granny youtube

How the indie horror game “Granny” became the 2nd most viewed mobile game on YouTube

Heini Vesander CMO
There’s a new mobile title making waves on YouTube, as Granny reached over 314 million views on YouTube in the month of May – leaving Supercell’s Clash Royale behind (225M views in May) (data based on Matchmade platform estimates on YouTube viwership). The biggest mobile titles on YouTube have for the longest time been Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and Clash Royale (read the post about MLBB surpassing CR here), and it remains to be seen if Granny is a one-week-wonder, or built to last.

Wait, what happened?

What’s interesting here is how Granny become so successful: a small indie developer with no website, with assumably limited marketing budgets and, voila, YouTubers are loving it and people are downloading it like crazy. On June 11, 2018 in the US, Granny was the 6th most downloaded arcade game, 10th game and 24th most downloaded app for the iPhone. And on Google Play: 1st in arcade games 5th in games and 5th overall apps.  

Horror games have a history of doing well on YouTube. One of the biggest stars of YouTube, PewDiePie, built his channel on Amnesia. We looked at a selection of other horror titles, and how did on YouTube after they launched…. And Granny is still the queen of the hill, but shares her throne with Resident Evil and Dead by Daylight, which have also been popular titles on YouTube.

Dead by Daylight was actually bigger (in terms of viewership on YouTube) than Granny during its first 3 months since launch, as Granny just started picking traction on YouTube at months 3-4. We can already see the decline of Granny’s viewership – just like other horror titles, the game does well for a few months on YouTube and then finds it own small fanbase. We’re expecting Granny to also be a “one-week-wonder” but we’ll see what happens.

 

Here’s a few funny Granny videos to watch:

 

Why is Granny doing so well on YouTube?

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  • Great timing: Holidays season is kicking off in Europe and the US and a lot of teenagers are idle. They have time to play, watch and create videos.
  • Since the time of funny home videos, it’s been entertaining to watch people get spooked. Playing scary games evokes a lot of raw emotion, which is fun to watch.
  • There’s plenty of great horror games on mobile, but this one is simple and easy to get into.
  • Relying on organic influencer marketing. Dvlper is letting YouTubers do what they do and the downloads are rolling in.

Congrats to Dvloper for all the success! Tweet @matchmadetv and email us on [email protected]