Aggro Crab shared the milestone on Bluesky and while the sales figures themselves make for a good headline, the circumstances surrounding the development and marketing of Peak are perhaps even more fascinating.
Peak launched mere months after Aggro Crab spoke to Game Developer at GDC about how it struggled to secure funding for its next title despite the success of Another Crab's Treasure, which sold between 600,000 to 700,000 units on a budget of $1.2 million (and also secured an Xbox Game Pass deal).
Aggro Crab sought $3 million to $4 million to finance its next project, which would have allowed it to "swing for the fences," but with investors reluctant to hand over the cash, the studio instead chose to develop multiple, smaller titles.
In a studio update shared two weeks ago, Aggro Crab community manager Paige Wilson explained the team was also suffering from burnout after working on Another Crab's Treasure and likely would have struggled if it had taken on another multi-year project.
"Turns out it's a lot hard to make fun games if you aren't having any fun doing it," she added, discussing the decision to pivot away from work on Going Under 2 and dream smaller. "After assessing this we came to the conclusion that for the future of Aggro Crab's sustainability as a studio and for the people themselves, we need to change what we're doing.
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"So, we shook things up. Instead of working on a large project again we started small. No big ideas—just something silly that a few of us really needed to bring back that spark. How about a game jam? We locked in for a month and made a game. Actually, we make two games."
Aggro Crab and Landfall scoped down to find the fun
Some of the Aggro Crab team collaborated with Totally Accurate Battle Simulator developer Landfall to make Peak. Meanwhile, the rest of the team worked on another project called Crashout Crew.Wilson called both titles an "Aggro Crab side hustle" because of their size, scope, and how they differ from the studio's past releases.
"Both of these games are quite different to our previous projects, but you can see the team's passion and their sense of humor in these games. You can see that we had fun doing it," she added. "In the end, shelving Going Under 2 was hard and we were really bummed to see it go. But the bright side is, in return, we got two smaller scope projects that gave us the chance to self-fund ourselves. [...] Not only did we get two new games out of this, we got our spark back."
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In the two weeks since that video was published, Aggro Crab officially announced Peak with a brief 18-second gameplay teaser. It followed that trailer with another 21 second teaser posted two days later. The studio revealed more footage when it dropped a release trailer two days after that, capping a remarkably short marketing cycle.
Indeed, the title was first teased by Landfall in April—but details were thin on the ground at that point. It's also worth noting that Peak is currently available for an introductory price of $5—a 38 percent discount on its $7.99 retail price. It's an offer you'd imagine has convinced groups of friends to nab the title in the hopes of summiting its titular peak.
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