The Top 20 Gaming Trends of 2025

Young adults are increasingly gaming as a way to make friends

Gaming has become a top social activity for Gen Z and Gen Y, with nearly half of young adults reporting they made long-term friends while gaming. And 40% of Gen Z and Millennials reported socializing more in video games than in person. The rise of online multiplayer games and social platforms like Discord has taken things even further, making gaming an even more interactive and communal experience.

Esports growth - expansion of esports in mainstream sports and media

Esports has exploded into mainstream culture, with global audiences surpassing 300 million. This surge is driven by increased online streaming, easier access to gaming technology, and more tournaments, similar to trends seen across the wider sports industry. Major media networks and sports brands are now investing in esports, recognizing its potential to capture and engage younger demographics who prefer interactive and on-demand entertainment.

Rise of competitive gaming creates an ecosystem of gameplay training software

The rise of competitive gaming is part of a larger wave in sports trends, creating two types of gaming culture. Some players just want to relax and have a good time, while others want to excel competitively. As games get more challenging, and players refine their techniques, it gets harder and harder to leave the first group and join the second.

Even for casual players, the required skill level is rising. Gen Y treats video games the way an older generation treated golf: as a way to socialize while also competing. This has led to a profusion of companies that offer training and analytics to help players build up their skills.

Refrag is popular in this space, focusing on improving players' skills in a specific version of Counterstrike. Counterstrike is one game of many, and far less popular than games like Fortnite, indicating that this is a large market with room for more participants.

Gamers increasingly investing larger sums into home gaming setups and on products that make the experience more comfortable

As gaming increasingly competes for time with other activities like television, social drinking, and even sex (according to the CDC Youth Risk Behavior Data), gaming products have all seen rising sales, from gaming chairs, to high-refresh-rate monitors, gaming mice, LED keyboards, and more.

Gamers have also started buying comfort-focused items like gaming pillows, reflecting larger shifts in furniture design.

In-game voice customization on the rise as players modify their real voices for anonymity or to hide their age or gender

For years, video games have let players customize their character’s looks. But if they chat with other players during the game using services like Steam (over 100M monthly active users), they still have their real-world voice. For a number of reasons, gamers are increasingly using products like VoiceMod to customize their voice the same way for in-game chat.

Many freemium products get caught in a classic pricing paradox where total value is zero sum so the more value you give up front to free users, the less there is to give to paid users. But Voicemod creatively gets around this.

They offer a free version of the product, which includes a set of voice modifications—but they rotate which ones are available every week. It’s free to try out identities, but costs money to keep the one you like. It’s a form of price-discrimination; VoiceMod doesn’t bother selling to people who want to use a funny voice for a prank call, but does want subscription revenue from anyone who wants to choose their online identity.

This idea of renting an identity is similar to what’s seen in broader fashion & apparel trends, where maintaining style or appearance requires continuous spending. Cosmetics might be the most extreme example: you can use samples to look a certain way, but you have to make continuous purchases to keep your chosen appearance.

Cloud gaming accelerates as global population becomes more connected

While the global population is becoming increasingly internet connected – there are 5.56 billion internet users as of 2025 – many are still accessing the internet though with just a phone, no desktop, and certainly no gaming console.

With rising internet speeds, wider mobile adoption, and better cloud computing technology, cloud gaming is benefiting from bigger changes happening in the technology sector.

Gaming companies are particularly keen on this as the lower barrier to entry means a larger gaming market.

Gaming earbuds are increasingly favored by professional streamers for their less obtrusive appearance compared to bulky over-ear headphones

Gaming earbuds represent the divergence of two separate trends: some people game to relax, and some people game to win.

Sites like Twitch have made it possible for gamers to earn a full-time living by playing video games and chatting with their audience. While some of these players are skilled, their role is not just to demonstrate elite gameplay; it's also to keep the audience engaged and entertained, whether or not the game itself is interesting. For these players, an important part of their work is their physical appearance, and they often opt for gaming earbuds, as opposed to more bulky over-ear headphones, as a way to look better while staying engaged with the game.

This also affects more than just professional streamers, as gaming is increasingly used as a way to socialize and how you look when you socialize—even when gaming—is sometimes important to gamers.

Earbuds are a category that has rapidly grown in popularity in the last few years, and as demand rises, there’s often pull from the market to offer niche-focused variants. In addition to gaming earbuds, there are earbuds designed for swimming, earbuds for sleep, even earbuds designed for pets. Since each of these products is optimized for one specific use case, it’s often suboptimal for others—a great set of noise-cancelling earbuds, for example, is dangerous while driving. Meanwhile, this same proliferation makes users more sensitive to price and features; no one wants to overpay for elements that don't benefit them, and gamers in particular are sensitive to the "gamer tax"—the fact that some high-performance products have a higher price point when targeting gamers.

Gamers seeking out gaming-specific supplements

Fitness wasn’t always popular. The Olympics inspired a running surge in the 1970s. In the 1980s, stationary bikes first started making their way into gyms everywhere. And the release of Jane Fonda’s Workout exercise videos in 1982 is largely credited with kickstarting aerobics’ popularity and establishing one of the first modern fitness trends. In the grand scheme of things, the commercialization of fitness and its developments is a relatively recent phenomena.

As the fitness industry boomed, everything from supplements to courses took off and turned into a massive industry. The sports nutrition market alone clocked in at a whopping $16.5B in 2020.

Today, gaming is a massive and growing market - some estimates size the gaming market as even bigger than the movie business and North American sports put together. Another way to look at it: Top-grossing games earn $10B+ while top-grossing movies earn low billions. Many argue too that the gaming industry is still early in its days of commercialization and, as the space gets more commercialized, gamers are increasingly looking for real life powerups.

This has created a growing category of products and brands – everything from finger sleeves which are like sweatbands for gamers’ fingers to emerging brands like GamerSupps, Gamerbulk, and G Fuel which sell what is essentially caffeine for gamers. Sometimes the biggest categories start out as a new take on an old product.

And while the gaming market is bigger – financially speaking – than most people realize, it’s also broader demographically. Women make up 46% of U.S. gamers and almost 40% of gamers are older than 35.

Gaming hardware companies are adding lights and visual effects to products to encourage photo sharing and boost sales

By building computer parts that emphasize visual effects, companies are able to outsource much of their marketing efforts through the sheer number of consumers posting photos of their photogenic PC setup online.

This is the case with RGB fans. The gaming PC subculture prizes two things: computers that run incredibly fast and computers that look cool. RGB speakers and PCs have built in LED illumination, which light up the computer case with colorful patterns while the computer is running. These fans are no more effective, but are more expensive.

Similar products, but with an RGB take, are also growing: everything from keyboards to motherboards, cases, and even mousepads.

In what is more nuanced of strategy than it may initially seem, Corsair, a computer peripherals maker that pioneered RGB fans, has continuously launched more elaborate RGB fans. They've released new fans with more individual lights and lights on more parts of the fan, allowing users to display increasingly complicated patterns. As part of the strategy, they also offer a program for selecting and customizing light programs. By giving users software whose features can only be used with the latest hardware, Corsair is reusing some of the PC industry's playbook: faster computers led to more complicated software, and more complicated software made older computers obsolete.