According to Newzoo, the duration of playtime for free-to-play games remains largely unchanged while gacha RPGs contribute to the expansion of the PC gaming market

Image credit: Hoyoverse, Hotta Studio. Left to right: Zenless Zone Zero, Neverness To Everness, Genshin Impact, Tower of Fantasy, Honkai Star Rail

A Newzoo report counters the belief that the free-to-play (F2P) model is on the decline, stating, "F2P is not dying."

The research leverages data from Newzoo's Game Performance Monitor, analyzing engagement for PC and consoles across 37 regions, though not including China, India, or mobile markets. The results show that from 2021 to 2025, F2P's playtime share decreased by 2.9 percentage points to 29.3%, although total hours played remained stable.

The dip is mainly ascribed to the rising popularity of segments such as premium games and platforms like Roblox. While playtime for F2P games on PC increased, their share experienced a drop. Conversely, F2P console playtime saw a reduction, particularly among well-established live-service games. Launch peaks occurred in 2017 with 36 titles, but the yearly average number of new F2P live-service games has since fallen by 31% from 21.3 titles between 2020 and 2022, down to 14.7 from 2023 to 2025, even though the overall industry saw more game launches.

This decline is attributed to factors like mounting development costs, elevated risks, and the competition from already popular titles, which have made it tougher for new games to make their mark in the F2P live-service arena.

The report reveals a decrease in revenue concentration among the top five F2P titles; their collective console share diminished from 79% in 2021 to 72% in 2025, and from 68% to 65% on PC across the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.

Gacha mechanics, which involve progression-based loot box monetization, have emerged as a notable growth area for F2P on PC. The number of significant gacha titles on both PC and consoles is projected to reach 17 by 2025, up from three in 2021. PC playtime for gacha games increased by 92% from 2021 to 2025, accumulating an additional 864 million hours. Despite experiencing declines in two years, console gacha games managed to gain 85 million hours during the same period.

The RPG genre remains the sole F2P category to boost its share across both platforms. On PC, the RPG slice of F2P playtime grew by 5.3 percentage points, reaching 14.3%. Titles like Wuthering Waves, Honkai: Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero collectively contributed 1.1 billion hours by 2025. On consoles, RPGs' share increased slightly from 10.0% to 10.3% with titles such as Zenless Zone Zero, Wuthering Waves, and Honkai: Star Rail gaining traction, though Genshin Impact saw a drop.

Newzoo notes that gacha's expansion comes from players shifting within the category. Despite this, the revenue growth is not keeping pace with engagement, signaling "a widening gap between engagement and monetization."

New entries in Newzoo's Top 20 revenue charts for August included EA Sports Madden NFL 27 at the No. 2 spot on consoles and Big Walk by House House reaching No. 3 on PC.