Goblin Company
^{A countdown, a launch, and a co-op mining debut gone global}

From "now hiring" to "open for business"

Goblin Company is BitBorne Studio's first game - a co-op mining survival title built by four developers in Italy, where digging deeper means things go wrong, beautifully and catastrophically. Months of relationship-building with press and creators set the foundation. The final stretch came down to three carefully timed beats, designed to build momentum ahead of launch day on June 12th.

Three beats in the final stretch

After months of laying the groundwork, the run-up to launch came down to three carefully sequenced press beats, each with a different job to do.

May 12 - the announcement. A release date reveal and a brand new trailer, landing with the game already sitting at 75,000 wishlists. This was the moment the date went into players' calendars and press's inboxes.

June 5 - one week to go. Pricing confirmed, and a deadline set: the demo would close its doors on launch day. At the time of send, over 54,000 players had already grabbed it. The "closing soon" framing turned a routine pricing update into a countdown clock.

June 12 - open for business. Goblin Company launched on Steam. The demo closed. And then the next 48 hours happened.

‍The spark that caught fire

The countdown worked exactly as intended. In the final week before launch, demo downloads jumped from 50,000 to 75,000 - a 50% increase, driven directly by the "closing soon" beat.

Then launch day hit, and the numbers exploded. Goblin Company landed on Steam's Popular Upcoming, then hit #1 on Popular New Releases, peaking at 925 concurrent players. Across social and video, the campaign generated roughly 2.15 million estimated combined views - 1,047,300 on Twitter/X, 768,500 on YouTube, and 106,848 on TikTok, spanning coverage from the weeks leading up to launch through to now. In just the first 48 hours after launch, Twitch alone saw 148 streams - 121 of them directly activated through codes we'd distributed - generating 33,000 watch hours, a peak of 5,200 concurrent viewers, and 228,996 VOD views. Press coverage spread across 82 pieces in 15+ countries, reaching an estimated audience of 26.2 million, with placements including Dexerto, 80 Level, IGN, and Denfaminicogamer in Japan.

During launch week, Goblin Company also attracted organic streams from a top 20 globally ranked Twitch streamer, coinciding with over 10,000 concurrent viewers across the platform at peak - appearing in the top three rows of Twitch's browse page alongside titles like Valorant, GTA V, and Fortnite.

Twitch figures reflect the first 48 hours post-launch (June 12-14, 2026) and continue to grow. Social and video view counts reflect the campaign to date. These will be finalised after the launch window has concluded.

Why it worked

It wasn’t luck. It was:

A countdown, not a blast - three beats, each doing a different job, building toward a deadline rather than repeating the same announcement.
A genuine deadline drives genuine action - the demo-closing beat didn't just generate coverage, it generated a measurable 25,000-download spike in seven days.
Tight, targeted code distribution - 510 review codes went to creators with a combined follower/audience reach of 7.35 million, and 121 Twitch streams in the first 48 hours came directly from that outreach.
Global relationships, not mass blasts - 1,530 personally pitched press and creator contacts averaged a 66% open rate, supplemented by 8,000+ contacts across mass distribution.

Key stats

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