10 Best-Selling Games That Became Massive Hits Without Major Marketing

10 Most Successful Games That Barely Advertised Themselves Published Jul 31, 2026, 5:30 AM EDT Ben Jessey is a self-publishing staff writer here at TheGamer who has been writing about video games since 2019. While he has been at TheGamer for a while, he has also written for GameRant, ScreenRant, and WhatCulture in the past. Before all that, he was earning a degree in Film and Television Studies at Leeds Trinity University. RPGs and action-adventure games are what he’s most experienced in, but Ben has great knowledge of most types of games. This is why he has been able to write hundreds of video game guides since 2019, along with numerous gaming lists. For each guide, he conducts extensive playtesting to ensure accuracy and that all relevant information is included. There is a reason why triple-A games typically spend a lot of money on marketing. You can make the best game ever, but if nobody knows about it, the sales aren’t going to reflect that quality. So, promotion is often important. That is why we see countless trailers and advertising campaigns every year for various games. That said, plenty of titles have managed to achieve success without huge marketing budgets. It isn’t easy to accomplish, but it is possible. Here are some games that have proved that. Portal The original Portal wasn't initially even a standalone release. It was bundled in The Orange Box with Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress. Those games were supposed to be the main selling points of the package. Portal was just an extra that most people hadn't heard of. So, the promotion for the collection was mainly focused on the other two titles. Yet, the clever puzzler turned out to be hugely popular. People loved the title's well-designed puzzles and the inclusion of the talkative AI, GlaDOS. It was so beloved that it became a standalone release, which sold really well and prompted a sequel. Among Us The 2020 lockdown was bad for most people, but it was great for the people behind the social deduction game, Among Us. The title actually released in 2018, but not many people knew about it until 2020, when content creators began to play it during lockdown. And it wasn't just any creators; it was most of the biggest ones out there, from xQc to Pokimane. Even famous U.S. politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) played the game on stream. As a result, the title became a bit of a phenomenon, no thanks to any sort of advertising. Rocket League Since releasing in 2015, Rocket League has become a really big hit, even though it didn't have any traditional marketing. On launch, it was available on the PS4 as part of PlayStation Plus at no extra cost. This led to a lot of people playing the game straight away, and their mostly positive responses led to a lot of buzz on social media. Therefore, people started to buy it on Steam, and Xbox players picked it up when it released on the Xbox One. Of course, this was only possible because the game was really good and different from any other title. After all, how many games do you know that combine football (aka soccer) and driving? This originality helped the game stand out. Five Nights At Freddy's By this point, Five Nights at Freddy's is a large franchise that contains a lot of games and even a movie. So, every new project gets plenty of promotion and likely has big marketing budgets. That was not the case with the original game, though. It was a small indie title that released in 2014 without a massive amount of fanfare. However, it didn't take too long for momentum to build, and this mainly came from YouTubers. At that time, people seemed to love to watch creators get terrified by jump scares, so FNAF was the perfect game for them to play. The likes of Markiplier and Jacksepticeye really helped the game's popularity with their playthroughs. Also, MatPat's famous in-depth theory on the game's story further increased the title's notoriety. Phasmophobia There weren't a bunch of people waiting to download Phasmophobia when it released in early access in September 2020. After all, not many people actually knew it existed or what it was. Thankfully, though, it soon grew in popularity around Halloween of that year. This was down to the game becoming very popular on Twitch and YouTube. A lot of big streamers played it, and clips of the game started to circulate online. All of this helped the co-operative horror game grow exponentially and become a big success. Traditional advertising was not needed. Meccha Chameleon Meccha Chameleon is a hide-and-seek game that has taken the internet by storm. It's a title that truly shows the power of online creators. This is because not only is Meccha Chameleon very successful, but it didn't take long for it to cultivate that success. It took less than a month for the game to hit several huge commercial milestones. This quick growth in popularity mainly came from word-of-mouth and content creators. So many streamers have played the game since release, and clips of it are all over the internet. Stardew Valley It's fair to say that Stardew Valley is one of the most popular farming simulators ever. And it didn't achieve that through typical marketing. Instead, the game's sole developer, Eric Barone, talked about the game online quite a bit on Reddit and in forums, plus the publisher got streamers to play it. So, there was a bit of effort put into promotion, but it isn't like they had a big budget. What they did do worked, though, because Stardew Valley quickly became very successful, and people still play it over 10 years after its release. Vampire Survivors Initially, Vampire Survivors launched on Itch.io, but it didn't spark much interest, so they also put it on Steam. They intentionally offered it for a low price to give people more incentive to buy it. Yet, it wasn't like a bunch of people rushed to get the game, as the lack of advertising meant people didn't know about it. Then, some streamers and content creators found it. Once they started to play the game, the title's fame began to grow, and people bought it themselves. This growth kept going, and now it's a very successful game. Flappy Bird Flappy Bird was a mobile game released in 2013 that was made by a person named Dong Nguyen. It's a simple-to-understand game where you have to control a bird that flies across the screen while avoiding the green pipes that are in your way. The game became a surprise hit on the iOS App Store and started making decent money. This is despite the game not having much of an advertising budget, if any. Its fame came more from social media. The title went viral due to its punishing difficulty and how rage-inducing it could be. People often posted their scores online, either in rage or pride, depending on how well they did. The game's great difficulty also led to plenty of memes. Minecraft Minecraft was already a famous game before it had its full release. That had nothing to do with advertising, though. The game had been in beta for what felt like forever. During this time, it gained notoriety through online discussion and creators making videos about it. The reason it got so much momentum this way was because of how original the title was. A game giving you as much freedom to create things as Minecraft did was rare prior to its release. So, seeing videos of the game, particularly when major creators played it, naturally caught attention online.