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Oliver Brandt is a Contributing Pop Culture Writer based in Tasmania, Australia. Their focus is reporting on video games, film, and TV. They have extensive knowledge of video game history and communities both in Australia and abroad, animated films and television shows, and international cinema. Oliver joined Newsweek in 2024 and has previously worked at Men’s Journal, Parade, and more. They are a graduate of Curtin University. You can get in touch with Oliver by emailing o.brandt@newsweek.com. You can find them on X and Bluesky @chocobalt. Languages: English.
Contributing Pop Culture Writer
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PEAK is one of the biggest games on the planet right now, after the goofy mountain climbing game shot to mass popularity following its release.
The multiplayer climbing game was released on Steam on June 16, 2025, but its popularity spiked a week later when it started appearing in Twitch streams and YouTube videos from popular creators. Since then, it’s endured massive popularity with an all-time peak of 114,492 concurrent players on Steam, bigger than even some triple-A games.
As often happens with popular viral games, imitators weren’t far behind, and one such imitator caught the attention of co-developer Aggro Crab Games. The game in question is a Roblox game called CLIFF, which looks to have been developed by PewStudio. CLIFF, which seems to use artwork and imagery very similar to PEAK, and has over 4.8 million “visits” on Roblox. PewStudio also directly admits to being inspired by PEAKin its description, offering a “special thanks to those amazing creators.”
Aggro Crab Games didn’t appreciate the special thanks, calling out the game on X (formerly Twitter) and encouraging players to pirate PEAK instead of playing the Roblox game.
“tbh would rather you pirate our game than play this microtransaction-riddled @Roblox slop ripoff,” the post reads, alongside screenshots of the game’s lobby and store page. Fellow co-developer Landfall Games agreed, quoting the post with a simple “Cosigned.”
As with many Roblox games, CLIFF offers a number of microtransactions, which are the primary way that Roblox developers make money from their creations. CLIFF has microtransactions for five items, ranging from 49 Robux (roughly $0.60 USD) for a “parrot friend” to 200 Robux (roughly $2.50 USD) for a “climbing pickaxe.” To buy all of the microtransactions in the game once would cost roughly $8 — which is how much PEAK costs on Steam up-front.
At the time of writing, PEAK is only available on Steam, but both developers for the game have said they want to bring the game to consoles in the future.
