PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now

The G-Man, The Heavy and Widowmaker hanging out
(Image credit: Future)

Ben Porter, director at the consultancy firm NewZoo, is giving a GDC talk this week that picks out some highlights from the firm's annual look at the state of the games industry. PC Gamer was fortunate enough to get a sneak peek at his slides, and one of the takeaways is that PC gaming is bigger than ever: And we love to play old games.

The results are extrapolated from a yearly in-depth survey of 73,000 players, alongside data from over 10,000 games. From this NewZoo says that the PC market is growing at a steady rate, with an estimated 873.5 million players in 2023 rising to 907.5 million in 2024.

I know you'll all like this one: that handily beats out the console audience, of whom there were an estimated 653.1 million in 2024.

And the data further shows, in NewZoo's own words, that these 908 million "PC players are heavily skewed towards older, live service games."

The data shows that from January 2024 to December 2024, 67% of player hours on PC were spent on a game that was six or more years old. A further 25% of player hours were spent on games that were two to five years old, and the remaining 8% of time was spent on games that are less than two years old.

NewZoo's data further breaks down that 67% chunk. Within this:

  • 7.1% of the total hours spent were on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive / Counter-Strike 2
  • 6.4% were in League of Legends
  • 6.2% were in Roblox
  • 5.8% were in Dota 2
  • 5.4% were in Fortnite

Obviously we could split hairs here: Counter-Strike 2 only released last year, so what's it doing in this category? I can see the argument, because it is essentially a ground-up remake of 2012's CS:GO, which itself could be considered a remake of 2000's Counter-Strike.

But whether we accept CS2's presence or otherwise, the general picture doesn't change. PC players are overwhelmingly spending their time on older games: 92% of our time goes into games that are more than two years old.

Counter-Strike 2

(Image credit: Valve)

As a brief aside, if you ever wonder why publishers are so obsessed with making live service games, and why so many of them fail, this gives you both answers. Get it right and a live service game is a golden goose, a forever money machine. Why do new ones fall flat? Because by-and-large the audience already likes what it likes.

This is in some ways not surprising, and reflects the size and scale of the PC gaming market. Not everyone is playing on the latest hardware, or has the money to constantly buy the newest titles, but PC as a platform offers endless ways to play for 'free' (the five titles that NewZoo picked out as dominating playtime are all F2P) alongside regular opportunities to pick up older titles for a pittance.

The interesting thing is, as someone who does this for a living, it shows the disconnect between consumer interests and much of the industry coverage, which tend to skew towards the latest hot game or big disaster. But that's not being reflected in PC gamers' general playing habits where, much like comfort food, we tend to have favourite older titles and stick with them.

Rich Stanton
Senior Editor

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.

Read more
Steam logo
Only 15% of all Steam users' time was spent playing games released in 2024
TF2 Heavy giving the Bret Rambo thumbs up
New report says PC games are outselling console games, calling PC gaming a 'bright spot' in a troubled industry
Money money money.
Valve tracked 1.7 million Steam users who joined in 2023 to see if they stuck around—they did, and they spent $93 million
TF2 Heavy giving the Bret Rambo thumbs up
'PC development has skyrocketed,' GDC survey finds: 80% of developers are now making games for PC, more than double the number working on PS5 or Xbox games
Valve soldier man on a pc.
2024 was Steam's 'best year ever' of users buying newly released games—but I wouldn't celebrate the end of the forever game era just yet
Thank Goodness You're Here! key art
If 2024 proves anything, it's that mainstream success hasn't made PC gaming any less weird—and thank God for that
Latest in Gaming Industry
Split Fiction trailer still - Zoe and Mio staring into a large pipe
'People like to hate EA, I don't know why': Split Fiction's Josef Fares says he has a good relationship with his publisher, but 'nobody believes' him
The G-Man, The Heavy and Widowmaker hanging out
PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now
Image for
Space Marine 2 CEO puts the boot into the Saints Row team's twitching corpse from his private jet: 'Who's going to fund them for the next game after that disaster?'
Former Treyarch studio co-head and Black Ops 3 director is heading up a new first-party PlayStation studio
Discord Social SDK
Your Discord friends list may soon appear directly in the games you play
Aloy - Horizon
'I feel worried about this art form:' Unsurprisingly, the real Aloy from Horizon isn't a fan of AI Aloy
Latest in News
Larian CEO Swen Vincke brandishes a sword at the camera and smiles.
Larian’s Swen Vincke subtweets anyone still fixated on singleplayer games’ commercial viability: 'They just have to be good'
Machinery tools and equipment,Rolls of galvanized steel for production metal pipes and tubes for industrial ventilation systems in factory.
New super-thin '2D' metal sheets could enable ultra-low power chips and can you guess how they're made? Yup, by squishing stuff really hard
Split Fiction trailer still - Zoe and Mio staring into a large pipe
'People like to hate EA, I don't know why': Split Fiction's Josef Fares says he has a good relationship with his publisher, but 'nobody believes' him
A screenshot from the Silent Hill F reveal trailer, showing a Japanese girl in a school uniform next to a truck
The Silent Hill F system requirements look pretty modest at first but that's only for all my 720p gamers out there
The G-Man, The Heavy and Widowmaker hanging out
PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now
A man holding a gun drives a boat as money flies out the back in GTA Online
Rockstar hornswoggles lapsed GTAO players with $3 million welcome-back offer that actually requires you to spend money to get most of it