Schedule I: The Solo-Made Crime Sim That Outplayed GTA V on Steam
One Australian developer, a $20 early-access game and a city called Hyland Point. In March 2025 Schedule I briefly had more players than Grand Theft Auto V. Why a dark comedy about dealing became one of the year's coziest hits.
In the last week of March 2025, the list of most-played games on Steam looked a little odd. Near the top, above Grand Theft Auto V, Monster Hunter Wilds and Marvel Rivals, sat a game almost nobody had heard of a fortnight earlier, made by a studio whose name is literally an abbreviation of its founder's.
That game was Schedule I, from TVGS (short for Tyler's Video Game Studio), an Australian developer. It entered early access on Steam on 24 March 2025 at $19.99, shot to the top of the sales charts within days and drew close to half a million players at once. Today it sits at 97% positive across more than 200,000 English-language Steam reviews.
From small-time to kingpin
Schedule I is a first-person crime management sim set in the fictional city of Hyland Point. You start with almost nothing after your uncle Nelson is arrested and a rival cartel, the Benzies, destroys your RV. From there you grow, cook and mix product, sell to customers, dodge police searches, roadblocks and curfews, and slowly build an empire.
The genius is in the systems. Mixing your product with everyday ingredients changes its effects and raises its value, and figuring out the best recipes is half the fun. As you expand, you hire dealers, cooks, janitors and botanists, and buy properties to manufacture goods and launder money. It plays in single-player or co-op, which turned out to be a big part of its appeal.
The coziest crime game
Reviewers kept landing on the same surprise. IGN described the mix of dark subject matter and "surprisingly cozy management mechanics" as a winning combination, and PC Gamer praised the crafting minigames.
Underneath the subject matter, Schedule I is a satisfying factory game. You optimise, automate and scale up, the same loop that makes farming or factory sims addictive. The crime theme adds tension and comedy, but the reason people lose whole weekends to it is the feeling of a small operation growing into a well-oiled machine.
Streams helped enormously. Twitch and TikTok creators played it with friends, and the chaotic co-op moments made perfect clips. A modding community grew quickly too, building hundreds of mods.
Growing pains
Success brought controversy. Movie Games, publisher of Drug Dealer Simulator, looked into possible similarities between the two games' gameplay and interface, though no formal legal action followed. The dispute spilled into review-bombing of Drug Dealer Simulator itself. Some commentators pointed out that the shared mechanics are common across the genre.
By the numbers
- 24 March 2025: early access launch on Steam
- $19.99: price during early access
- Nearly 500,000: peak players at once in the launch weeks
- 97%: positive share of more than 200,000 English Steam reviews
- Q4 2027: planned exit from early access, according to the Steam page
Why it matters
Schedule I is a reminder that Steam's biggest surprises often come from one person with a clear idea. There was no publisher, no marketing campaign and no famous IP. There was a sharp premise, deep systems, co-op that makes friends laugh and a fair price.
If you want to try before you buy, a free demo, Schedule I: Free Sample, is also on Steam. For another 2025 hit that took a punishing genre and made it friendly, read our feature on Escape from Duckov (Escape from Duckov).
WGC's take: Schedule I's subject matter is not for everyone, and it is clearly made for adults. But as game design, it is one of the smartest management loops of the decade, and it came from a studio named after its own founder.