Have you noticed that over the past year, a specific type of cooperative video game has gone viral again and again?

Meant to be played by a group of friends and always developed by a small studio or even a solo developer, these games often task players with exploring and looting dangerous places where scary monsters lurk around and chances of survival are slim, all for the promise of riches they won't even get to share.

The type of gameplay these games offer allows for hilarious situations to occur naturally, and viral clips shared on Twitch, TikTok and YouTube drag more and more people in.

Lethal Company, R.E.P.O and Content Warning are some of the best-known games in the genre, which people have taken to calling "friendslop."

Do they deserve this disparaging title and how exactly can we determine what is and isn't "friendslop"? Let's investigate.

What Is ‘Friendslop’?

So what exactly is "friendslop"? Semantically, the word is a portmanteau of "friend" and "slop," with "slop" being a suffix that recently gained popularity as a way of describing mass-produced content and media of poor quality.

The suffix has been popular to a degree of overuse, with people mindlessly slapping it onto everything they don't like. We had AI slop, we had rollslop and blobslop, and now we've got friendslop.

As the term was coined just recently, there is no strict definition for what can and what can't be considered "friendslop."

According to the person who coined the term, the sole criterion for the game being "friendslop" is its purpose being "friendfarming." However, the original post was also meant as a joke, so we can't really take that seriously.

What Games Can Be Considered 'Friendslop'?

Since "friendslop" yet lacks a proper definition, we're offering you three to consider, going from the widest possible to the one that people usually intuit upon hearing the term.

In the widest sense, every cooperative game is "friendslop." Everything that features a co-operative component, no matter how important it is, is friendslop. This includes Minecraft, Jackbox Party, Mario Party and Kane and Lynch.

In a narrower sense, survival cooperative games that are meant to be played with a group of three to 10 players are "friendslop." If we go with that definition, we could argue that Left 4 Dead and Deep Rock Galactic are the progenitors of the friendslop genre.

But what we believe is currently the most popular definition of the term is the following: "a cooperative horror game involving players entering dangerous locations with a goal of extracting resources and making it out safely."

This definition, despite its narrowness, has more than plenty of games released in the past two years that fit it perfectly, whose abundance led to the term being coined in the first place. Lethal Company, Content Warning, R.E.P.O. and the upcoming Scary Cargo are the most pure "friendslop" specimens.

We could argue that there is one additional component that distinguishes friendslop from other games: They are uniquely tailored to produce funny clips, which has been a major factor contributing to their viral popularity.

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/72729362838472522474693628384725224746

Who Coined The Term 'Friendslop'?

So, who came up with the idea to call cooperative games "friendslop"?

On March 17th, 2025, X user @wooosaaaahhhhh posted cover images of Lethal Company, R.E.P.O. and Content Warning using the umbrella term "friendslop" to describe the games. Notably, in a follow-up post, @wooosaaaahhhhh insisted that the tweet was meant as a joke.

Many didn't get the joke, and the post was initially subjected to mockery. "Friendfarming is a word only someone who has none could come up with," one user wrote. "Please leave the house," wrote another.

Yet despite the initial ridicule, the term seems to have found its place after all. The recent announcement of Scary Cargo, a new co-op horror game that looks suspiciously familiar, was what made some of those who initially mocked the term reconsider.

---

For the full history of Friendslop, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.