Key Notes
- The top five free-to-play games’ revenue share fell from roughly 79% to 72% on consoles and from 68% to 65% on PC between 2021 and 2025, while games outside the top ten gained share.
- Free-to-play’s overall playtime share declined by 2.9 percentage points even as total hours stayed broadly stable, with PC growth contrasting with a 17% decline on consoles.
- PC gacha playtime grew 92%, adding 864 million hours, but revenue per hour varied sharply by platform and the study’s spending data covers only six Western markets.
The biggest free-to-play games are taking a smaller share of spending on PC and consoles, according to Newzoo’s latest research. The five highest-grossing titles accounted for roughly 72% of console free-to-play revenue in 2025, down from 79% in 2021, while their PC share fell from 68% to 65%.
Newzoo’s new report describes a redistribution of player time and money rather than a simple collapse of the business model. Free-to-play games cost nothing to begin playing, but typically earn money through purchases such as cosmetics, battle passes or randomized rewards.
Spending Is Spreading Beyond the Market Leaders
The shift is more pronounced on consoles, where Newzoo puts the top five’s decline at 7.3 percentage points before rounding. Those games still collect most of the measured category’s revenue, but titles outside the leading group are claiming more of the available spending.
| Platform | 2021 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Console | 79% | 72% |
| PC | 68% | 65% |
The broader distribution also appears below the top ten. Newzoo’s published analysis says games ranked outside that group increased their combined revenue share from 11% to 19% on PC and from 8% to 17% on consoles between 2021 and 2025.
A falling share does not, by itself, establish a fall in revenue. A game can earn more money while competitors grow faster. These figures describe how free-to-play spending is divided, rather than proving that players spent fewer dollars on every leading title.
For developers, the distinction leaves room for a more focused commercial target: building a sustainable audience without needing to displace the category’s largest games. A broader distribution of revenue can create opportunities, although market share alone says nothing about whether a particular studio is profitable.
PC and Console Engagement Follow Different Paths
Newzoo reports that free-to-play’s share of overall playtime fell by 2.9 percentage points from 2021 to 2025, while its absolute hours remained broadly stable. The firm attributes most of that share decline to growth elsewhere in the market, including premium games and Roblox, rather than a comparable loss of free-to-play hours.
The platform split is less uniform. PC free-to-play added 1.2 billion hours over the period, even as its share of total PC playtime declined. Console free-to-play hours fell 17%, with the contraction concentrated among a relatively small set of established live-service titles.
Newzoo tracks Call of Duty, Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft separately to prevent these large franchises from dominating the comparisons. Readers should therefore avoid treating every game with free access as part of the report’s ordinary free-to-play bucket, or reading its category figures as a count of all free gaming activity.
The role of competing games also connects with our Steam analysis, which examined how spending can shift between new releases and established catalogs. A change in share becomes more useful when read alongside the size of the market and actual engagement.
Gacha Adds Hours Without a Uniform Spending Pattern
Gacha RPGs, which use randomized acquisition systems for rewards such as characters, are one source of growth. Their PC playtime rose 92% between 2021 and 2025, adding 864 million hours. That is a substantial expansion in engagement, but Newzoo’s figures also show why hours alone are an incomplete commercial measure.
On PC, gacha titles generated $0.21 per hour played, compared with $0.39 for non-gacha titles. On consoles, the relationship reversed: gacha generated $0.62 per hour against $0.15 for non-gacha. These averages do not describe what an individual player pays, and more engagement does not automatically produce proportionate revenue.
The study’s engagement data covers 37 markets, while its revenue analysis covers six Western countries: the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Italy. The different samples matter when comparing playtime with spending, and the revenue findings should not be presented as a worldwide picture that includes China or India.
