New Indie Game Probably Stolen Quickly Surpasses 100,000 Players

Cyberpunk Shop Sim Whose Demo Peaked At 28 Players Debuts To A 112k CCU On Steam tinyBuild Published Oct 30, 2026, 8:15 AM EDT Josh Coulson is an editor at TheGamer covering breaking news on everything from colorful platformers to the latest Lego sets. Primarily a news writer since 2018, Josh has covered just about every major game from the past decade. Now an editor, their focus has shifted to being the leading affiliate expert at the site, building relationships between TheGamer and global brands including Mattel, Funko, and The Pokemon Company. There’s a new indie game called Probably Stolen that’s taking Steam by storm, surpassing 100,000 concurrent players within 24 hours of its release. If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands who has picked up a copy and think it feels familiar, that’s because it’s a reworked full version of a demo that flopped, hard. Probably Stolen Is A Massive Hit Probably Stolen was released on Wednesday, and 24 hours later, 101,000 people were playing it at the same time according to SteamDB. A short while after that, the game peaked at over 112,000 players, making it one of the most played games on Steam on Thursday. Published by tinyBuild, the studio’s CEO Alex Nichiporchik has revealed surprising details about Probably Stolen’s road to becoming an unlikely indie hit. “Probably Stolen was initially a game under a different name with a released demo. That demo peaked at 28 concurrent players,” Nichiporchik revealed, pairing their post with a screenshot showing the game’s stellar Steam reviews and growing player count. “We loved the concept and gameplay, and worked with the dev to reinvent the visuals and focus on what works design-wise. This is the result,” Nichiporchik continues, and what a result it is. Not only due to that player count, which will likely reach even higher heights over the weekend, but because, according to Probably Stolen’s Steam page, the game sold through 350,000 copies in its first 24 hours. Probably Stolen's Demo Peaked At 28 Players When released as a demo that barely anyone played, Probably Stolen was called Deepspace Emporium. The page for that demo is still up, allowing for a direct comparison between what developer Questing Goose originally came up with, and what tinyBuild helped the game become. A pretty remarkable story, and evidence that with the right team who can spot a good idea and know what to do to make it a success, this could really happen to any of the thousands of smaller games releasing on Steam all the time. tinyBuild did something similar for Hello Neighbor, pretending the game's failed Kickstarter simply never happened. In Probably Stolen, you are tasked with running a pawn shop, flipping items for as much money as you can to make sure you keep up with your rent and maybe, one day, you’ll have enough to buy the shop outright. It’s a simple premise, but it runs deep. You’ll need to eye for fake stuff crooks try to fob off on you, and will occasionally need to deal in more high-risk items like weapons and drugs to really bump up your earnings, balancing that risk against its potential reward. Throw in a futuristic, dystopian, space-based setting, and turns out the building blocks for a successful game were there the whole time; they just needed to be rearranged. Systems Released October 28, 2026 Developer(s) Questing Goose Studio Publisher(s) tinyBuild Number of Players Single-player Steam Deck Compatibility Playable Genre(s) Simulation, Management, Crafting, RPG