Free-to-play playtime broadly flat as gacha RPGs drive PC growth, says Newzoo

A Newzoo report says free-to-play is not dying, with its share of playtime falling 2.9 percentage points to 29.3% between 2021 and 2025 while absolute hours remained broadly flat. Annual F2P live-service launches on PC and console fell 31%, from an average of 21.3 titles in 2020-2022 to 14.7 in 2023-2025. Gacha has become the main area of F2P growth on PC, with 17 major gacha titles in 2025 versus three in 2021 and PC gacha playtime up 92%.