The official Twitter account for Fall Guys

">announced on July 6th, 2022, that with just 2 weeks on the free-to-play market, the game had reached a whopping 50 million total players.

Fall Guys went free-to-play on June 20th, 2022, but on top of that, it also became available for the first time on the Nintendo Switch and Xbox consoles. It's clear the decision to lower the game's barrier of entry, in both price and platform, has done wonders for it so far.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, a platforming Battle Royale, was originally released on August 4th, 2020, only available on PlayStation 4 and PC, and with a $20 price tag. It was a bit more accessible on the PS4, given it was released as one of the monthly games included with PS Plus, and could be claimed at no additional cost for the month of August. Despite its relatively limited ease of access, the game did have a massive boom in its first few weeks and established a sizeable player base, however, it was never quite able to reach that initial high again, until now.

The developer, Mediatonic, was later acquired by Epic Games in 2021, followed by an announcement in May 2022, that the game would be coming to all platforms, completely free. This was a reasonable decision as many live-service multiplayer games tend to find better success with the free-to-play strategy because the non-existent barrier of entry results in players having an easier time convincing their friends to play with them.

It's worked out great for Fall Guys so far, however, going free-to-play often gives games a higher initial boom, as any slightly curious player can try the game out, and then the numbers dwindle with time. It's yet to be seen whether Fall Guys can carry this momentum forward, and establish a consistent player base that can continually fund the game via micro-transactions. The sheer number at 50 million does bode well for them though.

This move wasn't without controversy, however. Given that Epic Games became the title's publisher, Fall Guys turned into an Epic Games Store exclusive, and was delisted from Steam (Players that owned the game would continue to be able to play it). Steam users weren't pleased with the decision, but that hasn't done much to hamper the game's numbers.

Adding the game on the very successful Switch console was likely also a big boon to the total player count. Nintendo of America also celebrated the accomplishment with a Tweet saying "Thanks to all the beans who have already stumbled their way into the Blunderdome and downloaded #FallGuys on Nintendo Switch!".