Cheap co-op games are topping Steam's charts
Small teams, low prices, social play, built to be watched. The clearest prototype of what comes next.
Trends · updated 20 October 2026
What are the biggest trends in the video game industry in 2026?
Current trends influencing the future of video games, from the emergent to the perennial.
- Cheap co-op games are topping Steam's chartsSmall teams, low prices, social play, built to be watched. The clearest prototype of what comes next.
- Platforms are paying players to build their gamesPlayers as producers. Volatile, but pointing the right way.
- Instant games are growing outside the app storesCheap, social games that need no store. China shows the scale, the West the start.
- Players are taking finished games apart and rebuilding themPlayers as producers, remaking games that already exist. The rights stay with the publishers.
- Game platforms are letting players make games by typing a promptPlayers as producers with no craft barrier. A new place games come from, not a feature inside the old ones.
Trends defining gaming in 2026
The Street Finds Its Own Uses: Corporations own the money but it's players who are remixing the culture
In 2026 the ten biggest companies take more than half of all publishing revenue, but the culture is happening somewhere else: Friendslop games top Steam's charts, while players decompile games and rebuild them or simply type new ones into existence. Meanwhile the corporations who bet on what the culture should be keep losing. Live service, subscriptions and the metaverse have all stalled, and 83% of players say they don't want AI-written dialogue.
None of that means the old model is gone. Studios are still cutting jobs, investors have pulled out, and fewer people play in the countries that used to drive the growth. But it's no longer where the new ideas come from.
This page maps 49 gaming trends across three horizons. Each trend links to the sources behind it, and the data we use is freely available on the site. We revise trends as things move. Think we've got one wrong? Send us a source.
Updated 20 October 202649 trends6 categories4 stagesData CC BY 4.0
All 49 trends
The Three Horizons
Dot color = directory stageEmergingDominantPerennialReceding
Hover a dot to read it. Click to jump to its entry.
Tap a horizon to see its trends.
The current system, running down
Bigger budgets, rich-market growth and games as a service. These trends are its symptoms.
The clearest symptom of the pandemic-era model unwinding.
Open full trendThe Western growth engine this system was built on has stalled.
Open full trendThe growth moved to a market Western publishers can barely reach.
Open full trendThe flagship bet of this system, now failing more often than it hits.
Open full trendCapital is leaving the old model before a new one is proven.
Open full trendPaying to acquire players is hitting diminishing returns.
Open full trendThe hardware half of that squeeze, priced by a market games do not control.
Open full trendThe premium console bundle is squeezed from both sides.
Open full trendThe old coverage and discovery layer is hollowing out.
Open full trend
- Emerging
- Dominant
- Perennial
- Receding
How to read this chart
The Three Horizons depict a picture of change in video games as an interplay of three horizons. Horizon 1 (H1) is the currently dominant but failing system that declines over time as it loses its fit with a changing environment. Horizon 3 (H3) is a possible future state that is aligned to the changing environment. Horizon 2 (H2) is the current and turbulent intermediate space of innovations, some of which are 'captured' by H1 to prop it up and extend its lifespan, and some of which are genuinely disruptive and create space for a radically different kind of system to emerge.
The horizon placements are an editorial reading using Bill Sharpe's Three Horizons framework.
H1
The current system, running down
9 trendsBigger budgets, rich-market growth and games as a service. These trends are its symptoms.
Games companies are still cutting jobs
The clearest symptom of the pandemic-era model unwinding.
Rich markets are losing players, and growth has moved elsewhere
The Western growth engine this system was built on has stalled.
China's growth is going to Chinese-made games
The growth moved to a market Western publishers can barely reach.
Publishers are retreating from live-service games
The flagship bet of this system, now failing more often than it hits.
Investors are pulling money out of studios
Capital is leaving the old model before a new one is proven.
Mobile games are struggling to find new players
Paying to acquire players is hitting diminishing returns.
AI data centers are taking the memory games hardware needs
The hardware half of that squeeze, priced by a market games do not control.
Game prices are stalling as hardware prices climb
The premium console bundle is squeezed from both sides.
Games media is consolidating and shrinking
The old coverage and discovery layer is hollowing out.
H2
The transition
25 trendsWhere the old model is being fought over. Courts, regulators and unions are rewriting the rules, and it is not yet clear who that favors. More of these moves buy the old model time, while some of the industry's big bets have already stalled.
Makes room for H3
Shifts that already favor smaller, social, creator-made play.
Streamers are spreading across several platforms
Discovery follows creators, wherever they are.
Steam's glut is making discovery the hard part
Abundance shifts power from making games to getting them found.
Governments are paying for games as culture and industry
Grants reach new teams, while credits mostly reward the biggest productions.
Small studios are winning the top awards and selling millions
Acclaim and margins without a blockbuster budget. The sales charts still belong to the franchises.
Rewriting the rules
Courts, regulators, unions and store policies changing the terms. Who gains is still open.
Apple and Google are being forced to open their stores
Six years of lawsuits have cut the platform tax by a few points. So far Apple and Google are containing the rest.
Game workers are winning union contracts
Contracts now set terms for layoffs and AI inside big studios. Small teams and creators are outside them.
Creative workers are fighting over AI consent and disclosure
Writes the rules any AI-native future will have to follow.
Developers are turning against generative AI
Contested. It slows careless adoption and steers AI toward consented, disclosed uses.
Regulators are forcing child-safety changes on platforms
Forces identity and safety infrastructure onto open, player-built platforms.
India has outlawed games played for money
A natural experiment: regulation can delete a whole category overnight.
EU consumer authorities are going after how games sell currency
This is consumer law that reaches past the store's cut of the sale to address the value of in-game currencies themselves. Nothing is compelled yet.
Prolongs H1
Incumbents and new money keeping the big-budget, live-service model going.
The biggest games companies are taking a growing share of the money
The largest firms pulling ahead, mostly by growing rather than buying.
Saudi state money is buying major games companies
Patron capital extends the old model rather than changing it, and the debt makes it more fragile.
Publishers are reviving dormant franchises
Risk minimization: familiar names in place of new bets.
Game companies are putting their own games on screen
Familiar characters earning again on screen. Incumbents getting more from what they already own.
Console makers are keeping games exclusive again
Platform holders reaching back for an old lever.
Mobile live events are converging on one playbook
Optimizing the existing model, not inventing a new one.
AI teammates are reaching players in short tests
Tested inside Fortnite and PUBG, where it fills a team. Nothing is a permanent feature yet.
Chinese studios are trying to build premium global franchises
New studios betting on the big-budget model, and meeting its costs.
Gambling money is moving into games and the platforms around them
Betting money propping up teams, streamers and platforms, until regulators step in.
Mobile publishers are moving payments to their own web shops
The same publishers keep the same games and more of each sale.
Stalled bets
Transitions the industry bet on that plateaued or faded.
Esports is running on Saudi money
A transition that stalled, kept alive by a patron.
Game subscriptions are stalling
The one-fee-for-everything bet. Subscribers stalled well short of plan, and prices rose instead.
Investors are abandoning blockchain games
The transition that never delivered. Worth keeping as a cautionary pattern.
Handheld gaming PCs are losing momentum
A real form factor that plateaued. SteamOS may still carry the idea forward.
H3
The emerging future
5 trendsFeatured at the top of the page.
Cheap co-op games are topping Steam's charts
Small teams, low prices, social play, built to be watched. The clearest prototype of what comes next.
Platforms are paying players to build their games
Players as producers. Volatile, but pointing the right way.
Instant games are growing outside the app stores
Cheap, social games that need no store. China shows the scale, the West the start.
Players are taking finished games apart and rebuilding them
Players as producers, remaking games that already exist. The rights stay with the publishers.
Game platforms are letting players make games by typing a prompt
Players as producers with no craft barrier. A new place games come from, not a feature inside the old ones.
Perennial
Perennial ground
10 trendsPressures that never go away. They sit under the curves because every horizon has to answer them.
Old games take most of players' time
The structural fact the current system fights and the next one designs around.
Older players are a large audience the industry overlooks
The biggest overlooked audience. They still pay full price for single-player games, and most play alone.
Young people are keeping their friendships going inside games
A standing habit. Young people meet their friends in games, so every rule about chat reaches their friendships.
Campaigners are pressing to keep sold games playable
Ownership pressure on live service, and a value the next model can adopt.
Players are using review scores as a protest vote
Players' standing veto, and it applies across every horizon.
Regulators are age-gating loot boxes
A recurring regulatory cycle that follows monetization wherever it goes.
Governments are weighing legal caps on children's playtime
Comes back every time a new worry about children and screens arrives.
Children's privacy rules are nudging games toward checking every player's age
The paradox that keeps returning: less data about children means more checks on everyone.
Problem-gaming research is shifting from hours to compulsion
A long-running debate whose unit of measure is finally changing.
China is using game approvals as a policy dial
A standing lever the state turns up and down.