Make famous VTubers fight in this surprise Steam hit

Idol Showdown (opens in new tab) bills itself on Steam as “the definitive fan-made hololive fighting game experience,” and that might not be overselling it. Four days after launch, it remains very near the top of Steam’s “new and trending” Fighting and Martial Arts game chart (opens in new tab), and has earned a “very positive” rating across nearly 2,500 user reviews. And if you have no idea what a “hololive fighting game experience” is, don’t be alarmed, because I am about to explain.

First things first: VTubers, or Virtual YouTubers, are essentially streamers who use computer-generated avatars in place of their real-world faces and bodies during their streams. Using a webcam and specialized software, these avatars are able to move, speak, and express emotion much as a regular person would—it’s basically like wearing a fully animated mask on stream. There are a lot of very popular VTubers out there, and Japan-based hololive productions (opens in new tab)—stylized as all lower-case, thus the punctuation on the Steam page—is one of the world’s biggest VTuber agencies.