Report: No gaming experience appeals to more than 26% of players globally 

• Bain & Company's new report examines shifts in player behaviour, studio strategy and game distribution.
• Global gaming software revenue is growing at just 3% a year, pushing studios toward personalisation over new player acquisition.

No single gaming experience appeals to more than 26% of players worldwide as demand splinters across narrow preferences, meanwhile spending concentrates among a small group of gamers.

That's according to a new Bain & Company report examining shifts in player behaviour, studio strategy and game distribution through its June 2026 survey of more than 5,300 gamers.

The study found that the top 20% of spenders account for 73% of total spending, while the top 20% of most active players account for 59% of all playtime. 

Mobile leads D2C shift

Nearly half of all gamers have purchased virtual currency or in-game content directly from a developer's website in the past 12 months, with 27% doing so repeatedly, and a similar share of mobile and PC/console players reported buying directly.

Three-quarters of top-grossing mobile games now run their own web stores, up from just 12% in 2019. Mobile D2C revenue reached about $17 billion last year, roughly 15% of the mobile in-app purchase market.

It also grew from 25% to 40% of total revenue in the past year alone for publishers Modern Times Group and Playtika. The report found that mobile publishers without a D2C strategy are leaving 15% to 30% margin improvement on the table for every third-party sale.

A total 40% of 13- to 17-year-olds have made multiple direct purchases in the past year.

Discounts alone barely shifted buying habits in the survey. Personalisation did, as 84% of repeat direct buyers said a tailored offer would make them more likely to purchase again, and direct buyers were nearly five times as likely to have increased their spending over the past year.

Falling app-store fees, driven by the EU's Digital Markets Act and a US court ruling against Apple, have accelerated the shift. Google cut its baseline commission from 30% to 20%, and as low as 15% under certain conditions, as part of a settlement with Epic Games that also paved the way for Fortnite's return to Google Play after a five-year absence.

Notably, overall willingness to spend (not just from D2C) was seen to decline sharply with age, according to the report, from 86% of teenagers spending monthly on game activities to just 27% of players in their 70s.

Focus pays off

Bain's analysis of 100 titles released since 2023 further found that 83% of focused games achieved commercial success, compared with 50% of unfocused ones. AI, Bain warned, won't rescue unfocused projects. It accelerates whichever bet a studio makes, wrong or right.

With global gaming software revenue growing at just 3% annually, projected to reach $232bn by 2029, the report placed personalisation as the next growth lever.

Most players surveyed said they were comfortable with or neutral toward personalised offers, and one free-to-play company using AI decisioning tools lifted revenue per player from a liveops campaign by more than 50%.

You can access the full report here.