Social gaming is expected to have its biggest year yet in 2025.
Last year was a strange year for gaming (and that’s probably an understatement).
Global inflation had a huge impact on customer spending, leading to a huge drop in console sales. At the same time, mass layoffs swept across companies like Microsoft and Sony, with the usual “cutting costs” motto put out into the media. And the games themselves last year just weren’t that good, which has been the case for a while now. Ever since COVID-19, gamers have been complaining about buggy launches, microtransactions, oversaturation, and more, with most of their complaints being pretty legitimate. If any of last year’s games was to sum this up, too, it would be Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, a game that should have been a smash-hit but turned into one of the biggest video game flops of all time.
But with all the negativity that currently surrounds the gaming industry, there’s one shining light: social gaming. This ever-growing niche continues to attract millions of gamers from around the world, helping to keep them engaged across PC, console, and mobile (iOS, Android) devices. If it wasn’t for social gaming and everything it encompasses, the gaming industry would be in even more trouble than it currently is. Simply put, until gaming can get back on track and regain the trust of its long-time consumers, all signs point to the social gaming sector doing a large amount of carrying.
So, what exactly can you expect from social gaming in 2025? The first thing is a lot of growth. On top of this, the explosion of social games is likely to continue, Discord will remain the central space for social interaction amongst gamers, and the highly controversial adoption of AI by game developers could lead to a more personalized experience for today’s social gamers. All of this and more is covered in detail right here.
The Social Gaming Set to Boom Between 2025 and 2032
Although recent news for the wider gaming industry has been bleak, the social gaming market is booming. Between 2025 and 2030, Maximize Market Research reports that the market will experience accelerated growth until reaching a value of $89.13billion by the time 2030 wraps up, with this growth mainly being driven by Gen Z and Millenials. This shouldn’t come as too much of a shock, as younger generations have consistently stated they use gaming as a way to connect with friends and other people. Really, using social video games as a way to connect is a no-brainer from their perspective, especially now that these types of games are available (often as free-to--play games) across all of the major platforms.
Social Games Are One of the Hottest Trends
One of the main drivers behind the increase in social gaming over recent years has been the explosion of social games. In a nutshell, they’re a new type of online games where players are encouraged to connect, compete against each other, and socialize. It’s the exact opposite of traditional online games, where the focus is on winning money and nothing else.
- Social games use virtual currencies called Gold Coins and Sweeps Coins
- Climbable leaderboards, weekly tournaments, and awards are all part of the experience
- Collecting enough Sweeps Coins allows you to redeem prizes like cash transfers, cryptocurrencies, and gift cards
Because social games are such a major hit, it’s led to popular sites like Stake.us and WOW Vegas attracting millions of sign-ups. There’s even a growing belief now that social games could become the standard norm, as a large chunk of today’s players simply don’t want to bet real money anymore. Instead, their priority is connecting with other like-minded players while still getting to enjoy the gameplay of the casino games themselves. Smartly, social games have made all of their games free-to-play, ultimately allowing them to achieve explosive market growth.
Gamers Will Keep Joining New Communities
A recent report by Twitch found that 89% of gamers agree that gaming allows them to connect with others that share similar interests. On top of this, 81% of respondents also reported that gaming has allowed them to create friendships that they wouldn’t have been able to do in real life. What this tells us is that so many of today’s gamers are relying on the social gaming niche to meet other people and feel part of a wider community, which is one of the most obvious indicator that the growth of the social gaming industry is not going to slow down. Essentially, what we’re now seeing is lots of communities being formed across the games themselves along with streaming platforms like Twitch and Kick, where millions of people regularly come together to chat with each other in streams. And with real-world socialising experiencing a sharp decline, 2025 looks set to be another year where countless people use video games (and streaming platforms) as their third spaces.
Discord’s Dominance Will Continue
Discord is one of the most popular apps that gamers use to communicate off-platform. Impressively, Discord is expected to hit 689 million users by the end of 2025, which is another highlighter of just how important social gaming has become. The sole purpose of Discord is to allow gamers to hang out in new communities and make friends, so the fact that it’s achieved over half a billion users (and counting) shows just how important the social aspect of gaming has become. Now, when people play together online with others they know, they’ll commonly use Discord to send chat messages or host group video calls so that everyone can be connected while playing the game itself. Without Discord, social gaming simply wouldn’t be as powerful as it currently is — and the app will continue to drive this gaming niche forward in 2025 and beyond.
Demand for Cross-Platform Play Will Remain High
Over the past decade, we’ve seen a huge transition take place in the gaming industry. Not that long ago, there were only a handful of games that were cross-play. Now, though, a large bulk of today’s games have incorporated cross-play, allowing gamers from PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and mobile to play online together even though they’re on different platforms. What’s great about this is that it’s encouraged large player bases to get connected while also ensuring a longer lifespan for games, too. After all, today’s gamers are now more incentivised to keep playing because of the simple fact that online lobbies are fuller and more entertaining. This is also why the demand for cross-platform will remain high in 2025 as social gaming continues to skyrocket, with it now being a general expectation for games to come with this feature.
The Metaverse and a Revolutionized Social Gaming Experience
The metaverse looks set to take it to another level and change how we game forever. As of right now, the standard gaming format is what it’s always been: you have some type of controller, watch the screen in front of you, and communicate with other people via microphone chat or text chat. With the metaverse, though, the line between gaming and reality is being blurred in a really creative way. The way it works is that you wear a Virtual Reality (VR) headset that quite literally transports you to a digital world where it feels like you’re actually inside it, as seen in popular metaverse games like Rec Room and Horizon Worlds. Once you’re in these worlds, it’s just like real life. And as Metaverse games start to capture more attention by solidifying themselves in the mainstream, it will likely lead to an even bigger surge in social gaming that looks completely different to what we’re traditionally used to.
Summary
The gaming industry is going through a rocky patch. Everybody knows this. But the industry will bounce back and this will ultimately be down to the social gaming market. Demand for social gaming is still sky-high, social games are attracting thousands of new sign-ups every day, and community platforms like Twitch and Discord continue to connect gamers together as they search to be part of a wider community. As long as game quality remains high and publishers continue to adopt the highly popular free-to-download model, all signs points to the social gaming market reaching heights it’s never been to before, with 2025 serving as yet another successful year for this highly popular niche.
