About once a week I head on over Steam to peek at the most wishlisted games because I want to know: what are PC gamers looking forward to most? Are there any highly anticipated games on the brink of release? And is anything new blowing up
This week I definitely spotted something new: Dear Passengers, a co-op game about running “the world’s worst airline” with your friends, is now seated comfortably at number 12 on Steam’s top wishlists. That’s impressive because the chaotic friendslop game was only announced a week ago. Here’s the trailer if you missed it:
“You and your friends are the crew,” says developer Flexus. “Your job is to deliver passengers and cargo to their destination. Preferably in one piece. While one of you pilots the plane, the others keep the cabin together, serve the passengers, and deal with whatever goes wrong before it gets much worse.”
And things definitely look like they get worse. Turbulence, bad weather, bird strikes, and dangerous cargo can lead to all sorts of disasters while in flight, and of course there’s no greater threat than your friends who might open the doors at altitude and get everyone sucked out of the plane.
It looks like chaotic fun, and the internet agrees: Dear Passengers was added to 700,000 wishlists in just 36 hours after the trailer premiered on July 14, and has more than doubled that since, collecting over 1,500,000 wishlists a couple of days ago.
It’s not an entirely smooth takeoff to Mount Wishlist, however: in the same week, the Kyiv-based studio also received some backlash over its edgelord humor—players in the trailer are named “Epst.J” and “PDaddy,” not-so-subtle references to the notorious sex traffickers, and one passenger on the plane appears to be modeled after Donald Trump. (He is thrown out of the plane by Epstein.)
“All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental,” a developer posted in the game’s official Discord. “Flexus Games strongly condemns the actions of Jeffrey Epstein, as well as any crimes and individuals involved in breaking the law.”
More backlash came following a job advertisement posted by Flexus on its website looking for a “2D Artist skilled in bringing game ideas to life and adept at using generative AI for concept creation”—which led to speculation that Dear Passengers uses AI-generated assets despite the game’s Steam page displaying no AI disclosure.
The developers had a response to that, too: “No AI was used in the creation of Dear Passengers,” Flexus said on Steam. “That was an old job posting related to marketing assets for some of our mobile projects. It has nothing to do with Dear Passengers. This game was created without generative AI.”
The job posting has now been revised to state “Looking for a 2D Artist skilled in bringing game ideas to life.”
That’s a whole lotta stuff to happen in just one week, huh? We’ll see how the rest of the year goes: Dear Passengers is set to release sometime in 2026.
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