Eight people. Five hundred thousand copies sold in the first weekend. A 97% positive rating across nearly 18,000 reviews. And the number six spot on Steam’s Top Sellers chart, sitting comfortably alongside titles from studios a hundred times its size.

Far Far West, the co-op shooter from indie studio Evil Raptor, isn’t a viral meme game riding a TikTok wave. It’s not a major publisher’s tentpole with an eight-figure marketing budget. It’s a $19.99 action game about robot cowboys shooting supernatural monsters in a stylized Wild West — and it’s currently eating the PC gaming space alive.

Numbers That Don’t Lie

Evil Raptor launched Far Far West into Early Access on April 28. Within 24 hours, the game moved 100,000 copies, according to parent company Enad Global 7. By the end of the first weekend, that number crossed 500,000 units. Peak concurrent players hit 47,000 during those early days. As of mid-May, the game still holds 17,932 concurrent players and a 97% positive rating from 17,753 reviews — Steam’s coveted “Overwhelmingly Positive” designation.

That’s not just a strong indie launch. That’s a launch that outperforms most mid-tier studio releases, full stop.

Friends, Guns, and No Microtransactions

Start with the basics: the gunplay works. Player reviews consistently praise how weapons feel, and the game’s elemental combo system — layering different damage types on enemies — adds a tactical dimension to what could have been a brainless shooter.

But the real engine is word of mouth. “Didn’t pick it up until it was recommended by some friends, and have since had a great time,” writes one player with 14.6 hours logged. That sentiment repeats across the review section. Far Far West is a co-op game that actually plays better with friends, and its player base has become an unpaid sales force.

Then there’s the pricing model. In an era where $70 base games ship with battle passes and cosmetic shops, Evil Raptor founder Nicolas Meyssonnier is keeping it simple: buy the game once, unlock everything by playing.

“The economy of the game is based on how I would like a game to be,” Meyssonnier told MSN. “So basically, I just buy the game once, and everything else can be unlocked by playing without spending any money. So yeah, no, we are not planning for microtransactions.”

He added: “…everyone is screaming for that…please stop doing microtransactions. Please, let us unlock stuff by playing, and okay, yeah, that’s easy to do. We can do that. It’s even easier because it means less code, and everyone is happy. So I don’t know why more games don’t do that.”

Hard to argue with 97%.

An Extraction Shooter by Accident

Far Far West’s genre identity is slippery. After completing a mission and defeating a boss, players race across the map to a train station, call a train, and hold out against endless enemy waves until extraction arrives. Classic extraction loop. But Meyssonnier says the team didn’t set out to make an extraction shooter.

“We just wanted to make a game, and we didn’t set out to be part of the extraction genre,” he explained. “At some point in the game’s development cycle, you would just go from mission to mission. So there would be no extractions. Then we decided, why not try it? We created a train that would take you back to the lobby at the end of each mission. And then it turned into an extraction shooter. But that was not what we meant to do, just how it ended up. So yeah, that’s not really an extraction shooter, but it is at the same time.”

The extraction mechanic has drawn mixed reactions. Hey Poor Player’s early-access review praised the mission variety and weapon balance but called the extraction sequences’ endless enemy hordes “perhaps the least interesting thing this does,” noting that fighting waves of generic foes doesn’t add much tension. Horse-riding controls during these sequences also drew criticism.

But the players came anyway, and they’re staying. Nearly 18,000 concurrent players three weeks after launch is not the profile of a game people are bouncing off of.

The Road Ahead

Evil Raptor is an eight-person studio operating under Enad Global 7, the Stockholm-based gaming group that also owns Daybreak Games and Piranha Games. The studio’s previous titles — Pumpkin Jack and Akimbot — were traditional single-player action-adventure games. Far Far West is their first swing at an online-centric co-op experience, and the pivot has paid off.

Meyssonnier has ambitious plans: new enemy factions including UFO-piloting aliens, additional maps, more quests, and narrative content inspired by Sea of Thieves’ evolving storytelling. The team is leaning on community feedback, with Discord links embedded in the game’s lobby and active monitoring of Steam forums.

The game had accumulated over 700,000 wishlists before launch, fueled by closed and open beta phases and a strong showing at February’s Steam Next Fest. That pre-launch momentum — combined with a clean pricing model, solid co-op fundamentals, and word-of-mouth that money can’t buy — has turned a modest indie project into one of Steam’s biggest stories of 2026.

Not bad for eight people.

Sources