Porn and gambling win the "war for attention" of video game fans - research

Increasingly, on Friday evenings, users are choosing betting, crypto trading, or social services over a new game.

Consulting company Epyllion has presented a large-scale 164-page report on the state of the gaming industry. According to the research, video games are gradually losing the "war for attention" of users to other types of digital entertainment — from gambling services and cryptocurrencies to short videos and adult content.

In the section with the telling title "Video Games are losing the attention war in the Major Market 8," analysts compared consumer spending before and after the pandemic in eight key regions: the USA, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, and Italy. Before COVID-19, these countries accounted for more than 60% of global spending on video games.

After the pandemic, almost all of these regions recorded a decrease in audience. In the USA, from 2.5 to 4 percentage points of players stopped playing. The Canadian trade association reports that approximately one in six gamers who played before the pandemic have not returned to gaming.

The decrease in engagement led to a drop in spending. In the USA, spending on PC and console games decreased by 8% compared to 2020–2021 — this is about $2.3 billion. The growth of the mobile segment since 2025 has practically stopped, although compared to 2020, it is still more than 12% and is already ahead of consoles in terms of spending.

Total spending on console and PC games in the "big eight" decreased by $4.8 billion, and the mobile segment lost another $2.3 billion. At the same time, five of the eight markets demonstrate record overall spending figures — but the money is not going into traditional games. For example, the Roblox platform provided 67% of the industry's net growth, according to the report.

The authors of the report emphasize that the problem is not that players are massively "exchanging" AAA releases for a subscription or a console for short videos. It is about a gradual redistribution of time and money. Increasingly, on Friday evenings, users are choosing betting, crypto trading, or social services over a new game.