New report says older games like CS2 and League of Legends take up 35% of PC playtime, but Roblox reigns supreme

It's no secret that a select group of videogames are propping up the industry right now. While the indie and double-A spheres remain the central nexus of innovative, exciting game development, they don't typically carry the same commercial weight as triple-A titans. But, on the other hand, the fatigue around some of gaming's biggest franchises is real. Another year, another Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed; two series that were once regular, routine buys, but are now shells of what they once were. As development costs soar and layoffs become a weekly occurrence, it's clear that videogaming as we know it is changing, with the GTA 6 release date potential being the getaway to a brave new virtual world. But Rockstar's behemoth has been hit with delays, and call me a pessimist, but I'm not sure it'll launch in 2026 - even if it does, it probably won't be on PC straight away. If that means relying on Fortnite or League of Legends to keep things afloat for a bit longer, I'm ok with that.

A new report from Epyllion's Matthew Ball confirms that PC gaming's "big five" (Counter-Strike, Fortnite, Minecraft, League of Legends, and Roblox) still make up 35% of player hours. This sits largely in line with 2024's report, with the "next five" games (the section that now accounts for ~10% of player hours) also being older titles that range from five to 25 years old. Ball doesn't name these outright, but I presume they include several other top-tier multiplayer games like PUBG and World of Warcraft.

In 2025, new games (which include annual releases like Call of Duty and EA Sports FC), only accounted for around 14% of player hours on Steam (including handhelds like the Steam Deck), and half of that time "goes to just four titles." 45% of PC gamers are playing games between one and seven years old, while 41% are titles that have been out for eight years or more.

Ball also notes that, while industry titans have either managed to maintain or grow their revenue, they've "done so by successfully raising price, not from growing players, purchases, or playtime." Nintendo's Mario Kart games have increased from $60 in 2014 to $80 in 2025 (that's a $20 increase over 11 years) for example, while 1,00 Fortnite V-Bucks are now $9 instead of the $8 they were in 2023.

But the real winner is Roblox. Ball notes that the blocky, kid-focused game is "now a singular driver of the total videogame market. In 2025, it was over 4.5% of non-China spend and 67% of net growth." That's a big number; but not the shocker. Per slide 150, "Roblox's quarterly engagement is now as large as that of Steam, PlayStation, and Fortnite combined," and it's even challenging streaming titan Netflix for total hours of use.

Grow a Garden, an idle game where you buy seeds and harvest crops, currently has more engagement over a ten-month average than all of Blizzard's games (World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, and Hearthstone), while Steal a Brainrot and 99 Nights in the Forest beat out Valve's titanic Dota 2, which consistently ranks as one of Steam's most-played charts. Developers of UGC Roblox games are, apparently, taking home over $1.5 billion per year, up more than 70% year on year. That, my friends, is absolutely terrifying.

There are, of course, a lot of positives here. Roblox proves that there is growth to be had, and while the same five games continue to dominate, we're seeing more increased variety elsewhere. Certainly, new PC games only making up 14% of player hours on Steam is worrying (especially given the inclusion of CoD and yearly sports games), but perhaps that'll encourage some much-needed innovation at the triple-A level.

It's pretty easy to get all doom and gloom: as a writer who watches colleagues across the industry get laid off almost daily, it's a pretty harrowing time. But, if GTA 6 really does save us all, I think we'll come out of the other end with new games that are truly exciting.