AppMagic: Friendslop Games in 2025 and their Retention
Fast fun, and fast churn - this is friendslop in 2025.
AppMagic takes a broad look at the friendslop market and the trend as a whole. I won’t be covering everything here, just the retention section, which I found interesting.
State of the Friendslop Market
In 2025, 4 of the 10 best-selling games on Steam by copies sold were friendslop titles: R.E.P.O. (18.5 million copies), Peak (15.4 million), Schedule I (9.1 million), and RV There Yet? (5.7 million).
AppMagic notes that these games typically cost between $5 and $20. But nobody plays them solo, so the effective spend at least doubles.
❗️AppMagic notes that the low price point makes players more forgiving when it comes to leaving reviews. If the game is fun, that’s often enough.
Retention in Friendslop Games
On average, D30 Retention for friendslop titles sits around 3%. That’s a low number by Steam standards. Some titles run higher (R.E.P.O.), some considerably lower (RV There Yet?).
Ball x Pit, for example, comes in at 4.7% D30, about 1.5x the average. Different genres, but more comparisons are coming.
Dead by Daylight’s D30 is several times higher at 11.3%, and even Phasmophobia, which AppMagic describes as a forerunner to the friendslop genre, sits at 5.3%.
Content Warning, one of the earliest friendslop titles (released April 2024), lands right at that 3% mark.
❗️The low retention is directly tied to why people love these games in the first place. There’s no deep progression or meta systems, which also simplifies development. Teams focus on core gameplay; players have a great time for a couple of weeks, and then move on to the next thing.