2025 Unity Gaming Report

Almost 70% of the devs we surveyed said they try to do more with less. 45% said they’re harnessing efficiency tools to increase productivity, while 24% are squeezing more ROI out of their monetization and live ops budgets.

A fifth of the studios we spoke to reported staying lean to limit their exposure, using strategies like avoiding overhiring (10%) or refusing to take on debt (6%), while 4% said they’re intentionally limiting growth to reduce their vulnerability.

The overwhelming majority (62%) of studios we talked to said their primary strategy is to stretch existing games’ impact through tactics like content updates, deeper market penetration, and platform reach. Another 5% said they planned to double down on successful IPs by developing them into multi-game franchises.

In a curious twist, the next-most popular option was to hedge bets by developing new ideas in different genres, at 23%, while 10% of the studios we surveyed said they planned to continue developing new ideas in the same game genre.

So far, we’ve looked at how studios are mitigating risk on an individual level – but what kinds of changes do they think are needed across the industry?

Devs overwhelmingly pointed to the need for better access to tools and learning resources (51%), more comprehensive, better-integrated tech stacks (55%), and effective AI tools for greater productivity (32%).

On a different note, almost half (44%) of the surveyed devs pointed to a need to broaden game audiences to foster growth, while around a third (33%) suggested that the industry needs more diverse points of sale and payment to reach players.

As we saw in chart 1.3, 44% of devs think broadening their player bases is a crucial growth strategy, and many are already seeing gains in Latin America. 55% of the devs we talked to said it’s the emerging market where they’re already growing most (in terms of player numbers, revenue, and overall sales), with another 38% finding success in Asia, and just 7% naming markets in Africa or the Middle East.

So it’s not surprising that several Latin American countries top the list of emerging markets devs most hope to access, too – Brazil (50%) and Mexico (49%) take the lead, but studios also seem optimistic about the markets in Argentina (31%), Chile (17%), and Colombia (16%). Beyond Latin America, 46% of devs said they’d like to reach the Indian market.

While over half (55%) of the devs we talked to had specific content delivery plans for how they planned to update active productions, 27% said they had no plans and just over 18% were still undecided, with some adding that their post-launch planning hinged on budget limitations.

Multiplayer games still eclipse other setups – 64% of devs report that they’re working on projects with multiplayer features (including couch co-ops), while another 32% are networked single-player games.

Multiplayer development is often considered more complex, and many think it requires the targeted expertise that can only be found in larger teams. But in our conversations with devs at GDC last year, we saw that teams of all sizes are facing the challenges of building multiplayer games head-on.

Somewhat surprisingly, given the format’s reputation for being challenging, we found couch co-op to be more popular among solo or very small studios, with the number of games petering out as studios grow larger.

Unity devs are integrating networked features into a variety of game genres.⁷ Shooters and battle games are the most popular, but studios are creating social experiences in adventure games and platformer or sandbox games at a similar rate.

Of the studios that reported working on multiplayer games, 69% said they’re creating asymmetrical experiences, games where players meet with different objectives, abilities, and gameplay mechanics.

While competitive or combat play are still at the forefront, at 72% combined, devs strongly indicate that there are other kinds of encounters they want to give players. Together, social, cooperative, and lighthearted experiences make up 17% of the kinds of experiences studios want players to have in their games.

Mobile is popular with studios of all kinds. 90% of devs polled say they launched their games on mobile, and this rate is fairly steady across studio sizes.

Console launch rates rise alongside team size: Just 19% of studios with fewer than 10 team members target these platforms, compared to 84% of enterprise studios with 300+ staff.

Building and operating profitable mobile games seems to come more naturally to small teams – 75% of studios with fewer than 10 staff see this as the most lucrative platform, steadily dwindling to less than half for studios of more than 50. This suggests that the first trend this report spoke to – teams staying nimble as a strategic hedge against adversity – may be paying off for mobile developers.

On the flip side, devs in big studios say the payout is higher in consoles. 43% see this as gaming’s most moneymaking platform, versus just 6% of small studios. This suggests an economy of scale occurs for closed console development – maybe studios just have to be big enough to win in that space.

It’s worth noting that this rate is much higher for smaller studios of 10 or less, where 29% express an interest in developing web games.

While only 11% of the devs we spoke to said they were thinking about developing for web, those who were opting in wanted to do it soon – 81% said they’re considering developing or porting a game for web within the next 18 months, and 14% were planning on it in the next six.

Web games are the original quick and easy dev project (remember Flash and *gulp* Silverlight?), but the latest iterations built on WebGPU and other solutions are still finding their footing among studios. Asked why, devs cited the need for better browser support and more powerful dev tech, but they also pointed to the need for a better marketplace and monetization pathway.

The median build size of made with Unity games has been steadily increasing. While the median game was only slightly over 100 MB in 2022, that figure’s grown by nearly 67% in just two years.

Developers working on large-scale games (open world, sandbox, or with large levels) say they’re targeting PC and console platforms, suggesting they may not perceive mobile or web as realistic platforms for large-scale games.

Open world is the most popular style of large-scale game environment across platforms, but it’s worth noting that sandbox games make up an impressive 20% of large-scale games on PC for the devs we talked to at Gamescom last year.

While it’s no surprise that performance fundamentals are a top concern – 35% of the devs we spoke to identify smooth, high-performance play as their top concern, while another 11% pointed to performance metrics – quantity of content lands in second.

17% of devs said the number of missions or levels in the game was their primary concern, suggesting that giving players a sense of value by providing enough material to play through is of paramount importance.

Just 2% of devs we surveyed have seen a decrease in playtime, while only 10% of the studios we spoke to reported flat numbers. In short, playtimes are overwhelmingly on the rise for the majority of devs.

The devs we spoke to are harnessing a lot of live ops and other tactics to stimulate players’ interest in their games, with daily rewards or missions (77%) and achievements or challenges (76%) taking top spots. Many (24%) also reported out-of-game strategies like push notifications, web activity, Discord or Reddit engagement, or companion apps as a sound strategy to keep players’ attention, and multiplayer features like player vs player mode (48%), leaderboards (33%), and social features (26%)

The strong showing across these tactics support the high-level trend that devs are giving players more and more content, novelty, and features to add value to their games and retain players longer in this competitive market.

While headlines about the economy of the gaming industry are often stark, devs say their main challenges are coming from inside the house: Internal organizational issues far outweigh external factors as chief concerns among the devs we surveyed.

21% identified long lag times exploring tech as the biggest blocker – a cruel irony of trying to stay ahead of the curve is that you can waste a lot of time trying to find it, and long R&D times testing out new tech can be a huge drain on devs’ most precious resource: time. Another 20% pointed to hurdles keeping projects in scope and on track. Meanwhile, difficulties funding and marketing games hovered near 5-6% each, while finding a unique game concept landed a bit higher, with 18% of devs naming this as a primary obstacle.

What’s more, as games and gameworlds grow larger, so do the challenges of keeping assets organized and teams on track, suggesting that these challenges may grow alongside games.

While studios may be looking for better organizational tools, live ops services lead the solutions that Unity devs turn to in their day-to-day work. Looking specifically at Unity Editor projects across genres and platforms, over 40% of projects attach third-party or Unity services, with live game features for ads, data management, analytics, and payment software being the most popular add-ons.⁹

2023 was really the year AI applications broke into the mainstream. After ChatGPT hit the market, generative AI tools were suddenly everywhere, and a lot of game developers and other creators seemed apprehensive at first – but today, 79% of devs polled report feeling positive about using AI in gaming, while a mere 5% are apprehensive.

Looking at this year’s survey results alongside the survey results included in last year’s report, it’s intriguing to note just how little these figures have changed. Devs report picking up AI tools at a similar rate to last year, but AI applications and use cases have matured considerably in the interim. They’ve grown faster and are better trained, and we as users have honed our ability to guide generative AI toward desired results as AI use has grown normalized.

Since AI tool use is so much more widespread a year later, the slight downtick in several categories – adaptive difficulty, generative art, and writing or narrative design – is striking. It may suggest that devs may be less interested in exploring AI tools in creative or problem-solving dimensions of game development, possibly because they’ve tested these use cases and haven’t been leveraging strong concerns there. Meanwhile, AI use for automated playtesting, moderating in-game comms, and improving code have risen, implying that AI tools (so far) are most effectively used in support capacities, rather than generating original work.

While game developers seem to have high hopes for the time-saving potential for AI, they seem to be sticking with classic, battle-tested dev ops tools that streamline how they work. Mostly, they report using these tools to accelerate production by imposing order (32% combining quicker releases and efficiency replies), improve code quality and safety (26%), and scale process (13%).

Conclusion

Last year’s report showed how studios dealt with economic headwinds by squeezing more value out of their work. The trends indexed developer strategies like adopting AI tools to save time, diversifying revenue strategies, shipping games to more platforms, prioritizing multiplayer games, and building stronger brands to extend players’ engagement and loyalty. With this blueprint, devs aimed to stretch resources and maximize their ROI by finding new ways to save time and increase their games’ reach.

This year, many of the same market forces are in play, but studios’ responses to them have shifted slightly. As deep cuts, layoffs, and studio closures continue, the developers we spoke to seem to be putting safety first with strategies that limit their exposure to risk: they’re staying small and nimble; diversifying the types of multiplayer game they build; prioritizing trusted platforms; bringing players bigger worlds and more content; and they’re turning to time-saving tools – but cautiously.

These five trends offer a snapshot of what studios are approaching their work in 2025 – but of course good plans need to be forward-looking. So what comes next?

Devs forecast that live service games will continue to grow in popularity. 42% of the devs surveyed said they thought more games would adopt the continuous update model as a competitive strategy, while 12% pointed to the potential for more web, web for mobile, and webGPU games.

Echoing the first trend from this year’s report, 17% of these devs predict a rise in solo and small studios, even though only a sliver of respondents (1%) anticipate that the gaming industry will continue to contract and consolidate. Just 6% said they foresee signs of growth this year – so where do devs think the industry’s heading in the longer term?

We spoke to five of the brightest minds in the business for insights into what the future might hold in store.