How VOID Interactive Achieved 5 Million Hours Watched for Their Shooter Game Ready or Not

VOID Interactive's debut game, Ready or Not, topped the charts, garnering an impressive 1.5 million views on Twitch within the first 24 hours of its launch. This feat was no coincidence, as the small remote team at VOID Interactive had overcome numerous challenges to execute a successful creator launch campaign, propelling their game to become one of the most watched titles globally. As of 2024, Ready or Not remains a top contender among first-person shooter games, with the developer continuing to release updates and upgrades. Behrad Sabet, VOID Interactive's marketing head, shared his insights with Lurkit about the game's stellar launch and the company's future direction. With over 12 years of marketing experience, Sabet attributes Ready or Not's success to its exceptional quality, emphasizing that no amount of marketing can compensate for a subpar product. According to Sabet, "From a commercial, marketing, and brand perspective, Ready or Not was a massive triumph. Seeing our self-published indie studio alongside AAA games from established developers and publishers is a remarkable achievement." VOID CEO Julio Rodriguez described Ready or Not as the "quintessential tactical FPS for our era," and the game was highly anticipated when it exited early access on December 13th, 2023. With ambitious goals for Ready or Not, the marketing team trusted the developers to deliver a great game, but they had only a few months to accomplish their objectives. Since the game's early access phase had already established a solid core player base, the team needed to craft a marketing strategy that would reach the mainstream audience and make headlines. To achieve this, VOID's team collaborated with Lurkit's customer success team to develop an influencer marketing campaign on par with AAA standards. Lurkit's team worked with their native technology to identify creators who fit the customer's brief and could deliver on the set objectives. A total of 250 creators accepted the terms and embargo, including prominent streamers such as auronplay, shroud, tarik, summit1g, Papaplatte, Cohhcarnage, and ironmouse. On December 13th, these creators simultaneously started playing Ready or Not, and the audience responded enthusiastically. With Lurkit as their external marketing partner, Ready or Not's launch exceeded expectations, debuting at rank three on Twitch and peaking at 55,174 concurrent players on Steam in December 2023. Sabet noted, "With Twitch, it's always intriguing because it comes down to the daily viewership you have on the platform. So, it was a massive success for us to see that we had been able to hit rank three on launch day." During the first 24 hours, the creators collectively amassed 1.5 million hours watched, and the long-tail viewership continued to build across the Christmas holiday, totaling five million hours watched by the end of 2023. Sabet emphasized that influencer marketing is the most effective way to reach a larger audience in a short time, having trusted in its power since his early days in the Twitch community. To execute his plan for an all-out launch, Sabet turned to content creators, and that's where Lurkit came in. "Having Lurkit now is like the best of both worlds," he explained. "You have this self-serving system where you set up your campaigns, recruit your own talent, and have a retention-based creator program. But you also have dedicated support at your fingertips to manage large and global campaigns, from outreach to negotiation." Lurkit's Creator Program allows marketers to manage vast numbers of creators with minimal effort, thanks to the platform's technology. In a short time, the VOID Interactive marketing team had a long list of capable creators looking to partner with them, from nano to macro streamers, with an overflowing pool of talent. Sabet shared a humorous anecdote, "I think we had 7.5K applications from creators, and three days before the release, I blocked the whole evening and brought the backlog down to 4K. And then I went to sleep and returned to my PC, and we were already back to 6.5K."