[GamePea Exclusive] When a small Swedish studio that only makes co-op games changes the entire industry landscape with three titles, you pay attention. On April 8, 2026, Hazelight Studio posted a short video on Twitter with the caption: "50 million copies sold!!!" The studio then broke down the numbers: A Way Out (2018) has sold 13 million copies since release; It Takes Two (2021) has reached an astonishing 30 million copies; and Split Fiction, released in March 2025, has already sold 7 million copies in just over a year.
Three games, 12 years, a combined 50 million copiesâthis achievement may well cement the legacy of the studio founded in 2014 in the annals of global gaming. The 50 million figure carries extra weight for co-op games. Every copy sold represents at least two real players. This doesn't even account for those using the Friend Pass to play free, those crashing on a friend's couch, or the couples and families queuing at arcades in China. Rough estimates suggest the number of players touched by Hazelight's games could be in the hundreds of millions.
What's particularly striking is the upward trajectory. A Way Out took eight years to reach 13 million copies, while Split Fiction sold 7 million in its first year. At this pace, GamePea believes Split Fiction will inevitably surpass 10 million copies, making Hazelight one of those rare studios where every single title sells over 10 million units.
To understand what this means, consider FromSoftware. The Japanese studio behind Dark Souls and Elden Ring built the entire "Soulslike" genre, where each new release is an event, a blockbuster, a narrative-shifter. Hazelight's path is different, but its achievements are no less impressive. What they share is a refusal to rely on sequels, IP inertia, or marketing blitzes. Instead, they depend on consistent creative vision and near-obsessive quality control, making every game the ceiling of its genre.
Hazelight's success isn't an isolated case. In GamePea's view, it's a wave in the broader rise of the Swedish game industryâperhaps the most dazzling one. While the North American AAA industry across the Atlantic is mired in crisis, Bloomberg game journalist Jason Schreier recently cited figures that shocked the industry: "I hear AAA development costs in North America are typically $300 million or more, sometimes far exceeding thatâand I think that helps explain the state of the industry." He calculated that at a $70 price point, after a 30% platform cut, net revenue per copy is about $49. That means just to recoup $300 million in development costs, a game needs to sell over 6 million copiesâand that's before marketing. The result? Publishers increasingly rely on established IPs, avoid innovation, and make games that are more cautious, more expensive, and less sustainable. The failures of Starfield and Dragon Age: The Veilguard are just the latest symptoms of this systemic problem.
Sweden takes a different path. DICE, Mojang, Paradox, Hazelightâthis Nordic nation of under 11 million people keeps producing global hits while staying true to itself. The latest example is Embark Studios, founded by former DICE producer Patrick SĂśderlund. Its multiplayer shooter Arc Raiders, released in October 2025, sold over 4 million copies in two weeks and surpassed 14 million by February 2026, becoming the largest global release for its parent company Nexon.
Half of Co-Op Games: The Chinese Factor
But beyond Sweden's talent pool, there's a dimension Western media has long overlooked but is crucial to understanding Hazelight's success: Chinese players. In early 2025, Hazelight founder Josef Fares revealed a staggering figure: It Takes Two had sold over 23 million copies, with half of those purchases coming from China. GamePea remembers this was a Swedish game that initially had no special localization or massive marketing for the Chinese market. Yet it grew to the point where sales in China equaled the rest of the world combinedâa counterintuitive statistic.
Steam data for Split Fiction amplifies this phenomenon. According to third-party statistics, out of approximately 117,779 Steam reviews, Simplified Chinese reviews top the list at 56,651 (48.1%), far ahead of English at 36,724 (31.2%). What's more remarkable is the quality of these reviews. Anyone familiar with Steam knows that the Simplified Chinese review section is often a "strict parent" zone, where many games have significantly lower positive review rates than in other languages. But Split Fiction is an exception, maintaining a 98% positive rating in Simplified Chinese.
This affection extends even to games without Chinese support. A Way Out, released eight years ago and still lacking official Chinese localization, has 16.2% of its Steam reviews from Simplified Chinese players, second only to English (about 33%) and ranking second globally.
Offline, this trend is even more visible in China. Walk into shopping malls in first- and second-tier cities, and you'll find more and more console arcades. It Takes Two and Split Fiction are almost always the flagship titles. Tired couples sit down to solve puzzles together; families challenge levels while waiting for a table. This has become a new form of social entertainment, distinct from traditional gaming culture. From GamePea's observations, these games have quietly shifted categories: from "games" to "date activities," from "must-haves for gamers" to "essentials for couples." After all, one of Hazelight's strengths is that it doesn't require you to be a gamer or even know the controls (unlike Overcooked). It only requires someone willing to sit down with you.
Two Tracks, One Era
Globally, Hazelight's success isn't a lone peak. It stands at the apex of a genre explosion. Co-op games are experiencing an unprecedented golden age. Phasmophobia has players trembling while hunting ghosts in abandoned buildings; Lethal Company captivated global streamers with its minimalist art and immersive dread; and Peak, a climbing game released in 2025, became a global phenomenon. According to Unity's 2026 Unity Game Development Report, studios are becoming pragmatic about multiplayer strategies, focusing on smaller, more intimate experiences: 55% of surveyed developers said their games typically support two to nine players.
But this co-op wave has split into two distinct forms domestically and internationally. In Western markets, take Peak, developed by Aggro Crab and Landfall Games. Released on Steam on June 16, 2025, it supports up to four players climbing a semi-procedurally generated mountain. It sold 100,000 copies on day one, hit 1 million in its first week, 5 million in its first month, and eventually over 10 million. The developers revealed the entire budget was under $200,000, with core gameplay created by seven developers in a month at a guesthouse in Seoul, South Korea.
When the game blew up, player demands for updates turned into complaints and even accusations of laziness. Landfall Games responded on Twitter: "Neither we nor Aggro Crab are live-service studiosâany updates are a bonus, not an entitlement." They added that the entire studio has about 10 employees, and last year was their busiest ever, with the team suffering severe overwork and burnout after Peak's success. This statement captures the spirit of the overseas indie co-op ecosystem: the buy-to-play model is an equal contract between creator and player. You pay for a complete experience. If there are updates, they're generosity, not obligation.
In China, however, co-op games have taken a completely different path, following a different logic. Take NetEase's Eggy Party, which launched in May 2022 and rapidly built a massive user base with party gameplay and continuous content updates. Then there's the dark horse that shook the industry in 2025: Giant Interactive's Supernatural Operations Group. Launched on January 23, 2025, it started quietly but exploded later. In July 2025, concurrent online players exceeded 1 million, and DAU was estimated at over 4 million. By early 2026, the studio announced DAU had officially surpassed 10 million. In China, the 10-million DAU club has long been the exclusive domain of Tencent and NetEase, with few newcomers breaking in.
Two games, two paths, but both point to the same thing: Chinese players' passion for co-op experiences is far larger than any external estimate. In GamePea's view, neither path is inherently superior. The real difference lies in the underlying ecosystem, not the level of enthusiasm. Asking the 10-person team behind Peak to maintain a live-service game is neither feasible nor fair. Asking Tencent or NetEase to set aside commercial considerations and make a pure buy-to-play title is neither realistic nor necessary. These aren't opposites; they're parallel tracks. Overseas indie teams create explosive hits with low costs and precise gameplay, leaving lasting embers after the fire. Chinese giants keep hundreds of millions of players within a single product ecosystem through continuous content iteration and refined operations. Each track has its soil, its users, and its irreplicable qualities. Together, they form the unprecedented prosperity of the co-op game genre today.
Conclusion
In the same post announcing the 50 million sales milestone, Hazelight added a meaningful line: "Your love and support keep us moving forward. We can't wait to show you our fourth game." Josef Fares previously revealed that development on the new title began last year. What kind of game will it be? No details yet. But if the trajectory of the first three games tells us anything, the answer is clear: still co-op, stillćč´ (pursuing perfection), still that experience that makes two people sit down on the same couch and not want to get up. As Josef Fares said around the time It Takes Two won the BAFTA award in 2022: "We never look at what the market needs, what the industry needs, or what players want. We just make games out of love and passion." Fifty million copies is the community's best response to that love.
Tags: Hazelight, It Takes Two