Among Us had 1.5 million people playing at the same time this weekend

Uncovering spacetraitors in Among Us has become surprisingly popular, a success which is not unexpected because the game's bad (it's good!) but because it had been out for a year-and-a-half before really being noticed. The developers, Innersloth announced over the weekend that the sneaky party game hit 1.5 million concurrent online players, which is, well, damn. Servers have started to buckle from all the players, but the devs have a plan.

"We're hitting 1.5 million players online at the same time!" Innersloth tweeted on Saturday in the wee hours. That'll be across all platforms. "We're slowly getting the hang of things but please bear with us! We'll get through this."

It's been the most popular category on Twitch at times too. A lot of its newfound success has come from Twitch, because the game generates short bursts of spacedrama, ideal for lively streams with loads of mates mucking about in front of an audience.

Among Us is a bit like Werewolf or Mafia, in space, with minigames. The crew of a ship have a list of tasks to accomplish so they can get home, and shapeshifting alien Impostors among them want to kill everyone. With roles assigned randomly, one run you might running around watching your back as you try to fix electrical systems, then minutes later you're sneaking about trying to sabotage the oxygen and pin the blame on someone else. Players can call votes to eject people from the airlock, which is where that Werewolf-esque deduction and deception comes in.

"You might think you're not capable of being a good liar. I worried about that, too," Craig Pearson said after his spaceadventures. "It turns out I'm a great liar, and I have no moral concerns about attempting to have an accuser killed. Sorry, mum. Your boy's a wrong'un."

Among Us has hit maximum capacity at times, causing hiccups, but the fix is fairly involved. If you want to get technical on its technical problems, one of the developers posted a Twitter thread detailing why the solution isn't as simple as "adding more servers". Basically, they're working on it, they hope to have it sorted in a few days, but they're a tiny team, they're tired, and the fix will likely cause some disruption of its own. Hold tight, crew.

You can find Among Us on Steam and Itch.io. It's £4/€4/$5 on Steam, where you can also buy some cute cosmetics, and pay-what-you-want on Itch. You can get it on Android and iOS too. All the versions can play together.