"Free‑to‑play isn’t dying," declares a fresh Newzoo special‑focus study that pushes back against the narrative that the F2P model is on the decline. The analysis, which draws on Newzoo’s Game Performance Monitor data covering player engagement on PC and console across 37 territories (excluding China, India, and mobile platforms), reveals that the proportion of total playtime attributed to free‑to‑play titles slipped by 2.9 percentage points between 2021 and 2025, landing at 29.3 percent.
Despite this modest share reduction, the absolute number of hours logged by players stayed essentially flat, indicating that overall engagement with F2P games has not evaporated. Newzoo attributes the dip in share primarily to expansion in other segments of the market, notably premium (pay‑to‑play) titles and the sandbox phenomenon Roblox. On the PC side, total F2P playtime actually increased even as its relative share fell, suggesting that the overall gaming ecosystem grew faster than the free‑to‑play slice. By contrast, console‑based F2P playtime declined, a downturn concentrated among a handful of long‑standing live‑service franchises that have seen their player bases erode.
The report also highlights a sharp contraction in the number of new F2P live‑service releases on PC and console. The peak year, 2017, saw 36 fresh titles enter the market, but the average annual launch count fell by roughly 31 percent, dropping from 21.3 titles during the 2020‑2022 window to just 14.7 titles in the 2023‑2025 period.
This slowdown occurred even as the broader market continued to see an uptick in overall game releases, underscoring the increasing difficulty of breaking through with a new free‑to‑play live‑service offering. Several factors are cited as contributing to the tougher environment: rising development and marketing costs, heightened financial risk for publishers, and the presence of entrenched competitive titles that dominate player attention.
These pressures have made it more challenging for newcomers to achieve the critical mass needed for sustained success. Revenue concentration among the top‑earning F2P titles is also loosening.
On consoles, the combined revenue share of the five biggest F2P games fell from 79 percent in 2021 to 72 percent in 2025. On PC, the top five’s share slipped from 68 percent to 65 percent over the same period, across major Western markets such as the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. This diffusion suggests a more even distribution of earnings, albeit at lower overall levels. A notable driver of growth within the free‑to‑play space is the rise of gacha‑style games, which Newzoo defines as progression‑based loot‑box monetization systems.
The number of major gacha titles on PC and console swelled from three in 2021 to seventeen by 2025. On PC, gacha playtime exploded, climbing 92 percent and adding roughly 864 million hours between 2021 and 2025. Console gacha titles contributed an additional 85 million hours over the same span, despite experiencing a contraction in two of those years.
RPGs emerged as the sole free‑to‑play genre that expanded its share on both platforms. On PC, RPGs captured an extra 5.3 percentage points of F2P playtime, reaching 14.3 percent. Flagship releases such as *Wuthering Waves*, *Honkai: Star Rail*, and *Zenless Zone Zero* collectively contributed about 1.1 billion hours of gameplay by 2025.
Console RPG share edged upward from 10.0 percent to 10.3 percent, buoyed by the same titles making their way onto console hardware, while *Genshin Impact* saw a relative decline. Newzoo’s audience‑overlap analysis indicates that much of the PC gacha surge stems from players who migrate between titles within the category, rather than from entirely new gamers entering the ecosystem.
However, the study warns that this heightened engagement has not been matched by proportional revenue growth, pointing to a widening gap between the time players spend in games and the money those games generate. In August, several fresh releases managed to break into Newzoo’s Top‑20 revenue charts.
EA Sports’ *Madden NFL 27* debuted at the No. 2 spot on console, while House House’s cooperative adventure *Big Walk* secured the No. 3 position on PC, illustrating that high‑profile launches can still capture significant financial attention despite the broader market headwinds. Overall, the data paints a nuanced picture: free‑to‑play titles continue to command a substantial portion of total playtime, but their relative share is shrinking as premium games and sandbox experiences expand.
Gacha‑driven RPGs are the bright spot for F2P growth on PC, yet the monetization gap suggests that developers may need to rethink revenue models to fully capitalize on the growing player engagement. The landscape remains competitive, and success increasingly hinges on delivering compelling content that can attract and retain players across an increasingly crowded field.