In 2025 the European video‑game industry posted a total turnover of €30 billion, with digital sales representing a dominant 91 percent of that figure, according to the latest data released by Video Games Europe (VGE). This milestone underscores the continued shift toward online and downloadable content across the continent, as physical copies become increasingly marginal. A major development this year was the broadening of VGE’s flagship market study, the All About Games report. Previously the research focused on the five largest European gaming economies – the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy – collectively known as the EU5.
The 2025 edition now incorporates data from an additional eleven countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Sweden and Switzerland. By covering sixteen markets, the report offers a more comprehensive picture of the region’s diverse gaming landscape and allows for finer‑grained comparisons of consumer habits, revenue streams and employment trends.
To compile the expanded analysis, VGE commissioned the market research firm Ipsos, which pulled together information from several industry‑specific sources, including GameTrack, the Game Software Developers (GSD) association, and the freshly published EGDF‑VGE Video Games Industry Insight Report. The combined survey reached 39,371 respondents, providing a robust statistical base for the findings.
When the numbers for the original EU5 are examined in isolation, a modest contraction becomes evident. Revenue across these five markets fell 4 percent year‑on‑year, slipping from €26.8 billion in 2024 to €25.7 billion in 2025. Germany remained the top‑earning nation within the EU5, generating €6.5 billion, followed by the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain.
Employment data paints a similarly encouraging picture. In 2025, the gaming sector across the EU and the UK employed roughly 123,000 people, spread across about 8,700 development studios, publishers and ancillary service providers. Women accounted for 24 percent of the workforce, a figure that reflects ongoing efforts to improve gender diversity in a traditionally male‑dominated field.
The United Kingdom led the region in headcount with 28,520 employees, Poland came in second with 14,930 staff members, and Germany ranked third with 12,410 workers. Platform preferences among European gamers continued to evolve. Mobile phones and tablets dominated usage, with 82 percent of respondents indicating they primarily played on these devices. Consoles were the second‑most popular platform at 47 percent, while traditional PC gaming held a 34‑percent share.
Notably, mobile and tablet gaming also contributed nearly half of the total industry revenue, highlighting the lucrative nature of the freemium and in‑app purchase models that dominate that segment. In the console arena, Electronic Arts (EA) emerged as the leading publisher in 2025. EA’s flagship sports titles, EA Sports FC26 and FC25, occupied the top two spots on the console sales chart, with the tactical shooter Battlefield 6 taking the third position.
Battlefield 6 also claimed the number‑one slot on the PC platform, followed closely by Rockstar Games’ long‑standing hits Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto 5, which continue to generate strong sales long after their initial releases. Mobile gaming leaders differed markedly from their console counterparts. The casual‑strategy title Coin Master topped the mobile leaderboard, with Royal Match and the evergreen puzzle‑match game Candy Crush Saga rounding out the top three. These results illustrate the broad appeal of quick‑session, socially integrated games on handheld devices.
Player demographics revealed that 199 million Europeans engaged in video‑games during 2025, with women representing 46 percent of that audience – roughly 91.5 million female gamers. The United Kingdom remained the single largest national market, boasting 25 million active players. On average, gamers logged 8.39 hours of play per week, a slight decline from the 9.4 hours recorded in 2024.
Younger age groups still spent more time than the overall average: children aged 6‑11 averaged 11.35 hours weekly, while teenagers aged 12‑17 logged 14.30 hours. Parental involvement in gaming habits stayed high. Seventy‑five percent of European parents expressed a desire to take an active role in setting limits on their children’s gaming activities.
Correspondingly, 79 percent reported using one or more family‑setting tools to monitor or restrict gameplay, and 74 percent employed a combination of agreements, monitoring practices, or built‑in family controls to manage online interactions and content exposure. Within the EU5, 72 percent of parents indicated that their children did not make any in‑game purchases. Of the minority who did, a striking 93 percent said they kept a close watch on those transactions. Moreover, the average amount spent by children who were permitted to buy in‑game content fell by 13 percent compared with the previous year, suggesting either tighter parental oversight, more cautious spending habits, or a shift toward free‑to‑play models that rely less on micro‑transactions.
Overall, the 2025 figures confirm that Europe’s gaming ecosystem remains vibrant and financially robust, even as it adapts to evolving consumer preferences, expands into new national markets, and continues to grapple with issues of diversity, parental control and responsible monetisation. The broadened scope of VGE’s All About Games report provides stakeholders with a richer, more nuanced understanding of where opportunities lie and what challenges must be addressed as the industry moves forward.