In October, Swedish developer Hazelight Studios announced that its cooperative game It takes two It had sold 20 million copies. It takes two is no minor release: It was backed by publisher Electronic Arts' EA Originals label and won Game of the Year at the Game Awards 2021. But the sales tally still surprised many who read about it.
It takes two is a cooperative platform game in which a married couple planning a divorce are magically trapped in a pair of dolls by their daughter's tears and must work together to overcome a series of obstacles. It's a small game that had good reviews upon release, but quickly disappeared from mainstream gaming outlets. Yet here it is posting sales figures that would be the envy of almost any AAA blockbuster; 20 million are just shy of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomsales count, for example, and would probably put It takes two somewhere outside the list of top 50 best-selling games of all time.
It is also interesting that It takes two reached this sales milestone more than three and a half years after its launch. In fact, digging a little deeper into Hazelight's public announcements about the game's sales tells an even more remarkable story.
He hasn't slowed down. In fact, it has accelerated slightly. Its average sales rate in the seven months after its release was around 430,000 copies per month. In the seven months to October 2024, it sold approximately 570,000 copies on average each month.
This is an incredibly unusual sales pattern, usually reserved for more perennial successes, such as minecraft. What went well?
“First of all, the game turned out very well, we are very proud of it, and the overall reception to its quality has been remarkable,” Hazelight COO Oskar Wolontis told Polygon via email. He went on to make the usual qualitative claims about the game's “vibrant and hugely varied adventure,” its “gripping story,” its “unique concept,” etc. But it did reveal some interesting data.
First of all, It takes two is achieving these sales figures without any marketing support to speak of. The initial marketing budget was “low,” Wolontis said, and “there has been no significant marketing spend during It takes two for quite some time.” It also noted that the reported sales figures do not include downloads from subscription services such as Game Pass and EA Play.
Secondly, the victory at the Game Awards definitely helped, and not just in the United States: it had a global effect. “It had an impact, we saw a substantial increase in sales in all markets,” Wolonits said. He also noted that the GOTY victory led many streamers and influencers to choose It takes two up, which further increased its reach.
Third: “It has found a large audience in both Western and Asian markets,” Wolonits said. I was probably talking It takes tworeported overwhelming success in China, where it is not officially licensed for sale (but, like many games outside of China, that is not a major impediment to success). Director Josef Fares claimed in a December 2021 podcast that “almost half” of the game's audience was in China and it won Game of the Year at the Bilibili Game Awards based there. In a 2022 article, GamesIndustry.biz theorized that the game's accessible cooperative gameplay, uncontroversial style, and divorce theme could have helped it succeed in a country where multigenerational households are common and divorce rates are skyrocketing. .
Finally: it's the cooperative, stupid. Wolontis noted that Hazelight's brand of forced cooperative adventures (split-screen games designed for two players, no less) satisfy a broad appetite, but remain almost unique, guaranteeing a level of word-of-mouth success. “There are a lot of gamers in the world who enjoy cooperative games, and there are a lot of games with cooperative gameplay. But the type of cooperative game that It takes two offers (and an exit also), it is very rare or even non-existent outside of those games,” he said. “We saw from the beginning that It takes two has very impressive growth through word of mouth (which has also spread a little to an exit), and we attribute its quality and uniqueness to that.”
There you have it: if you want to sell 20 million copies of your game, identify something that a large number of players want but that no one else is doing, preferably with a multiplayer component for greater virality. Also, make sure it is acceptable worldwide and can penetrate any market. That's not easy at all. But surprisingly, it's pretty simple.