Graveyard Keeper's mammoth success proves that giving games away for free on Steam works

Everybody loves free things - especially free PC games. To celebrate the reveal of Graveyard Keeper 2, publisher tinyBuild made the first game free for an entire weekend, leading to a surge of fresh faces and a new, all-time player peak. But is there any real monetary advantage to giving your game away for free? The answer, according to tinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik, is yes.

On Sunday, April 12, Graveyard Keeper hit a new peak of 46,305 concurrent players, dwarfing its 17k launch count. It's seen spikes at around 9k and 7k post-launch, but nothing quite like this. As a result, it currently sits at 47 on Steam's most played chart, ranking above Terraria, Cyberpunk 2077, and Path of Exile. On April 12, Nichiporchik states that it climbed to number 39 - not bad at all.

"Many are asking if it's worth it, to give away a game like this for free," he writes on X. "Outside of the currently 400k wishlists for the sequel, we've also made almost $250k from selling DLCs for the original. This is just on Steam. Haven't gotten the console numbers yet. So it makes sense when you have a lot of DLC."

As of today, Nichiporchik confirms that the number has risen to 450k wishlists, making Graveyard Keeper 2 Steam's most wishlisted games.

The aforementioned DLCs, Stranger Sins, Game of Crone, and Better Save Soul (inspired by Stranger Things, Game of Thrones, and Better Call Saul respectively) all retail for $9.99 / £8.50 each. At the moment, however, they're just $1.99 / £1.70 as part of the ongoing celebration. Safe to say tinyBuild has sold a lot of DLCs (125k, to be exactish) in the past few days.

The publisher's strategy has been clever, though. It's easy to pick up a $2 DLC - or three - when you've already got a $20 game for nothing (Graveyard Keeper normally retails for $19.99 / £16.75). It's an easy base game to DLC pipeline that gives players the full experience for the price of a Starbucks (or, at this point, half a Starbucks).

I do love a success story - especially an indie game success story. We've seen a slew of them in recent years: Animal Well, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hollow Knight Silksong, and the newly emerging 'games to play with your pals' genre. It's an exciting time in the indie sphere, and if more developers choose to give their games away Graveyard Keeper-style, we may finally see some truly stellar titles finally get the attention they deserve.