 Lethal Company is a game that has taken the internet by storm. If you've never played the game, you for sure have seen your favorite youtubers play it, your friends play it, if you have those, or have seen funny videos all over social media of people biding the dust in excruciating ways. And while everyone seems to be thrilled with the game itself, which I mean, hey, justifiably, it's a great game, I'm also really fascinated by the game's origins and how it came to be. Lethal Company has become the highest rated steam game of 2023, passing titles such as Baldur's Gate 3 and the Resident Evil 4 remake. Lethal Company has also outsold Activision's Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 on Steam. And as of right now, this game has over 150,000 players actively playing the game, but also reaching a peak of 184,000. All this chaos and hype and pounds of money generated in content creation was created by one person who's 21 years old. So join me, Dr. Skipper, on this expedition of how one person outsold a company of human slaves. Also subscribe, please, I need this. Lethal Company isn't made by a massive studio, or even a small indie team at that. In the same vein as Cruelty Squad, or even Five Nights at Freddy's, this game has one single developer that got some help from friends for voice lines and game testing. And before I glaze and explain why you should play Lethal Company, first, um, what is Lethal Company? I first found the game by seeing clips on Twitter, and then eventually I saw the game pop up in my friends list, so I looked it up and saw that it was only $10, which is like two light ice-gold needles from Dutch Bros, so I gave it a try. Lethal Company is a game where you roleplay as the average Amazon employee, putting your life on the line for big business to get scraps in return. I'm not even joking, either, that's quite literally the game. You go to abandoned planets to pick up loose items so that you could sell it to a company. Where their collector is a tentacle monster, they get annoyed when you ring its bell. And you have to meet a quota of items in three days, and if you don't, Jeff Bezos himself ejects you into space. The areas you explore in each planet are procedurally generated, which translated from Four Eyes means that they're random, so sometimes you could hit the jackpot and other times you could come out with nothing but dirt and a screw, and you get that screw in a thunderstorm, where Jeff himself summons lightning to strike you down. But what's also generated are monsters. This game isn't just an Amazon simulator, it's Amazon Simulator if the homeowner had a very aggressive dog, or cat, or child. Just like how the game has randomized trash and map layouts, the game also has randomized monsters. And depending on what planet you go to, the monsters can be stronger and scarier, but they're always gonna be random. The creatures you encounter are heavily inspired by SCPs. There's an enemy called the Coilhead that's directly inspired from the most popular SCP, that being SCP-173. It even follows the same rules. If you look at it, it doesn't move, and if you stop looking at it, it snaps your neck. The other monsters can range in many different ways of horror. Face huggers that are on the roof, a landshark, a stalker, There's even psychological warfare where a little girl hunts you, putting you on a timer that will eventually kill you. And you're the only one who can see her. There's also big spiders that eat up indigenerate. But then there's creatures outside, like giants and dogs, that make sure even getting back to the ship is a challenge. And then you got a jack in the box. The game's premise is simple, but what makes Lethal Company so fun is its design of co-op play. Lethal Company isn't a game that cures cancer, but the best graphics and game design. It's made by one person after all. And the game knows that, so instead of trying to be groundbreaking, it's instead made to be incredibly fun to play with friends. Lethal Company is successful because it's easy to understand its objective and it's fun to play while not costing an arm and a leg to buy, which was the intention of the developer being very cautious to nail down the objective. This isn't the first time an indie co-op game exploded. And the last time we saw it in full force was from two other games, Phasmophobia and Among Us. Before all the memes and shit posts, do you want to know why Among Us was so successful? It was successful because it was a simple party game. It was made to cause drama and start arguments amongst friends who played the game. It required communication, which made it engaging. It was simple, but had a fun repetitive game loop. And Phasmophobia had a similar lightning in a bottle success. It was a game that released around Halloween where you had to find out what Ghost was haunting whatever location you chose to play at, and the only way to communicate was through proximity chat and radios. But the reason the game was fun was because it was scary, and when you have four clueless people experiencing new stuff at the same time, it makes for a thrilling and more importantly funny time. Lethal Company hits the mark on what it takes to go viral. It has a simplistic art style with character designs that are easy to market, and a fun repetitive game loop that relies on in-game communication through proximity chat and radios. And it being only $10 makes it very accessible, thus making it very successful. So now that we know what Lethal Company is, who made the game? Well, this game was made by Zeekers. As I mentioned earlier, this person is 21 years old, and when looking at their social media presence in history, it's easy to tell. Just by looking at their digital footprint, you could track their history and inspirations for the game. And something that stood out to me was how much of a normal person Zeekers appears to be. When looking at their Twitter, you could find discussions about video games, dramas, or recent events alongside updates to them progressing in game design. And when looking at his YouTube channel, you could see his old Roblox and Minecraft videos that he made when he was a kid, like so many of us did when we were kids. But if you glance at the videos, you start to notice that these videos were building blocks that led him to make video games today. Zeekers at on Twitter is at Zeekers Roblox. When you open Lethal Company, the credit is also to at Zeekers Roblox. So when you put two and two together, this dude used to be a Roblox map designer before learning Unity. On August 31, 2012, you see a public video on Zeekers' YouTube channel named Dark Mansion, where he is making a horror map in Roblox at the age of 10. At age 10, I was playing Black House 2 and Gary's Podwell, this kid was grinding. Zeekers continued to make Roblox maps for years in his youth, alongside watching the Death Star blow up in 2017, uh, sick. Then in 2019, Zeekers made his first Steam game titled Welcome to the Dark Place, but it never got successfully greenlit so it never released. Then in 2020, he released a game named It Steals on itch.io. This is also his first game ever made on Unity. Zeekers followed the game up with Drive Home and another game named Dead Cedar, where Zeekers would upload trailers and reactions to his games. None of these were home runs in comparison to what would come next. On July 8, 2022, Zeekers would upload a teaser for a game he was now working on called Lethal Company. For the following year, Zeekers would continue to develop the game while also leaving notes in his Discord server and on Twitter and his Patreon about the game's progress. Lethal Company was inspired by a critique that Zeekers had for Phasmophobia, which was its proximity chat. Eventually on February 17, 2023, Zeekers would also add a walkie-talkie item to Lethal Company that only took him five hours to make. Later, he also learned how to add rain and music, which is also seen by a Twitter update on June 26. Then Zeekers would run into a problem with Lethal Company due to a drama with the game's engine. In 2015, Zeekers would begin to learn the Unity engine so that he could make games outside of Roblox, which is seen by his post on October 9. Then two years later in 2017, Zeekers would continue to learn the Unity engine. Eventually, his games were all made in Unity, but in September this year, the Unity engine had a controversy. The controversy was that if any game made with the Unity engine passed a certain installation and revenue threshold that the developer would start to get charged a fee for every time the game was downloaded. Zeekers would respond to this drama on September 16, 2023. After the statement, Zeekers would also post his progress on learning the Epic game's Unreal engine. Even with Roblox, Zeekers would progress to Finish Lethal Company on the Unity engine. A year later, he released the official trailer on August 1st this year to then release the game on October 23rd. I bring up the history of Zeekers because he's no one special. I mean he's special in his own way, but me and him are the same age and I see so many types of similar traits. As a kid, I pirated editing softwares and taught myself how to edit videos, and this kid was making Roblox maps and taught himself how to use game engines. This single dude outsold Activision and made a more popular game than a ton of big-wig AAA game studios. All because he used to make scary maps on Roblox. I have a video on my channel about online animation that documented how powerful the internet can be, and that video just keeps aging like fine wine. You could be an idiot who draws art for Twitter or Tumblr and then make a TV show. You could be an idiot who makes funny fighting videos to then make a movie for a big studio. And you could be an idiot who makes shitty Unity games or Roblox maps to then make the biggest game of the holiday. The internet allows you to do so much, and gatekeeping isn't like it was back then. You don't need a degree or connections to make a video game. The best way to make video games is to learn and make video games. To be successful takes hard work, I'm not saying it doesn't, but nothing is really holding you back. Like Zeekers, you can learn in Roblox and free programs to then make something that everybody plays. That's why I'm making this video. Zeekers is a brilliant, hopeful story of success, and 2023 has been full of broken games and soulless games and overpriced garbage like Modern Warfare 3 that's a glorified $70 DLC, but then you get a breath of fresh air like Lethal Company that reminds you that some people just like making video games. It's fun to see an underdog win, especially when it's deserved. I guess we'll never know. And with the newfound success, Zeekers could put that money in recent fame into his next projects. Lethal Company is gonna fade out like both Among Us and Phasmophobia. It's inevitable. But I believe Zeekers knows this. It's the circle of life. But for now, while it's hot and new, get your friends and try Lethal Company. I've had a blast playing it and have reconnected with friends I haven't talked to in a long time. Also support Zeekers on Patreon to fund his future games. I'm Dr. Skipper, new video on MW3 soon. Subscribe, play Lethal Company. Goodbye.