Most Played Games in 2024 – Ranked by Average Monthly Players

While there’s been no shortage of games released over the past few years, you might be surprised to learn that the majority of the most played games in 2024 are actually much older. Here, we’re recapping the top 10, which we’ve based on data provided by various analytics sites, including Activeplayer.io, Statista, and MMO-Population.

Editor’s note: We updated this article as of September 2, 2024, to accurately reflect the most up-to-date player count data available. Additionally, the metric used to rank games on this list has recently been changed from peak concurrent players to average monthly active players. Twinfinite believes this better indicates the most played games of the current year.

Still, do note that these figures are not official and are only estimates. Also, certain games are likely to appear more popular than others purely because they are available on a greater number of platforms — especially those that have mobile releases.

10. Counter-Strike 2 – 55 Million

Counter-Strike is an FPS franchise that just won’t quit. On May 8, 2023, the tactical team-based shooter saw its highest-ever concurrent player numbers, topping 1.8 million concurrent users, according to SteamDB. That would be hugely impressive for any modern game. However, the remarkable part is that CS has been cranking out this sort of performance for almost a decade now.

A strong esports presence and the brand power created by a franchise that’s been around since the late 1990s have kept CS ahead of newer releases. It remains especially popular in Europe, with countries like Russia contributing massively to the overall size of an active community that numbers over 50 million active monthly players.

Since its abrupt transition from CS: GO to CS: 2, despite the players’ many complaints, the game has kept growing and growing. In January 2024, it even had 12 million different players in a day, making it the most-played game on Steam at some point. That’s not too bad, considering it only had half of that two months prior.

Since then, Valve has kept ironing out the game, and the player figures reflect that. Now, CS: 2 is by far the most popular game on Steam, with over 650 million hours played each month. Dota 2, PUBG, Apex, and the like are losing the race fast. The question is, can CS: 2 leave a bigger legacy than CS: GO?

Related: Best Free Google Play Games on Dot Esports

9. Call of Duty Warzone – 60 Million

The Call of Duty franchise has always been a behemoth of the video game industry, but its popularity skyrocketed to all-new heights when the franchise launched a free-to-play, battle royale spin-off. Warzone has risen to become one of the most popular titles in the world in record time, which is why it made it to our list of the most-played games in 2024.

The Warzone 2 (now just Warzone) community is enormous and spread across PlayStation, Xbox, and PC platforms — though it is surely most played as a console experience where the franchise has always been very popular. The numbers for Warzone 2 are an estimation based on the fact that we know that Activision alone had a total of 92 million active monthly users, according to the 2023 Q2 financial results. The figure actually shows a slight decline from the game’s peak of over 100 million in previous years.

Despite its decline, things are shaping up with the latest updates of Call of Duty, which I myself have had the pleasure of participating in with the unique take on Zombies mode. New maps, guns, and operators are being released each month, making the meta spicier. Still, the competition is fierce, and it might be a while before CoD WZ manages to beat its old player base records.

8. Apex Legends – 60 Million

Respawn’s Apex Legends stealth dropped out of nowhere and then proceeded to take the battle royale genre by storm. It proved the perfect recipe of compelling gameplay, AAA production quality, and a free-to-play business model that saw it succeed in temporarily dethroning Fortnite and PUBG as the most-played and most-watched multiplayer games.

Since an opening month that saw 2 million concurrent players, the community has stuck around and helped build a player base of 60 million active monthly users. It’s safe to say that Apex has muscled its way into the genre and secured its place as one of the most-played games of 2024.

What we can be certain of is that those numbers will never stop growing. Respawn is relentless when it comes to dishing out new updates and content, which can’t be said for PUBG, for example. Let’s just hope they get a new mode out because we can all agree that the whole battle royale genre has gone a bit stale lately.

7. Genshin Impact – 65 Million

When Twinfinite reviewed Genshin Impact back in 2020, we knew it was something special. The genius fusion of Zelda-like exploration, anime-esque storytelling, and excellent role-playing mechanics was just too good not to succeed — especially not when it was all entirely for free! But did we suspect Genshin Impact would go on to become one of the biggest gaming franchises? Certainly not.

When you look at how developer miHoYo has supported the game since its launch, though, it’s perhaps not so surprising to see just why its audience loves the experience so much. An incredible amount of new content has been added, featuring all-new storylines, characters, areas to explore, and all sorts of different events and challenges fleshing out the package. It’s even brought me back to series throughout the years, just to see what’s next for the beloved characters.

The quality of the Genshin Impact experience has seen over 60 million players playing the game each month, earning it the status of the most-played gacha in 2024. That being said, with the China-based studio’s next free-to-play gacha RPG, Honkai: Star Rail, making waves right now, it’s likely that numbers may begin to fall as fans embark on an alternate adventure that’s cut from the same cloth as its predecessor.

6. Rocket League – 85 Million

Who would’ve thought that a game mixing cars and soccer would become such a huge hit? It should be no surprise that Rocket League is one of the most played games in 2024, and of all the games on this list, it’s the most consistent at keeping its players. The numbers over on the Rocket League activeplayers.io page certainly indicate that.

That probably has to do with the fact that since its release back in 2015, Rocket League has delivered its players the most thrilling sports action on the market, sweeping the floor with FIFA, Madden, NBA 2K, and the like.

On a side note, though, Rocket League is also one of the games where your friends will rage at you the most (I can’t hit a ball in the air to save my life). Yet, I still haven’t refused a game invite to this day.

5. League of Legends – 140 Million

According to Riot Games, League of Legends is played by around 8 million people almost every single day. Now, this could be a deflated number, considering how popular the game is in China, where there are 29 servers alone (more than all the other servers combined).

Now, just as is the case with CS2, a strong esports scene has helped League of Legends to hold onto its community, which routinely turns up in the millions to watch competitive tournaments online. The League of Legends World Championships 2019 broke Twitch’s concurrent viewership records, with 1.7 million watching FunPlus Phoenix crush G2 Esports.

Additionally, if you take a quick peek at activeplayer.io‘s latest stats, you’ll see that the beloved team-based game is tallying up a massive 130 million active players over the last 30 days, making it the most played MOBA in the world at the time of writing. That’s, of course, if we exclude mobile games such as Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and Honor of Kings.

4. Minecraft – 170 Million

Minecraft is a juggernaut that just keeps on steamrolling. The unending freedom to create, explore, and interact with other players in the Overworld makes it less of a game and more of a metaverse to just hang out. Such is the depth of different community-driven experiences you can have within Minecraft. It’s popular for different reasons for different people, from constant updates to fun-filled DLCs. In any case, there are a lot of fans out there.

Back in 2015, when Minecraft’s monthly active users were around 40 million, the game logged an incredible 1.4 million concurrent players at one point. The game’s population is now almost five times as big! With that said, it comes as no surprise to see it on this list of the most-played games of 2024, and it will likely continue to grow with the upcoming update.

Even more so, players (including myself) are always inclined to go back to expand their worlds further or create an all-new universe from scratch. However, the biggest issue, for me at least, seems to be keeping the whole crew together, as none of our servers manage to last more than a month.

3. Roblox – 220 Million

Roblox has skyrocketed in popularity since its launch back in 2006, especially over the past five or so years. Back in 2016, CEO David Baszuski proudly touted 700,000 concurrent players and declared that the 1 million milestone wasn’t far from the corner. Fast forward to 2020, and Roblox’s 7th Annual Bloxy Awards saw an incredible 4 million players watching in-game concurrently.

In terms of monthly active players, the number is obviously larger. Much larger. Roblox has a consistent player base of about 200 million across PC and mobile devices. Like Minecraft, people love it for its almost metaverse quality in that it delivers all manner of different gameplay experiences, the majority of them designed by members of its community.

Early 2023 saw the free-to-play game creation platform manage to smash its own record of simultaneous users by hitting an eye-watering 9.3 million concurrent players. Not too shabby, right?

Now, in 2024, Roblox is going as strong as ever. It set a record of 6 billion registered accounts in May and more than 9 million experiences, with new ones being released each day. Some experiences alone have more than 500k concurrent players, and if you were to consider them MMOs, they’d easily be some of the most popular MMOs on the planet.

2. Fortnite – 225 Million

Whether you love it or hate it, one thing is for sure: Fortnite is the biggest and most popular battle royale played outside of China. It will surely go down in history as one of the most important and innovative games ever created, and that’s mostly due to Epic Games’ ability to redefine what it means to make and support a live service game.

Fortnite is a constantly shifting entity, remolding itself with different features and gimmicks as new trends emerge. It’s essentially a new game every month, thanks to its battle pass content. Plus, it’s also managed to embed itself into the pop culture zeitgeist by collaborating with musicians and celebrity figureheads to stay relevant. You can add in the OG Fortnite update as well, bringing back veteran players for the exclusive event.

During the Astronomical Concert back in 2020, Fortnite set a 12.3 million concurrent player peak as players flocked to watch Travis Scott debut a new single. Epic Games doesn’t tend to really talk about player numbers outside of these big events, but estimates of the game’s average monthly players are somewhere around 220 million.

1. PUBG – 340 Million

The game that kicked off a frenzy that saw the entire multiplayer gaming landscape reshaped over the past few years, PUBG still commands a huge audience despite the battle royale genre becoming flooded with copycat titles.

The most notable one is Epic Games’s Fortnite, which still towers over it in terms of player count outside of Asia. At the time Fortnite launched, PUBG still had a premium model, and it wasn’t even on consoles, which caused it to start losing the race. However, everything changed once it went F2P and launched its mobile version.

PUBG now once again rules not only the battle royale roost but the coveted title of the most played game in the world in 2024—according to activeplayer.io, anyway. If we’re honest, we’re a bit skeptical of the data. The numbers don’t seem to align with what we see on Steam charts for daily and monthly concurrent players, which are impressive at around 500,000 on big days but nowhere what you would expect if there truly are that many monthly players.

Now, it could be that the game’s player base is overwhelmingly on mobile. An AppAnnie report in 2019 estimated monthly player figures for the mobile version were upward of 100 million (not including China), but that was before the game was banned in India, a region where it was massively popular. We’ll continue to research the data and update this article where we can.