Certain gaming genres have small yet hyper-dedicated fanbases that actively promote any new content they can get their hands on. That’s certainly the case for the Life Sim genre; a genre basically filled by just a single franchise over the past 25 years – The Sims. It’s no wonder, then, that when inZOI was announced as a direct competitor in the Life Sim genre, the internet became awash with hype for the new title.
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Because inZOI is published by Krafton, a South Korean publisher known almost exclusively for PUBG, the live-streaming community warmed rapidly to this new title’s potential. And given Krafton’s proven track record in managing live service games and fostering live-streaming communities, inZOI’s launch was expected to go gangbusters upon release. Looking at how Krafton handled the launch of a new IP can give us a lot of insight into how an established publisher in the space leverages the live-streaming medium to grab our attention.
inZOI Positions Itself as The Next Gen Life Sim Title
For starters, we’ve looked at how inZOI performed when it became fully accessible to all players. In its first week of early access from the 28th of March to the 3rd of April, inZOI racked up 5M hours watched: A healthy viewership that showed the game’s concept caught the attention of live streamers. Given the sheer amount of hype for the game’s advanced character creator since it was showcased back in 2023 (and, of course, the legacy of its publisher), this level of viewership certainly met expectations. The peak viewership of 211K similarly showcased the sheer number of people interested in the game, backed up by inZOI being the #1 most wishlisted game on Steam prior to release.
It’s worth noting, however, that the game’s viewership dropped off along with its concurrent player count. While inZOI’s first full day saw just over 1M hours watched, this quickly dropped to just under 100K daily hours watched a week later, and then half that after another week. For a single-player game, this wouldn’t be too surprising, but Life Sims – or any games with creative, sandbox mechanics – are expected to have long-tail viewership generated by experimentation and worldbuilding. One of the primary criticisms of inZOI so far has been that it’s simply “too early access”: The core gameplay loop isn’t yet fully implemented, leaving players with something more akin to an interesting AI toolkit for a Life Sim rather than a playable game. That’s a massive shame: Just look at how the recent hit Simulator game Schedule I thrives on its satisfying core gameplay loop despite much lower development resources.
Going back to that first bumper week in traffic though, it’s easy to see why the game reached such heights upon release. inZOI received crucial support from influential Twitch streamers in its first week, including MissMikkaa and zackrawrr with 186K and 120K hours watched, respectively. These top streamers were also overwhelmingly Western and predominantly English-speaking, despite Krafton being a South Korean publisher. Local Chzzk streamers 서새봄냥 SEBOM and 풍월량 (Poong Wol-ryang) did also get some attention, but fell outside the top 5 with roughly 72K hours watched each. The only other Asian streamer in the top 10 was VTuber Ibrahim (イブラヒム) from Nijisanji, also being the most watched YouTube Gaming streamer. The strength of influencers in attracting viewers to new games was demonstrated by the fact that the top 10 all outperformed the game’s official Twitch channel, playinzoi, which had just under 57K hours watched.
inZOI’s Creator Studio Drives Global Hype
The figures discussed so far don’t give the whole picture of Krafton’s strategy when launching inZOI, however. Krafton made use of live-streaming integrations to support the game’s release by providing advanced access to certain features of the game to viewers of inZOI streams. More specifically, inZOI followed a staged release schedule: On March 20th, viewers who obtained keys via a special Twitch Drops event were instantly able to access inZOI’s Creator Studio (character builder) and Build Mode features. Then, on March 23rd, access to those same features was granted to all players. Finally, as we looked at above, all features were unlocked on March 28th (with yet another Twitch Drops event for the first two days where viewers could receive Twitch-themed clothing as in-game loot).
That means the truly hardcore Life Sim streamers actually turned up on March 20th to support inZOI and hold their own Twitch Drops-enabled streams. Over this initial campaign from March 20th – 22nd, 2.8M hours were watched, which was actually higher on average than the game’s full release on March 28th. There’s an important caveat here: Technically, inZOI’s official Steam channel was the most watched channel during this period by far (with 950K hours watched), but this figure is inflated by passive Steam store page viewership. Regardless, among actual streamers there was far more diversity, with Spanish, Russian, and Indonesian-speaking entering the top 5 streamers by hours watched. Worryingly though, none of these streamers returned to inZOI upon its full release, perhaps due to the aforementioned lack of fleshed-out content in its early access state.
Life Sims Are Thriving, But is inZOI The Game to Capture the Market?
inZOI was certainly a first-week success on live-streaming platforms compared to most new game releases. But gauging the success of the title among its genre proves difficult since it doesn’t really have any direct competition other than The Sims 4. To get some idea, we’ve compared inZOI to not just The Sims 4, but also two other casual Simulator games with Life Sim elements: Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. If we include these cozy games, inZOI’s success looks a little less impressive with Animal Crossing: New Horizons generating 35.9M hours watched in its first quarter compared to just 8.2M hours watched for inZOI. You might be racing to point out that inZOI was only out for 11 days in Q1 2025, but, by pure coincidence, Animal Crossing: New Horizons also released on March 20th in its first quarter (Q1 2020).
Still, there’s one other massive effect at play here: The COVID pandemic. Indeed, cozy games and Life Sims were benefited most by the pandemic, with social isolation leading people to seek out games with light-hearted tones and social-bonding mechanics. The Sims 4 and Stardew Valley are great examples of this effect, each seeing a roughly 3X jump in average quarterly viewership following the pandemic – that’s including quarters after lockdown rules were lifted! The reason we bring this up is to point out that Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ viewership was no doubt inflated by the pandemic, but inZOI also should be poised to capitalize on the modern viewer’s interest in the genre.
Still, The Sims 4 is the comparison with the most weight in this discussion. Over the past 8 years, The Sims 4’s highest monthly viewership was 3.9M hours watched compared to the aforementioned figure of 8.2M for inZOI. But if EA were to release “The Sims 5”, there’s no doubt that game would also see a monumental surge in viewership. If anything, the fact that The Sims 4 has still been able to pull in close to the same amount of viewership as inZOI despite its age proves that its hardcore fans are still waiting for the next big announcement.
So if inZOI wants to convert that fanbase to its side, what can it offer? Many of the game’s functions are similar to The Sims (like the Build Mode), but the game goes a step further by adding AI and AR-style functionalities. For example, players can generate AI-created textures for their clothes and walls, and they can project real-life videos onto billboards around the city. The forward-thinking innovation of these features proves that Krafton is committed to making a next-gen Life Sim that will age well in the coming years. As far as live streaming is concerned, these tools also offer creative opportunities for fully customizable and memeable worlds that can be shared between communities.
Some pundits are already sounding alarm bells over inZOI’s rapidly dropping player counts. While it is true that games can miss their chance to capture people’s interest if they don’t immediately impress upon first release, it’s worth remembering that inZOI is only in early access. No doubt Krafton wants to use the early access period to get player feedback, experiment with more next-gen creation mechanics, and then gear up for a splashy full release some time in the next few years. Unless EA releases a new The Sims game, Krafton has been given a clear runway to take its time and experiment without losing potential players. Finding dedicated streamers who will stay tuned for every new announcement will be key to keeping inZOI at the front of people’s minds in the coming years.
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