# Doki Doki Literature Club!

> Free game Doki Doki Literature Club! hit 1 million downloads in under three months.

- Owner: Team Salvato (Dan Salvato)
- Kind: Game
- Sector: Gaming
- Seed date: 2017-09-22
- Peak date: 2017-12-09
- Spread Score: 54 (Notable), v1.2
- Mechanics: Platform jump, Fandom mobilisation

## Summary

Team Salvato released DDLC free on itch.io on Sept. 22, 2017. A subreddit and YouTube Let's Plays followed within days, Kotaku covered it in October, and it came to Steam that month. It peaked at 7,402 Steam players on Dec. 9 and passed 1 million downloads.

## Timeline

- 2017-09-22 — Team Salvato (Open web) — Team Salvato released DDLC free on itch.io; its launch post said big streamers would play it, with giveaways.
- 2017-09-24 — r/DDLC (Reddit) — The r/DDLC subreddit was created for discussion of the game.
- 2017-09-26 — ManlyBadassHero (YouTube) — YouTuber ManlyBadassHero uploaded the first video in a DDLC Let's Play series.

The full timeline, metrics and sources are on the case page, or via the Pro API (https://howitspread.com/developers).

Canonical URL: https://howitspread.com/cases/doki-doki-literature-club

Cite as: How It Spread (2026). “Doki Doki Literature Club!.” Case HIS-00459. Spread Score v1.2: 54/100. Updated 2026-10-13. https://howitspread.com/id/HIS-00459