Legacy IPs continue to dominate PC gaming new top 20 data shows

The games industry analysts at NewZoo have revealed the top 20 most-played PC games of 2025, showing that the majority of playtime is concentrated across a select few long-running IPs like Counter Strike, Diablo, WoW, Call of Duty and more. 

We are currently living in an age where every publisher is trying to crack the live-service model, with one big long-running game generating consistent recurring income that vastly outweighs the kind of money made by a typical single-player game. However, as we've seen more recently, these types of games are becoming increasingly risky to release, with games like Babylon's Fall, Rumbleverse, Suicide Squad, Concord and Highguard all shutting down within a year of release.

As the NewZoo data shows, the top 20 most-played PC games is heavily concentrated on legacy franchises. Unfortunately, their resources website is currently down, so I can't link directly to the study, but Insider Gaming managed to grab it beforehand. Below is the full top 20, along with the percentage of overall playtime each game has earned:

1. Roblox – 9.7%
2. Counter-Strike 2 – 7%
3. League of Legends – 6.9%
4. Minecraft – 6.3%
5. Fortnite – 4.3%
6. Dota 2 – 3.6%
7. Valorant – 3.2%
8. World of Warcraft (retail) – 2.4%
9. The Sims 4 – 2.3%
10. Call of Duty – 1.8%
11. Escape from Tarkov – 1.7%
12. Overwatch 2 – 1.5%
13. Marvel Rivals – 1.2%
14. PUBG Battlegrounds – 1.1%
15. World of Warcraft Classic – 1%
16. Grand Theft Auto V – 1%
17. Diablo 4 – 1%
18. Wuthering Waves – 0.9%
19. Genshin Impact – 0.9%
20. Apex Legends – 0.9%

There are just a few genuinely ‘new IP' on the list, Games like PUBG and Apex Legends may not count, as they were preceded by a highly popular mod beforehand in the case of PUBG, and Apex Legends was preceded by the fantastic Titanfall games. Even World of Warcraft had a good fan base built up before launching in 2004 thanks to the prior Warcraft RTS games. Dota 2 famously came to be after starting out as a popular Warcraft mod as well.

That leaves us with just a handful of genuinely brand-new IP on the list, including the likes of Fortnite, Valorant, Escape from Tarkov, Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves and Minecraft. These account for less than 30% of the most-played titles and the majority of them had launched well before the current live-service development trend across the games industry.

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KitGuru Says: If you need your game to be a top 20 title in order to keep supporting it, then you are likely better off just not going down the live service route at all. As we've seen with Highguard, Concord and Babylon's Fall, having a big budget does not guarantee you any level of success in this saturated market. 

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