It’s way beyond safe to say that Palworld is a gargantuan hit despite basically coming out of nowhere. It could very well be the biggest hit of its kind, but it’s far from the only one. Surprise hits actually aren’t all that uncommon, with several major ones releasing within just the past few years alone. Not all of them went onto lasting success, but their rise was a sight to see all the same. Just which games exploded out of nowhere to seize gaming’s attention? Here are some of the more prominent (possibly notorious) specimens.
1Baldur’s Gate 3
It was probably something of a given that Baldur’s Gate 3 was going to be popular among Dungeons and Dragons fans and those who enjoyed the Divinity series, but nobody could have predicted just how much of a phenomenon it would become. When it launched for PC in August 2023, the game had already been available in early access for almost three years, and it sold quite well during that time too,with about 2.5 million copies sold.
The early indicators were there, but perhaps those who were aware of Baldur’s Gate 3 were really only expecting it to be popular within the hardcore RPG audience. That’s what happened with Divinity: Original Sin II, after all, andthatgame had actually gotten a decent amount of attention during its pre- and post-release periods too. Really, unless an RPG falls within the established mainstream series like Final Fantasy, Witcher or Persona, it isn’t exactly reasonable to expect it to achieve mainstream-level success.
Yet, after Baldur’s Gate 3’s launch on PC and especially after its PlayStation 5 release in early September, it immediately became a massive success. YouTube was flooded with videos covering just about every aspect of the game. Fans flocked to watch it streamed on Twitch, and it became a hotly debated topic within gaming media for a variety of reasons, both positive and negative.Conservative estimates put copies sold at around 6 million,butsome sources saythat they could be as high as 27 million. That’s an absolute explosion in popularity compared to Larian Studios' last game, and it’s basically catapulted the developer to the top of the RPG space.
While this kind of massive popularity can have a lot to do with getting picked up by the right people at the right time, it should be remembered that those people likely wouldn’t have even bothered with it if Baldur’s Gate 3 wasn’t already a fantastic RPG. It had (and still has) the gameplay, story and characters needed to withstand the attention of the masses and will likely go down as a true classic.
Review: Baldur’s Gate III
Baldur’s Gate III is one of those rare games that’s nearly flawless in its execution and should be experienced by every RPG fan.
2Goat Simulator
Goat Simulator is perhaps the most curious case of a popular success listed here. You see, Goat Simulator was originally not going to be a game at all. It started life as a silly alpha prototype that its lead developer, Armin Ibrisagic, and other members of Coffee Stain Studios made to learn and play around with Unreal Engine 3. The prototype was finished in January 2014 and made as a kind of parody of all the oddly-popular simulation games that were circulating at the time. As for why it starred a goat, it was because Ibrisagic had jokingly insisted that goats could get the same kind of viral attention as cats.
It was still just an internal joke, though, and it might have stayed that way too had Coffee Stain not decided to upload footage of their goofy goat game to YouTube. Against all expectations, the video quickly gained a ton of attention, racking up over a million views in just a couple of days. Goat Simulator’s utter quirkiness and the chaos caused by its many physics glitches had (accidentally) charmed the entire gaming world practically overnight, and Coffee Stain suddenly found itself getting tons of requests from fans asking for a full release. So, Coffee Stain obliged, but not in the typical fashion.
The studio limited itself to just four weeks of development time after deciding to go ahead with a full release, giving itself just enough time to get the game into a playable state and making sure that all the glitches fans had enjoyed in the alpha footage were still present. Despite the roughness, intentional though it was, the game was received warmly by higher-ups at Valve, gaining Steam support with little to no trouble. Goat Simulator went on to release on June 18, 2025, taking advantage of April Fool’s Day to have just a little more fun with the craziness of it all.
The result: instant and smashing success. Coffee Stain Studios made all of its money back the same day,sold almost a million copies of the game by August 2014and over 2.5 million copies by January 2015. And, of course, it was all over the internet during that time. Truly, Goat Simulator is one of the most successful jokes ever crafted.
Goat Simulator Gets Beautifully Dramatic Launch Trailer
3Rocket League
Rocket League is a perfect example of what the near-flawless execution of a simple concept can achieve. It wasn’t an instant phenomenon on the same level as Baldur’s Gate 3 and Palworld, but it did nonetheless take off quickly once it was released on June 11, 2025. By July 11,the game was already hosting over 120,000 concurrent players.By August, the game had already sold over a million copies on Steam alone. By the end of 2015, Rocket League had been downloaded over eight million times and grossed over $50 million for developer Psyonix Games, and it just kept going from there. Rocket League went from relative unknown to smash success in an incredibly short time, surprising everyone, its developers included.
Rocket League was not, in fact, Psyonix’s first attempt at a car-themed sports game. It wasn’t even its first crack at making a car soccer game. That distinction goes to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars (aka “Battle-Cars”), a game very much like Rocket League that Psyonix released back in October 2008. It operated in five-minute rounds, tasked players with knocking a giant ball into a goal while others tried to stop them, and it allowed the cars to perform acrobatic stunts and double jumps. In other words, Battle-Cars was the studio’s initial vision for this sort of game. It only managed moderate success though, which sent Psyonix back to the drawing board for a time.
From Battle-Cars, Psyonix, learned that its formula needed a few key tweaks. One was a frame-rate upgrade from 30-60, as the game’s speed sort of demanded it. Another was to make the game both a little slower and the cars a bit easier to control. The developer also deemed it necessary to ensure that Rocket League would have both a lower skill floor and skill ceiling than its predecessor, thus making it so players of varying skill levels could realistically enjoy competing against each other. And…it worked. Unlike Battle-Cars, everyone knows about Rocket League these days and the game still enjoys a healthy audience almost ten years after its initial release.
Epic Games Acquires Rocket League Developer
Unlike the games above, Among Uswasn’ta smash success the instant it saw a full release. In fact, it took about two years from its release in 2018 for most gamers to become aware of it. It was enough time for developer InnerSloth to see the game as having run its course and to start preparations for a sequel.The company even announced said sequel just before the game’s explosion in popularity;that’s how close Among Us came to dying in virtual obscurity. Of course, it didn’t suffer that fate, instead winding up as one of the most popular games of the past five years. It’s an absolutely incredible turn-around, and what’s even more amazing is that it was almost entirely organic.
As most may know, the Among Us' rise and eventual explosion came in 2020, when most of us were locked inside our houses and desperate for social interaction. As so many discovered at the time, it was a perfect vehicle for hanging out since it relied so much on conversation and was enhanced by so many aspects of in-person interaction. These qualities and the very lonely circumstances so many were dealing with certainly primed Among Us for success, but that success would still depend on people actually knowing about the game. Just being a fun and enjoyable game is, unfortunately, simply not enough to get the word out. No, it also requires one of two things: massive advertising or a viral trend.
Among Us' trend actually started outside the U.S., primarily in South Korea, Brazil and Mexico. Content creators and streamers popularized the game quickly in those countries in the early months of 2020, and the trend eventually crossed over into the States that summer, with big streamers such as xQc, PewDiePie and Ninja picking up the game and introducing it to their massive, cabin fever-suffering audiences. From that point on, Among Us was everywhere; it was continually picking up steam for almost the entire latter half of 2020 and even now remains relevant as a meme. It’s not THE game to be playing anymore, but it still enjoys a strong core audience and will likely endure for a good while yet.
Among Us Emerges as PlayStation Store’s Best-Selling Game of December
Only Up is perhaps the most curious case on this list. When it released in June 2023, the game almost instantly became a Twitch darling, with streamers big and small clamoring to take on the challenge and show both the elation and frustration it evoked. It also became a bit of a trend to record oneself playing the game and the nearly inevitable rage quit that followed. If things had proceeded normally from there, Only Up would have gone down as a massive success and would likely still have a following right now. Circumstances did not follow the typical course, though.
It was quickly discovered that Only Up incorporated a number of copyrighted assets and sound effects. These included sounds from Final Fantasy VII and Minecraft, as well as a 3D character model that was only available under a non-commercial license.Only Up was thus removed from Steam on June 30,cleaned up by developer SCKR Games and relaunched on July 1. The quick turn around wasn’t enough to save the game though, and on September 7, SCKR Games permanently removed it from Steam. Only Up has since been playable on its own website, but that hasn’t seemed to matter. Its bubble had burst, and it was then largely forgotten. It’s unfortunate, but popularity truly does not always guarantee success.
Popularity and awareness are odd things, especially when it comes to games. Some games become massive phenomenons overnight for almost no apparent reason, while others can linger for years before anyone takes notice. Sometimes developer pedigree and good advertising translate into massive success, and other times it doesn’t. A game can even achieve that much-coveted mainstream status and still ultimately fail. Such are the whims of gamers and the gaming market, eh?
