What’s The Time period For Video games Like ‘Deadly Firm’ and ‘R.E.P.O.’? Folks Calling C…

Have you ever observed that over the previous 12 months a selected kind of cooperative sport has gone viral repeatedly? Meant to be performed by a bunch of buddies and at all times developed by a small studio or perhaps a solo developer, these video games typically process gamers with exploring and looting harmful locations the place scary monsters lurk round and possibilities of survival are slim, all for the promise of riches they will not even get to share. The kind of gameplay these video games supply permits for hilarious conditions to naturally happen, and viral clips shared on TIkTok and YouTue drag increasingly individuals in.

Deadly Firm, R.E.P.O and Content material Warning are a number of the best-known video games within the style which individuals have taken to calling “friendslop”. Do they deserve this disparanging title and the way precisely can we decide what’s and what is not “friendslop”? Let’s examine.

What Is ‘Friendslop’?

So what precisely is “friendslop”? Semantically, the phrase is a portmanteau of “buddy” and “slop”, with “slop” being a suffix that not too long ago gained recognition as a method of describing mass-produced content material and media of poor high quality. The suffix has been in style to a level of overuse, with individuals mindlessly slapping it onto all the pieces they do not like. We had AI slop, we had Rollslop and Blobslop, and now we have got Friendslop.

Because the time period was coined only in the near past, there isn’t a strict definition for what can and what cannot be thought-about “friendslop”. Based on the one who cointed the time period, the only real standards for the sport being “friendslop” is its goal being “friendfarming”. Nonetheless, the unique publish was additionally meant as a joke, so we will not actually take that significantly.

What Video games Can Be Thought of ‘Friendslop’?

Since “friendslop” but lacks correct definition, we’re providing you three to contemplate, going from the widest attainable to the one that individuals normally intuit upon listening to the time period.

Within the widest sense, each cooperative sport is “friendslop”. Every part that encompasses a co-operative part, regardless of how imporatant it’s, is friendslop. This contains Minecraft, Jackbox Occasion, Mario Occasion and Kane and Lynch.

In a narrower sense, survival cooperative video games that are supposed to be performed with a bunch of three to 10 gamers are “friendslop”. If we go along with that definiton, we might argue that Left 4 Lifeless and Deep Rock Galactic are the progenitors of friendslop style.

However what we consider is at present the most well-liked definiton of the time period is the next: “a cooperative horror sport involving gamers coming into harmful areas with a purpose of extracting assets and making it out safely”.

This definition, regardless of its narrowness, has greater than loads of video games launched previously two 12 months that match it completely, whose abundance led to the time period being coined within the first place. Deadly Firm, Content material Warning, R.E.P.O. and the upcoming Scary Cargo are essentially the most pure “friendslop” speciments.

We might argue that there’s one further part which distinguishes friendslop from different video games: they’re uniquely tailor-made to provide humorous clips, which has been a significant factor contributing in direction of their viral recognition.

Who Coined The Time period ‘Friendslop’?

So who got here up with the thought to name cooperative video games “friendslop”?

On March seventeenth, 2025, X consumer @wooosaaaahhhhh posted cowl photos of Deadly Firm, R.E.P.O. and Content material Warning utilizing the umbrella time period “friendslop” to explain the video games. Notably, in a follow-up publish @wooosaaaahhhhh insisted that the tweet was meant as a joke.

Which many did not get the joke, and the publish was initially subjected to mockery. “Friendfarming is a phrase solely somebody who has none might give you”, one consumer wrote. “Please depart the home”, wrote one other.

But regardless of the preliminary ridicule, the time period appears to have discovered its place in any case. The current announcement of Scary Cargo, a brand new co-op horror sport that appears suspiciously acquainted, was what made a few of those that intiially mocked the time period reconcider.

For the total historical past of Friendslop, make sure to try Know Your Meme’s encyclopedia entry for extra data.