After REPO ‘kinda blew up’, its developer asks the community for advice on how to make matchmaking lobbies

REPO is the latest co-op horror viral sensation, taking the template established by Lethal Company and adding wacky physics and googly-eyed robot protagonists. It’s a combination that has proved wildly popular, with REPO currently positioned as the fourth highest-selling game on Steam.

Now, developer semiwork has posted its first community update since the game launched. Starting with the acknowledgement that “Our game REPO kinda blew up”, the video mainly covers familiar ground for these kinds of updates. Semiwork assures players that the studio is working hard on new features for the game, like new enemies, weapons and so forth. The video also provides a sneak peek of a new level, which is in very early production and so looks fairly abstract, but appears to be either a museum or an art gallery.

The primary intent of the video, however, is a request for help from the community on the issue of matchmaking lobbies. For context, REPO launched without matchmaking lobbies, which semiwork apologised for in a previous video. The studio didn’t explain why it launched without this feature, simply stating “we had no idea”. But the inference seems to be they didn’t anticipate the need for them, as they didn’t expect the game to be as popular as it has become.

In any case, semiwork promised to add matchmaking lobbies, but in the new video explains that it wants help dealing with a conundrum that has appeared in the interim.

“The main issue with matchmaking lobbies is hackers,” the video’s host explains. “That’s like a package deal that you sadly get with lobbies. And how do you deal with hackers? Well, you get an anti-cheat system. But the issue with an anti-cheat system is that you’re ruining the experience for everyone who has made mods, because mods don’t work with an anti-cheat system. And we don’t want that.”

Semiwork is trying to figure out the best way to deal with this on its own, but in the meantime it “would love to hear your opinion or if you have any tips or suggestions on how to tackle this”, pointing to the comments section on the video’s YouTube page for responses.

Provided you don’t need to rely on matchmaking to get a group together, REPO is a blast to play. PC Gamer’s Elie Gould took it for a spin last week, and was immediately enamoured by its physics-infused shenanigans and flappy-mouthed, pedal bin-like characters. “The proximity chat detaches your character’s jaw relative to how much volume you’re spitting through the mic,” they wrote. “It’s unspeakably funny watching one of my friends run from a killer clown while their head is completely cocked back screaming at the top of their lungs.”