From closed beta to Next Fest and game launch — How Once Human Became One of the Most Watched Games of 2024
RESULTS
#1 Demo in Next Fest
Once Human dominated Steam Next Fest - June 2024 Edition
~ 20M hours watched
Became a hit on Twitch — #11th most watched new release in 2024
150k+ Creators
Unique content creators across Twitch, YouTube and TikTok
Company overview
NetEase Games is the gaming arm of Chinese internet tech company NetEase, Inc. The company develops, publishes and operates PC, console and mobile games. Starry Studio is a subsidiary of NetEase Games and Once Human is their debut title.
Game overview
Once Human is a multiplayer open-world survival game set in a strange, post-apocalyptic future. Unite with friends to fight monstrous enemies, uncover secret plots, compete for resources, and build your own territory. Once, you were merely human. Now, you have the power to remake the world.
Products used
Marketing Insights, Key Campaigns, Creator Program, Missions and Rewards
The Challenge:
While NetEase Games is a video games industry giant, Starry Studio was a relatively young game studio with a brand new IP at hand with little presence, especially in the Western gaming world. On top of that, Once Human arrived in a year where many open world survival/crafting games were released and found popularity, making competition fiercer than any year before.
Starry Studio wanted Once Human to stand out in a crowded and competitive market, build hype around the title with consecutive marketing beats, and have a strong Steam Next Fest performance. The next challenge would be to carry all the hype the game has earned during these beats into the full launch.
This meant they needed to reach out, onboard and manage thousands of relevant content creators, and strategically activate them at key points while rewarding them handsomely for their awesome work. The studio needed an easy to use, efficient Creator Program to build a community of creators and transform the rising interest in Once Human into long-tail success.
The Solution:
This is where Lurkit came in. We partnered up with Starry Studio and Once Human early on, staging several beats to drive visibility and awareness for the game. Together we launched three major campaigns for Once Human:
Closed beta test
Steam Next Fest - June 2024 Edition
Full game launch
Creator Program + Missions and Rewards to the rescue
The closed beta test with Lurkit was live between 3rd April - 15th May, 2024. With a little help from Lurkit's expert team and tools, Starry Studio was able to create a massive hype wave for Once Human. They used this momentum to onboard creators on Twitch and YouTube to their Creator Program on Lurkit and their official creator Discord.
This closed beta beat helped Starry team collect meaningful and actionable player feedback while boosting Once Human's visibility and hype around it big time, just before the Next Fest arrived next month, in June.
"Lurkit was our command center during Once Human's closed beta, Steam Next Fest and the full release. We onboarded thousands of creators super-fast and activated them at key moments thank to the Creator Program. Plus, the TwitchCon party Lurkit threw allowed us to connect with PirateSoftware & make him a Once Human creator, which was a massive win for us"
Sky Shows — Global Influencer Lead @Starry Studio
Once Human started using their creator program and it's unique features across all other major beats. The studio used unique missions to activate creators at every important key moment, brought thousands of creators to their official creator Discord, and rewarded everyone who helped them handsomely. Through these features thousands of content creators across the world with audiences small to mega were ready to support Once Human, especially whenever there's something new and exciting coming to the game.
The Results
Closed Beta Test
This was the first major collaboration between NetEase Games, Starry Studio and Lurkit for Once Human. Starry Studio easily carried over their existing content creator partners over to the Creator Program they launched on Lurkit.
Starry Studio grew its creator network by prospecting new content creators across Twitch and Youtube via Lurkit. The studio found thousands of new creators who're interested in the game and were the right fit for the creator program. Lurkit's tools allowed for lightning fast vetting, onboarding and campaign management.
Starry Studio's talented creator management team used Lurkit's solutions to the max and generated AAA-level viewership for the game's last closed beta test. When the closed beta test came to an end, not only content creators but millions of players wanted to play more of Once Human.
Steam Next Fest - June 2024
Leaving people want more is a great strategy when your game is able to generate organic interest and maintain it over a long period. Of course, this level of expectation management and building anticipation requires an expert touch or else things can go wrong quickly.
Luckily, Starry Studio's Global Influencer Lead, Sky Shows is quite experienced in this area. Sky and his team successfully connected the hype generated at the last closed beta test into the Steam Next Fest. The team at Starry used the Once Human Creator Program and Lurkit's "Missions and Rewards" feature to build a series of interconnected missions with in-game cosmetic rewards.
Starry Studio focused on getting Day 1 coverage for Next Fest to kickstart the event with strong presence, and maintained creator activations throughout the festival to make sure Once Human never lost momentum, neither on Steam or Twitch or YouTube.
This approach proved right, as Once Human became the most played demo of Next Fest - June 2024 Edition, and generated nearly 1M hours watched on Twitch, despite the demo being live for a very limited time.
Game Launch - Day 30 Performance
The moment of truth had arrived for Once Human on 9th July, 2024, less than a month after the stellar performance during Steam Next Fest. Starry Studio once again used Lurkit and its tools to organize thousands of creators they onboarded during the pre-launch period of the game. They also continuously interacted with their creator community and listened to their feedback. In fact, one such name who helped them improve the game were PirateSoftware, who Starry Studio partnered up with via Lurkit.
The studio didn't break the formula that's been working well for them, and they created several missions with handsome in-game rewards, free codes for creators to distribute to their communities and more. At this point, Once Human was a highly anticipated release of the year and creators were more than eager to complete these missions for added rewards.
Once Human's D30 results were beyond amazing. The game closed the first 30 days with nearly 20M hours watched on Twitch and 15M+ YouTube views, for above a regular AAA-tier game launch. The long tail was also a massive success, as Once Human closed the year as one of the Top 20 Most Watched New Releases in 2024.
The level of viewership earned through content creators helped Once Human reach high levels of active players, and always-on strategic content creator activations made sure player retention stayed high. Once Human saw 231k all-time peak on Steam in terms of concurrent players when it first launched and the game is still able to retain around 35k to 40k concurrent players on a daily basis.
A new scenario called "The Way of Winter" even pushed the player numbers above 100k when it first launched and hours watched on Twitch spiked at 4M, showing a strong correlation between creators and player numbers/sales.
Final Thoughts
Once Human is kicking strong months after its launch and Starry Studio regularly update the game with new content, making sure players and content creators always find new and exciting experiences. They're using Lurkit's technology and services to ensure creators produce content around the game with cleverly built missions and rewards, and employing strategic activations to bring back creators who have churned at one point or another.
