Obsidian Entertainment's survival game Grounded has been a successful release for the popular developer. The game sold massively on Steam following a fun launch trailer at the Xbox Series X games showcase last month, contributing to Grounded reaching a million players within 48 hours. Apparently, some of those players are part of a Facebook group where members roleplay as ants.
The aptly named "A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony" Facebook group was started in June 2019 and boasts nearly two million members as of this writing. Those who are part of the private group refer to each other by their ant names (such as Ant-Joe), and do everything in service of The Queen. According to Rock Paper Shotgun Deputy Editor Alice Bell, member of the "ant family," a steady stream of posts related to Grounded have been shared over the past week.
Grounded follows children shrunk to minuscule sizes that have to survive the terrors of a backyard, including spiders and ants that attack if provoked. Ant eggs are a valuable resource in Grounded, so it makes sense for the game to be a hit in this very specific Facebook group.
The popularity and meme value of Grounded suggests the early access game has a bright future ahead of it. That bodes well for Obsidian Entertainment, which has another game on the way called Avowed that premiered at the Xbox Series X games showcase.
Grounded is available on PC and Xbox One, and will release on Xbox Series X later.
Sources: Facebook, Rock Paper Shotgun