Viral Japanese hide-and-seek party game Meccha Chameleon has sold over 3 million copies just two days after it passed the 2 million mark on June 15, and exactly one week since it launched on Steam. Many are in awe of the indie game’s success, especially considering the fact that no money was spent on advertising, as recently confirmed by co-creator HAGANEIRO.
Rumors regarding the cause of Meccha Chameleon’s success have been spreading online. Some conspiracy theories suggested that co-creators LEMORION and HAGANEIRO may have paid streamers to spread the word of their game before release. Others implied the involvement of a wealthy backer or other developers, citing the costs needed to run servers that can support 209 thousand players (Meccha Chameleon’s highest concurrent player count at the time of writing).
However, HAGANEIRO was quick to dismiss these rumors, disclosing that Meccha Chameleon uses Epic Online Services (a free set of multiplayer networking tools provided by Epic Games) for its matching processes, which explains how the two-member indie team is handling the server side of operations. In addition, they state that not a single yen has gone into advertising. This suggests the creators benefited from word-of-mouth and an inherently “fun-to-stream” game design, as previously theorized by Mixi and Sega game producer Taira Nakamura. It might also be worth nothing that Meccha Chameleon didn’t quite “crop up out of nowhere” as many people think it did. The game had steadily accumulated over 500,000 Steam Wislishts leading up to its release day, which likely drove early sales momentum.
Meccha Chameleon is available for Windows (Steam).
