Among Us
You might remember it as emergency meeting
It popularised “sus”, for suspicious, a word already in use before it
2020·Short-form and streams·funny
A two-year-old game nobody had played became the shape of socialising in a year when nobody could meet.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- emergency meeting
- Spread in
- 2020
- Began as
- Something you played
- Where it started
- commercial-release
- Format
- Phenomenon
- Made by
- The studio Innersloth
- What it said
- It popularised “sus”, for suspicious, a word already in use before it
- Origin
- Not an upload originally
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
Small armless astronauts run around a spaceship doing maintenance tasks. One or two of them are impostors, and are killing the others. When a body is found, everyone stops and argues about who it was. The game is Mafia in a spacesuit, and it was released in 2018 to almost no attention.
Two sitting members of the US Congress streamed it as a voter-registration drive and drew hundreds of thousands of viewers. The developers cancelled a planned sequel to keep working on the original. It is the clearest example of a game succeeding because of what it lets an audience watch rather than what it lets a player do.
Why it matteredWhat changed
A game that averaged thirty to fifty players at once after its release had 3.8 million two years later, after streamers took it up during lockdown.
TimelineIn order
- Posted
The game is released for phones.1
- Picked up
The streamer Sodapoppin plays it on Twitch. Others with larger audiences follow.1
- Record
It passes 100 million downloads, and late in the month 3.8 million people are playing at once. The studio cancels a planned sequel to repair the original.1
- Mainstream
Two members of the United States Congress play it on Twitch to encourage voting, watched by almost 700,000 people at once.1
- Mainstream
Merriam-Webster adds “sus”.1
What people misrememberSet straight
Commonly remembered asThe game invented “sus”.
ActuallyThe word was in use before it.1
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
This began as something you played rather than watched. Originally published on commercial-release.
Where it came fromWhat we know
There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This began as something you played rather than watched. Originally published on commercial-release.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things