Among Us Drives Record High Discord Downloads

Perhaps the primary appeal of the wildly popular Among Us is its social element, which would partly explain why the two-year-old game didn't quite take off until quarantine began in March of this year. We now know that Among Us' massive popularity is actually having a ripple effect for another social-oriented product under lockdown. According to Apptopia, the chat client Discord is raking in about 800,000 new installs per day thanks to the growing audience for Among Us.

Discord's recent growth spike was aided first by nationwide shutdowns as COVID-19 cases began to rise earlier in the year, forcing many to seek alternate, no-contact ways to socialize. As lockdown continued and Among Us began to rise in popularity, so too did Discord's download rates. You can see the worldwide daily download rates for both Among Us and Discord in Apptopia's chart below.

Among Us and Discord's daily download rates between July and September 2020, from Apptopia.

Based on Apptopia's data, "Discord has been hitting a new lifetime high for mobile app downloads every day since September 5th." You can get a better idea of just how high that is in Apptopia's second chart below, which shows both the initial spike in downloads around the start of the pandemic ("hockey stick like growth," according to Apptopia) and the second spike as Among Us began to take off a few months later. At this point, that's about 800,000 new Discord downloads per day.

Discord's two major popularity spikes at the start of the pandemic and as Among Us grows in popularity, from Apptopia.

Discord offers a quick and easy way for Among Us players to connect in voice chat, which probably accounts for a portion of those downloads. Discord's recent rebranding efforts have also centered around making the chat client more appealing and accessible to non-gamers and non-gaming communities. While Among Us is still a video game, its party game format and social deception elements grant it a much wider appeal.

Among Us is free to play on mobile, but also offers crossplay support with its paid PC version, making it super easy and quick to hop into a match with friends, family, and even strangers. It is so popular that its planned sequel Among Us 2 was canceled so the developers could spend more time and resources on the original game, which remains one of the top mobile games right now.

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