"Free-to-play isn’t dying," declares a new special‑focus report from Newzoo, a data firm that disputes the narrative that the free‑to‑play (F2P) segment is in terminal decline. The report, which draws on Newzoo’s Game Performance Monitor, analyses player engagement on PC and console across 37 regions—excluding China, India and the mobile market—to paint a nuanced picture of how F2P is faring in the broader gaming ecosystem.
The core finding is that F2P’s share of total playtime slipped by 2.9 percentage points between 2021 and 2025, settling at 29.3 percent. Despite this modest dip in share, the absolute number of hours logged by players stayed roughly level, indicating that overall gaming time grew in other categories and offset the loss in proportion. Newzoo attributes the shift primarily to expansion in premium (pay‑to‑play) titles and the continued rise of platforms such as Roblox, which siphon attention away from traditional F2P experiences.
When the data are broken down by platform, a divergent story emerges. On PC, total F2P playtime actually increased even though its share of the overall market fell, suggesting that PC gamers are spending more hours on free titles while the market as a whole expands.
By contrast, console F2P playtime declined, with the downturn concentrated among a small set of long‑standing live‑service franchises that have struggled to retain momentum. The volume of new F2P live‑service releases also shows a downward trend. The peak year for launches on PC and console was 2017, when 36 titles entered the market. By the 2023‑2025 window, the annual average had dropped 31 percent, falling from 21.3 titles in the 2020‑2022 period to just 14.7 titles, even as the total number of releases across all categories continued to rise.
This contraction points to higher development costs, greater commercial risk, and stiff competition from entrenched titles, all of which make it harder for newcomers to break through. Revenue concentration is another area of change. The top five F2P games on console accounted for 79 percent of total F2P earnings in 2021; that share fell to 72 percent by 2025.
On PC, the top five’s share slipped from 68 percent to 65 percent over the same span. This diffusion suggests that earnings are spreading more evenly across a broader set of titles, reducing the dominance of a handful of blockbusters. Perhaps the most striking driver of growth on PC is the surge of gacha‑style games. Newzoo defines gacha as a progression‑based loot‑box monetisation model, and it has become the primary engine of F2P expansion on the platform.
In 2021, only three major gacha titles were active on PC and console; by 2025 that number had risen to seventeen. PC gacha playtime exploded, climbing 92 percent and adding roughly 864 million hours between 2021 and 2025. Console gacha also grew, though more modestly, contributing an extra 85 million hours despite a dip in two of the intervening years. RPGs represent the sole F2P genre that increased its share on both platforms.
On PC, RPGs rose 5.3 percentage points to capture 14.3 percent of all F2P playtime. Flagship titles such as *Wuthering Waves*, *Honkai: Star Rail* and *Zenless Zone Zero* collectively contributed about 1.1 billion hours by 2025.
On consoles, RPG share edged up from 10.0 percent to 10.3 percent, buoyed by the same titles as they launched on the platform, while *Genshin Impact* saw a relative decline. Newzoo’s audience‑overlap analysis indicates that much of the PC gacha boom is fueled by players who move between multiple titles within the genre, rather than a wholly new user base. However, the report warns that this surge in engagement has not translated into a proportional rise in revenue. The firm points to a widening gap between how much time players spend in gacha games and how much money those games actually generate, hinting at potential monetisation challenges ahead.
The August revenue charts illustrate that fresh releases can still make a splash. EA Sports’ *Madden NFL 27* debuted at number two on the console revenue leaderboard, while House House’s cooperative adventure *Big Walk* secured the third spot on PC. These entries demonstrate that, despite the overall slowdown in F2P launches, high‑profile titles can still capture significant market share when they resonate with audiences.
In summary, Newzoo’s data paints a picture of a free‑to‑play market that is not collapsing but evolving. While the proportion of playtime devoted to F2P games has slipped slightly, total hours remain stable thanks to growth in premium games, Roblox, and especially gacha‑driven RPGs on PC. The landscape is becoming more diversified, with revenue spreading beyond the traditional top‑five powerhouses and new genres like gacha reshaping player habits.
Developers and publishers should note that while engagement is high, converting that engagement into revenue may require innovative monetisation strategies that address the emerging gap between playtime and earnings.