic of hackers, and perhaps most importantly, an overall lack of content. 

Fall Guys released with only 25 maps, which sounds like a lot on paper, but when you factor in that those 25 maps would be split between five different rounds and the fact that the average length of a single match was only 10 minutes, people were forced to replay the same maps over and over again, leaving the game feeling repetitive and stale for the vast majority of people who played. Unlike the other two issues, this was something the developers didn't know how to rectify. 

Contrary to other games in the live service genre, Mediatonic never created a roadmap of content for post-launch. They attempted to counter this lack of content by adding random obstacles to the pre-existing maps, which for a time did help keep Fall Guys fresh, but eventually, the rapidly growing player base began to decline. Month after month, more and more people grew tired of the game, and even when updates started to drop, the player count continued to dwindle, likely due to the negative reception that said updates received from the few players who remained.

Epic's Acquisition and Subsequent Decline

There was a glimmer of hope for Fall Guys in March 2021 when Epic, the creators and publishers of Fortnite, announced that they were purchasing the game. To give Epic credit, following their acquisition, they did a pretty good job of reversing the decline of players. They not only finally ported Fall Guys over to the Xbox and Nintendo Switch but also made it completely free to play, boosting the game to a staggering 50 million players over the span of a two-week period. 

However, the hope that the game would return to its former glory quickly died off as the first few updates under Epic dropped. Despite the initial good reception Epic brought back to the game, they began making the same mistakes as the former publishers almost immediately: mediocre updates, insanely long gaps between seasons, boring and repetitive mini-games, and the vaulting of fan-favorite maps. This once again resulted in a drastic decline of players.

The Rise of Stumble Guys

Around the time of Fall Guys' second decline, another party battle royale game began to emerge: Stumble Guys, a mobile battle royale game created by a Finnish studio known as Kitka. Stumble Guys released on September 24th, 2020, just 52 days after Fall Guys, and as you can probably tell, it initially started off as nothing more than a cheap knockoff, copying the look, premise, levels, and obstacles of Fall Guys. However, Stumble Guys had one major advantage over Fall Guys: the mobile market. In 2020 alone, the PC and console markets had a combined revenue of around $52.8 billion, yet mobile gaming by itself generated an astounding $73.8 billion and accumulated a user base of around 2.5 billion people. 

What makes mobile gaming so profitable in comparison to its competitors isn't just its insanely high player base but also microtransactions. Yes, almost every game released now on console or PC has microtransactions to some degree, but nowhere near the extent of mobile gaming, and this was something Stumble Guys took full advantage of. Stumble Guys quite literally sold it all: skins, emotes, season passes, loot boxes. They even nullified the issue of hackers and cheaters by putting game-breaking advantages, such as the ability to attack and defend yourself, behind a paywall. Unlike most developers that create knockoff games for the sole purpose of an easy cash grab before eventually abandoning them, Kitka continued to update the game. 

They added a lot of basic things you would expect, such as skins, emotes, and other cosmetics, but also a ton of other things like a bunch of original maps, new obstacles, massive in-game events, and even tournaments. They produced these large updates on an extremely frequent basis, usually with only a 2-3 week waiting period between patches, which, in contrast to Fall Guys, a game that has gone up to 6 months without any additional updates, is quite astounding. In fact, Stumble Guys started coming out with so many impactful updates in such a short period of time that the game managed to divert its original image of just being another Fall Guys knockoff into being a genuine Fall Guys competitor.

Scopely's Acquisition and Marketing Push

Things only got better for the game on September 8th, 2022, when Stumble Guys was acquired by a much larger company with greater resources: Scopely, a company that specializes in the mobile market. Scopely immediately got to work expanding Stumble Guys after their acquisition. They did things you would expect, such as allocating resources to the game and assisting the developers in broadening their visions for future updates, but their main priority wasn't really improving the game as a whole but rather improving its marketing. 

Scopely went on a spree of securing sponsorships for Stumble Guys, managing to negotiate major collaborations with popular IPs like Hot Wheels, Nerf, Looney Tunes, SpongeBob, My Hero Academia. They even managed to collaborate with MrBeast twice, sponsoring a bunch of his videos as well as having an entire season dedicated to him. There's even talk of another MrBeast collab being in the works, though it's questionable if that will ever happen due to certain reasons. This increase in advertising pushed the game, which was only really known to a small percentage of mobile users, into the mainstream. The game that originally started off as a knockoff was now being searched up more than the original. 

Scopely acted upon this major boost in popularity by making Stumble Guys more accessible for anyone to play. They made the decision to port the game over to Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch. You can even play the game on a web browser if you want to. As it stands today, Stumble Guys has been downloaded over 700 million times with a consistent monthly player base of over 50 million people. So, while Fall Guys' player count continues to decline, Stumble Guys only continues to grow bigger and bigger, making a game that once started off as just another copycat more popular than the original.

Conclusion

The tale of Fall Guys and Stumble Guys is a fascinating one, highlighting the unpredictability of the gaming industry. Fall Guys' initial success was undeniable, but a series of missteps led to its decline. In contrast, Stumble Guys capitalized on the mobile market, frequent updates, and effective marketing to rise as a genuine competitor. As the gaming world evolves, the story of these two games serves as a reminder of the importance of adaptability and innovation in maintaining relevance and success.