Article Summary
- Primary Subject: Reanimal [Base Game / Launch Version]
- Key Update: The author advocates for the "Friend Pass" as a vital social and marketing tool that defines the success of modern co-op and "Friendslop" titles.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: January 20, 2026
- Quick Answer: A Friend Pass allows one owner to invite a friend to play the full co-op game for free, acting as a high-conversion marketing tool.
I’ve recently been playing a lot of Reanimal, the newest title from the creators of the hit Little Nightmares series, and I’ve been having a blast. Amazing gameplay and atmosphere aside, I want to give a special shoutout to the unsung hero of this game: The Friend Pass. A feature that allows you to enjoy a video game free of charge as long as someone else already owns it, the Friend Pass is the next logical step in modern-day couch co-op video games. But saving gamers a pretty penny isn’t the only great thing about Friend Pass, and it isn’t just the players benefiting from it either.
Video games are being touted as the next big social space of our generation, bringing us a step closer to the Matrix's future. Aside from the fear of the cyber hivemind taking over, this should be viewed as a good thing! The term friendslop has been thrown around more frequently these days, and it's been used to describe a genre of games that are meant to be played with friends. Games like REPO, RV There Yet, and Lethal Company are some of the few video games that fit the bill perfectly. But curiously enough, these titles don’t offer Friend Passes, and I believe that’s been holding them back.
Now that more friendslop games are popping up in the market, it’s getting harder to justify buying any of them. Personally, if you’ve played one of the friendslop games, then you’ve probably played all of them. After all, the entire appeal of friendslop is the people you play it with, and if you’re just playing with the same people, then you’re pretty much set. This was the reason I skipped out on buying RV There Yet, and the reason why I won’t be buying any more Friendslop moving forward. But alternatively, the existence of the Friend Pass opens up other avenues for developers
There’s a big distinction we have to make between Friendslop and games that were designed to be co-op. Friendslop is used to describe games that were developed for the sole purpose of your friends messing around in a given scenario, such as REPO and Content Warning. Co-op games, on the other hand, are games that have friends in mind, but that isn’t the sole purpose of the game. The first game that comes to mind would be Hazelight Studios’ GOTY-winning entry, It Takes Two. A game that was designed from the ground up to be played with a friend (or a lover, if you had one), but had the polish and care of a single-player narrative game.
It goes without saying that games that are as well-polished and refined as It Takes Two or Split Fiction deserve a heftier price tag. While they do deserve it, putting a hefty price tag assumes that you have two people willing to shell out upwards of $50-60 for a game, which is a big ask in this economy. Putting a Friend Pass in your game means you get to keep the price of your game accessible without completely butchering the pricing of your game. Which is perfect, because then Friend Pass opens up an entirely different perspective! Developers won’t have to choose between just a massive multiplayer game and a single-player narrative game anymore, because the Friend Pass allows a successful middle ground.
Friends as Marketing
While we’ve proven that co-op games with a friend pass, such as It Takes Two, Reanimal, and Little Nightmares 3, can be great games, we still have to talk about the bottom line: profit. As horrible and boring as it is to talk about, these games are still products, and if we want them to keep being made, then they have to turn a profit. The Friend Pass is, unfortunately, still a hard sell to video game publishers because we’re asking them to basically give out a second copy of the game absolutely free. That sounds unprofitable, but only if you look at it under a microscope.
As the Highguard hate train has proven, one of the most important parts of a video game’s success is its marketing. If a game is marketed well and if people enjoy your game, then you’re sure to turn a profit when it finally comes out. I believe that publishers should start looking at the Friend Pass as a free marketing tool targeted towards the Friend Pass player. Speaking from experience, playing through Reanimal on the friends pass just made me want to buy the game just so I could share it with people in my circle. Therein happens the chain reaction of sales that’ll get you the same success as It Takes Two.
As time goes on and video games get more demanding hardware-wise, it’s nice to see that we’re still evolving in ways other than just increasing fidelity. The Friend Pass will always be my favorite innovation of modern-day gaming because it’s one that serves the players the most, and I look forward to more games adopting this structure.
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