Among Us explained before you start

Among Us is eight years old and still changing. On Tuesday 29 September Innersloth released version 19.0.0 with a new role, the Influencer, which lets a dead Crewmate send pictures to a living one. On Thursday it declared October "Impostor Month". And on Steam the game is 40% off, $2.99 instead of $4.99, until 8 October. This page is for someone who has heard the name for years and is about to join a first lobby: what the game is, what each platform charges, what has been added since 2018, and the chat rules a parent may want settled first.

What it is

Innersloth LLC, which describes itself as a Washington limited liability company, is the only company named on any storefront we read, as developer, publisher or both. Steam's one-line summary is accurate: "An online and local party game of teamwork and betrayal for 4-15 players".

One or more players are secretly Impostors; everyone else is a Crewmate. Crewmates win by finishing their tasks around the ship or by voting out every Impostor. Impostors kill, and in the store's own list they "Pretend to run tasks to blend in with the crewmates", "Sneak through the vents to quickly move about the ship" and "Use sabotages to cause chaos and divide the crew". Reporting a body or calling an emergency meeting starts a discussion, and the discussion ends in a vote on whom to eject.

There are two modes. Classic is the game described above. Hide n Seek, added in December 2022, is a chase: in the developer's words, Crewmates "complete tasks to run down the timer and survive until the time is up", while the Impostor hunts them and a danger meter fills as it gets closer.

The game runs on phones, computers and consoles, and Steam's page promises "Cross-platform play between PC, console, Android, and iOS".

Where it came from

The press kit tells the origin plainly. The idea was cofounder Marcus Bromander's, based on "a combination of a Mafia-like game he played as a kid and the movie 'The Thing'". The game was "Originally released for mobile in 2018, local mode only", it was "made by only 3 people at the time", and the kit dates it June 15, 2018. A PC version followed on Steam on 16 November 2018, at a price the developer had posted eight days earlier: "$5 for PC versions (Steam, itch.io and Kartridge). Mobile versions will remain free-to-play with ads." That split still holds.

By the kit's account the team considered the game complete in January 2020, until it "gained worldwide popularity in the summer of 2020". In August 2020 Innersloth confirmed a sequel, because the original "really was not created to be this big". A month later it reversed: "We have decided to cancel Among Us 2 and instead put all our focus into improving Among Us 1." Everything in the tables below from 2021 onward came after that decision.

The developer announced the console date in November 2021: "Among Us for Xbox and PlayStation will launch on December 14". No source we read gives separate dates by region; the console dates are the US storefronts'. PEGI's record for the boxed Crewmate Edition, from Maximum Entertainment Ireland, lists 2 November 2021 on six platforms, six weeks before the digital PlayStation and Xbox releases. We could not tell whether that is a shelf date or the date of the rating, so the table leaves it out.

What it costs today

The Steam sale saves $2.00 in the US, £1.60 in the UK and 1,80€ in Germany, and the US and UK store pages both give 8 October as its last day. None of the console stores we read had a discount. Buying on itch.io also gets you the Steam version; the page says "Your purchase comes with a Steam key."

Money spent inside the game buys only looks. When Innersloth introduced Cosmicubes in November 2021 it said "All cosmetics are purely visual and do not have any effect on gameplay or gameplay options." Prices come in two currencies, Beans and Stars, and Stars are the ones bought with money; a 2022 Steam note begins "When you purchase Stars in-game". This month's limited items are a Trick Cosmicube for 70 Stars, a Treat Cosmicube for 2,600 Beans and a 2019 Halloween hat bundle for 2,000 Beans, all gone at the end of October.

Eight years of additions

The developer's Steam announcements date each new map, mode and lobby size since 2018:

Steam's store description has not caught up. It still lists "4 different maps to play in: The Skeld, MIRA HQ, Polus, and the Airship", nearly three years after The Fungle arrived; the Impostor Month post decorates every map "From The Skeld to The Fungle".

The roles came in five waves. Before November 2021 a player was simply a Crewmate or an Impostor.

That is eleven. Innersloth counted seven after the 2024 wave ("bringing the total number of roles up to 7"), so the Influencer is the eleventh by its own count, and the first new ghost role since the Guardian Angel. Every role is optional: the host can "Add or remove whatever you like, change the probability", and since 2024 a preset offers "Core Settings - for those looking for a classic Among Us feel with no extra roles".

Before your first game

Update first. Innersloth retires old versions. On 22 June 2026 it stopped supporting every 2024 build, with a simple test: "If you see 'v2024' on the bottom left of the main menu, you will be affected." The Influencer needs 19.0.0.

Pick a lobby that suits a beginner. The matchmaking overhaul of March 2025 added a Filters screen. Its options include Classic or Hide n Seek, the map, the number of Impostors, whether roles are on, and tags for Beginner, Intermediate and Expert. Since August a Match Info Guide shows "the players, roles, and settings chosen for the game", so you can check which roles are in play.

Play with people you can talk to. Steam's description says it directly: "Originally created as a party game, we recommend playing with friends at a LAN party or online using voice chat."

Buy the right game. Steam also sells Among Us 3D and Among Us 3D: VR, separate games made with Schell Games and listed at $9.99 each (both $5.99 today). They are not this game.

Chat, accounts and age labels

Text chat comes in two kinds. When Innersloth introduced accounts in March 2021, it said a player must create an account to use free chat, and that without one, chat is limited to Quick Chat, which since July 2023 builds messages from set phrases. A player under the minimum age of digital consent in their country ("for most countries 13 is the minimum age", the post says) needs a parent or guardian's permission to use free chat or to change their display name. Without an account, Guest Mode locks a player to Quick Chat and a randomly generated name.

The arrangement has not gone away. In May 2022 the developer pointed players having trouble verifying their age to "SuperAwesome's age verification process", and in September 2025 it was still fixing "parent portal emails to set their account permissions". We found no later post that changes the rules, and we did not create an account to test them.

The age label depends on who is asked:

One gap: a search of the ESRB's database returns no certificate for the digital game itself. Its five Among Us records are the three boxed editions from Maximum Games, Among Us VR and Among Us 3D, all E10+ for Fantasy Violence and Mild Blood, which matches what the stores display.

How many people play

Steam held 749,911 reviews when we read it, 690,108 of them positive, which is 92.0% and the store's "Very Positive" band. At 11:10 UTC on Monday 5 October, 3,620 people were playing on Steam. Steam is one of the seven stores in the price table. Google Play shows "500M+" downloads and 13,665,847 ratings averaging 3.9; the App Store shows 845K ratings averaging 4.1. Reviews, star ratings and download bands measure different things, so we do not add them up, and no source we read publishes a current total of players.

The prices, the review count, the player count and the dates of the developer's posts can all be re-read with the script that ships with this article:

python among-us-check.py

Correction, 10 October 2026: the player count can no longer be re-read with the script. It came from api.steampowered.com, whose robots.txt closes every address to every automated reader, and the script now reads each site's robots.txt before its first request there and skips what the file closes. It prints the 3,620 read at 11:10 UTC on 5 October instead, marked as such. The script now finds the developer's posts in the Steam store's own event list, which held the same 126 posts on 10 October, so the prices, the review count and the dates of the posts still re-read as described. The rest of the article is unchanged.

This month, and what is not known

Impostor Month runs to the end of October. The post decorates every map and brings back Horse Mode, which "returns October 26th for one week only" in Classic and Hide n Seek.

The August roadmap said there were "two new roles planned" for the rest of 2026, and two have shipped since: the Judge in August and the Influencer in September. In a September interview the principal game designer said the team had prototyped "over 20 roles" and "picked out 6 that we would be really happy to release", among them "even an Impostor Ghost". No Impostor ghost role has been released, and no date has been given for one. Nor has any post we read given a release date for Among Us Story: On Guard, the single-player game Innersloth revealed in June; the roadmap's word to waiting players was "hang tight". Nothing public says what comes next in the main game, or when.

Should you start now

Yes, if you have friends to play with and a way to talk to them, because that is what the game was built for. A phone is the cheapest way to find out, free with adverts. On PC, Steam's $2.99 lasts until Thursday; the console stores charge $4.99 or $5.00. Update to 19.0.0, filter for a Beginner lobby with roles off, and add roles once the basic bluff is familiar. If a child will play, settle the free chat question first: under 13 in most countries, it needs a parent's permission.

About the images

This page has no pictures. Innersloth's press kit offers a Dropbox folder of logos and screenshots under the line "Download images that can be used for promotion", but the company's website terms forbid visitors to "reproduce, distribute, modify, create derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, republish, download, store, or transmit any of the material included on the Websites", and its marks need "the prior written permission of Innersloth". The kit's one line about use does not mention editorial coverage, so we left the images out.