Forget REPO, Monster Hunter Wilds and Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Steam’s current global top seller is an early access game about managing a drug empire

The last couple of months have been packed with massive games. Monster Hunter Wilds, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Split Fiction, and Fragpunk have all proved enormously popular with players, and let’s not forget the leftfield indie smash that is REPO. But which of these games has the fattest stacks this week—which of them occupies that coveted number one spot on Steam’s global top sellers list?

Well, right now, the answer is ‘none of them’, as they’ve all been beaten to the top by a game about building and managing your own drug empire. Schedule I released onto Steam yesterday, and having accrued over 2,000 ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ reviews within 24 hours, is currently sitting pretty as Steam’s no.1 digital kingpin.

Schedule I puts players in the role of a “small time drug dealer” who arrives in the town of Hyland Point without so much as a spliff to call their own. From these lowly beginnings, you’ll “build your drug empire from the ground up” and “contend against intensifying law enforcement and deadly cartel competitors to expand your empire and reach the peak of the underworld.”

The game lets players grow and manufacture a range of different drugs, then “walk, skate or drive” through its open city to sell those drugs to customers. Once you’ve got a few bills to your name, you can hire dealers to sell drugs for you and buy properties to “expand the scope and scale of your operations.” You’ll also occasionally need to deal with police or rival gangs in first-person gunfights.

As the game’s Steam page explains, “This is a dangerous line of work.”

It’s basically Grand Theft Auto meets Breaking Bad, and when you view it through that lens it’s easy to see why it might be so explosively popular. It also probably helps that it supports up to 4-player co-op, which seems to be a prerequisite for any successful game these days.

In any case, Schedule I has gone down hugely well with players, currently sitting at a 99% ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ rating with almost 2,500 reviews. Granted, a lot of these reviews are of the “I just sold a bunch of drugs… and in the game LOL” variety, but reading between the jokes and ‘I R Walter White’ commentary, players seem to be genuinely jiving with its wide array of systems, and how it balances scope with depth.

“This game is everything I want in a good ‘build your own empire game’,” writes Steam reviewer Cyberleak. “You can play with friends and have fun. It doesn’t take itself too seriously which makes it fun to explore and discover.”

King Toasterbath, meanwhile, says “Schedule 1 really excels in departments that other games in the genre fall short of.”

It should be noted that Schedule I is an early access game. Developer TVGS (who is apparently a solo dev) aims to keep the game in alpha for 2 years, with plans for a “significant expansion” of the map, more drugs and production processes, a “larger customer and supply network” and “more fun things”. Schedule I may fall down the Steam rankings in the coming days, but at the moment, it is the game to beat. Say its name.