The latest “State of Video Gaming 2026” report from Epyllion has landed, painting a fascinating, if slightly lopsided, picture of the industry. While global video game content sales climbed 5.3% to a staggering $195.6 billion in 2025, the financial backbone of the industry is looking a bit thin, with private funding dropping another 55%. Despite hitting new revenue peaks, the “money-in” side of things is struggling. The final three months of 2025 saw only 40 deals, with pre-seed investments falling below $100 million. It seems that while we are spending more on games than ever, investors are being much more cautious with their wallets.
PC Gaming on the Rise
While the headlines often focus on consoles, the PC market is showing some serious muscle. Global consumer spending on PC has grown 30% since 2020, reaching $40.7 billion last year. Consoles aren’t exactly dying, sitting at $41.6 billion, but their growth is almost entirely tied to platform services like Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus rather than raw game sales, which actually fell 11% year-on-year.
Key Market Stats:
- Global Content Sales: $195.6 billion (up 5.3%).
- PC Spending: $40.7 billion (30% growth since 2020).
- Console Spending: $41.6 billion (driven largely by subscription services).
- The China Factor: China accounts for 20% of global player spend; publishers there have captured roughly half of all global growth since 2019.
The Shift to Outsourcing
If you’ve ever sat through the credits of a modern AAA game and wondered why they last for twenty minutes, the report has the answer: outsourcing. In 2025, outsourcing accounted for 35.5% of total content investment. Developers are increasingly leaning on outside partners for “core creative work,” including art and engineering.
The report highlighted some eye-opening examples:
- Hollow Knight: Silksong: Listed with just three internal credits compared to 94 external credits.
- Palworld: Featured 97 internal credits and 93 external, with a massive chunk coming from Keywords Studios.
The Roblox Juggernaut
Perhaps the most surprising takeaway is the sheer scale of Roblox. Matthew Ball describes the platform as the “singular driver of the total video game market,” capturing 67% of net growth in 2025. With daily active users now surpassing PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox, and monthly engagement hours beating Steam and Fortnite combined, it’s a force that simply can’t be ignored.
It’s a bittersweet report. Seeing the industry hit nearly $200 billion in sales is fantastic for the medium’s health, but the human cost remains high. 9,200 people lost their jobs in 2025, bringing the four-year total to nearly 44,000. While that’s a 40% improvement over 2024, the “increasing reliance on outside partners” suggests a permanent shift in how games are made, moving away from massive permanent studios toward more flexible, project-based external teams.
