Online multiplayer statistics, 2026

Market size

Consumer spending on games, as tracked by Newzoo. Hardware is excluded.

• $201.6B

  Global games market revenue in 2025, up 9.1% year on year and the first year above $200 billion.

  Newzoo revised this up from its September 2025 estimate of $188.8B.

  Newzoo: Global games market 2025 · 18 Jun 2026

• $113.3B · $44.7B · $43.6B

  Mobile, console and PC revenue in 2025. PC grew 12.0%, its fastest rate in Newzoo’s dataset.

  Newzoo: Global games market 2025 · 18 Jun 2026

• $213.9B Forecast

  Forecast global games revenue for 2026, up 6.1%.

  Newzoo says console growth depends on GTA VI launching in November 2026.

  Newzoo: 2026 global games market: key numbers · 25 Aug 2026

• $234.4B Forecast

  Forecast global games revenue for 2028, a 5.1% compound annual growth rate from 2025.

  Newzoo: Global games market 2025 · 18 Jun 2026

Players and platforms

How many people play, and the scale of the largest PC and console networks.

• 3.70B Forecast

  Forecast number of players worldwide in 2026, up 4.4%, rising to 4.07 billion by 2029.

  Newzoo: 2026 global games market: key numbers · 25 Aug 2026

• 3.0B · 936M · 645M

  Mobile, PC and console players in 2025, out of 3.58 billion in total.

  Latest free per-platform split. Newzoo’s 2026 PC and console player counts are in its paid report.

  Newzoo: Global games market to hit $189 billion in 2025 · 9 Sep 2025

• 212.3M

  Americans who play video games at least one hour a week: 67% of people aged 5 to 90, with an average age of 37.

  YouGov survey of 13,545 people, 11 to 25 February 2026.

  Entertainment Software Association: Two-thirds of Americans play video games every week · 3 Jun 2026

• ~39.0M

  Peak concurrent Steam users in the 48 hours to 6 November 2026 (38,989,567 at 14:43 UTC).

  A live figure. Valve does not publish an all-time record on its stats page.

  Valve: Steam & game stats · Read 6 Nov 2026

• 127M

  PlayStation monthly active users at 30 September 2026, up 7% year on year. Sony had shipped more than 97 million PS5 consoles by the same date.

  Sony counts accounts active in the last month of the quarter, not unique people.

  Sony Interactive Entertainment: Business data and sales · 30 Sep 2026 data

• 26.35M

  Nintendo Switch 2 consoles shipped worldwide by 30 September 2026, alongside 157.20 million original Switch consoles.

  Nintendo: Dedicated video game sales units · 30 Sep 2026 data

Playing together

How often people play with others, online and in person.

• 70%

  US players aged 8 and over who have played games with other people, online or offline.

  ESA 2026, YouGov survey of 13,545 people.

  Entertainment Software Association: 2026 Essential Facts About the U.S. Video Game Industry (PDF, p. 23) · 3 Jun 2026

• 46%

  US players aged 8 and over who play games with others at least weekly.

  The 2025 edition reported 55% for ages 8 to 90. The bases differ, so don’t read the change as a decline.

  Entertainment Software Association: 2026 Essential Facts About the U.S. Video Game Industry (PDF, p. 23) · 3 Jun 2026

• 62%

  Of US players who play with others, the share who play online with friends they know in person.

  Entertainment Software Association: 2026 Essential Facts About the U.S. Video Game Industry (PDF, p. 23) · 3 Jun 2026

• 89%

  US teens who play video games and play them with other people, in person or online. 85% of US teens play video games.

  Survey of 1,453 teens aged 13 to 17, September to October 2023.

  Pew Research Center: Teens and video games today · 9 May 2024

• 55%

  UK children aged 3 to 17 who play games online. Of those, 55% at least sometimes play with people they have only met online.

  Ofcom changed its method this year, so year-on-year comparisons are indicative only.

  Ofcom: Children and parents: media use and attitudes report 2025/26 (PDF) · 21 May 2026

What studios build

Developer surveys on multiplayer and live-service work.

• 83%

  Surveyed studios that make online multiplayer games, the most widely adopted feature in Unity’s survey. 10% make no multiplayer games.

  Survey of 300 developers in 2025, plus Unity platform data. Likely to lean towards Unity users.

  Unity: 2026 Unity Game Development Report · 9 Mar 2026

• 55%

  Multiplayer studios whose games typically support 2 to 9 players per session.

  Unity: 2026 Unity Game Development Report · 9 Mar 2026

• 31%

  Multiplayer developers who name the pace of content and balance updates as their biggest obstacle, ahead of technical complexity (23%).

  Unity: 2026 Unity Game Development Report · 9 Mar 2026

• 16%

  Game developers currently working on a live-service game, rising to 33% at AAA studios.

  Survey of more than 3,000 developers, fielded before GDC 2025.

  GDC: GDC 2025 State of the Game Industry · Undated (2025)

Where playtime goes

Long-running multiplayer games hold most PC and console playtime.

• 67%

  Share of 2024 PC playtime that went to games released six or more years earlier. New releases took 8%.

  37 markets, excluding China and India.

  Newzoo: PC & Console Gaming Report 2025 (PDF) · Mar 2025

• 42%

  Share of PC playtime outside the 20 most-played games in 2025, up from 33% in 2022.

  Newzoo: Playtime and revenue beyond the top 20 · 14 Apr 2026

Latency research

Research papers and first-party engineering posts on how network delay affects players.

• Up to 15%

  Drop in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player performance as round-trip latency rises from 0 to 100 ms. Rifle accuracy fell 15%; the shotgun was affected about a third as much.

  Lab study, 42 participants, 11 latency levels. The authors conclude that latencies under 100 ms still degrade performance.

  Xu, Liu, Claypool (WPI), IEEE QoMEX 2022: The Effects of Network Latency on Counter-strike: Global Offensive Players · 2022

• 40 ms

  Median latency at which surveyed players said they first notice delay (mean 86 ms, pulled up by outliers). For first-person shooters, the median tolerable latency was 100 ms.

  Self-reported opinions from 240+ usable responses across 164 games, not measurements. WPI technical report.

  Jiang et al. (WPI): A Survey of Player Opinions of Network Latency in Online Games · Jul 2020

• 100 · 500 · 1000 ms

  Latency thresholds by game type: first-person games (shooters, racing), third-person games (sports, RPGs) and omnipresent games (strategy, simulation).

  A 2006 synthesis of earlier user studies. Foundational, but the underlying games are older.

  Claypool & Claypool, Communications of the ACM 49(11): Latency and Player Actions in Online Games · Nov 2006

• < 125 ms

  Even small cuts to local system latency below 125 ms improved accuracy and score for experienced Counter-Strike players.

  43 players on high-end systems. This measures device latency, not network latency.

  Liu et al. (WPI), ACM CHI 2021: Lower is Better? The Effects of Local Latencies on Competitive First-Person Shooter Game Players · 2021

• Defender

  Peeker’s advantage in first-person shooters depends more on the defender’s latency than on the peeker’s.

  Tokey et al. (WPI, NVIDIA), ACM FDG 2024: The Effects of Network Latency on the Peeker’s Advantage in First-person Shooter Games · May 2024

• 35 ms for 70%

  Riot’s target for Valorant: 35 ms ping for 70% of its players, served by 128-tick servers.

  An engineering target, not a measured outcome.

  Riot Games: Peeking into VALORANT’s Netcode · 28 Jul 2020

• 50% → 80%

  Share of North American League of Legends players under 80 ms ping after Riot moved servers to Chicago on its own network.

  Riot Games: Fixing the Internet for Real Time Applications: Part II · 11 Feb 2016

Attacks on game servers

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, as seen on Cloudflare’s network.

• #4

  Gaming’s rank among the most-attacked industries in Q4 2025. Gambling and casinos ranked third.

  Cloudflare counted 47.1 million DDoS attacks in 2025, up 121%. The largest it disclosed reached 31.4 Tbps and lasted 35 seconds.

  Cloudflare: DDoS threat report for 2025 Q4 · 5 Feb 2026

• 96%

  Network-layer DDoS attacks in Q3 2026 that ended in under 10 minutes. 98% stayed under 1 Gbps.

  18.2 million network-layer attacks in the quarter, about 8,226 an hour.

  Cloudflare: DDoS threat report for 2026 Q3 · 29 Oct 2026

Server tick rates

How often game servers update the simulation, as stated by each developer. Rates change between seasons, so check the year.

Not listed: games where we found no first-party statement of the rate, including Call of Duty, PUBG and Overwatch 2. For what tick rate means, see our tick rate explainer.