Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: April 20 - April 24 (2026)
Friendslop data by AppMagic & German gaming market in 2025 by game.
Reports of the week:
game: German Gaming Market in 2025
Games and Numbers (April 7 - April 21, 2026)
AppMagic: Friendslop Games in 2025 and their Retention
game: German Gaming Market in 2025
The German gaming association used data from YouGov Shopper (a sample of 25,000 people), Nielsen IQ, and Sensor Tower.
Gaming Market in Germany
Total revenue of the German gaming market grew 4% in 2025 to €9.382 billion. The market returned to growth after a decline in 2024.
Revenue from subscription and cloud services (PlayStation Plus, Xbox Game Pass, and others) reached €1.031 billion, crossing the €1 billion mark for the first time. The segment has more than doubled over six years, up from €461 million in 2019.
Hardware Sales
Gaming hardware sales in Germany grew 12% YoY to €3.403 billion.
Consoles grew 26% to €1.021 billion, driven largely by the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2. Console sales had fallen 26% in 2024.
Gaming PCs (desktops, laptops, and handheld devices) grew 7% to €651 million. Key sales drivers included the ROG Xbox Ally.
PC gaming accessories (peripherals, monitors, GPUs, VR headsets) grew 13% to €1.371 billion. The segment is slowly recovering from a prolonged decline that began after the 2020-2021 pandemic growth.
Console accessories, on the other hand, fell 10% to €360 million.
Game Sales
Game sales fell 1% YoY in 2025 to €4.948 billion.
Unit sales of games (physical and digital combined) dropped 13% to €807 million.
In-game purchases, however, grew 1% YoY to €4.141 billion, accounting for 84% of total revenue.
Games and Numbers (April 7 - April 21, 2026)
PC/Console
Hazelight Studios games have sold over 50 million copies combined: It Takes Two sold 30 million, A Way Out - 13 million, and Split Fiction - 7 million .
Mortal Kombat 1 has sold over 8 million copies, per NetherRealm Studios. In August 2025, the studio reported 6.2M copies sold.
Crimson Desert by Pearl Abyss has sold over 5 million copies in 27 days since launch, according to the developers. Alinea Analytics estimates roughly half of sales came from Steam.
Pragmata by Capcom sold over 1 million copies in two days after launch. The game received an 88 on Metacritic and 96% positive reviews on Steam. Capcom noted that Pragmata was developed primarily by younger staff.
Windrose by Kraken Express sold over 1 million copies in 6 days, with peak concurrent players exceeding 97,900. The studio is based in Uzbekistan.
Quarantine Zone: The Last Check from Brigada Games and Devolver Digital reached over 1 million copies in three months. Devolver Digital called it one of their largest releases of 2026 so far.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 has reached an audience of 12 million, with Saber Interactive counting all players, including Game Pass and PlayStation Plus subscribers. The company reported 7 million players in June 2025.
The total audience of 11 bit studios’ Frostpunk series has exceeded 11 million, including Game Pass subscribers.
According to Forbes, Marathon by Bungie cost over $200 million to develop, possibly as much as $250 million, not counting ongoing support and content costs. The game earned $55 million in its first three weeks, per Alinea Analytics.
Alinea Analytics estimates Starfield sold around 140,000 copies on PS5 in its debut week.
Graveyard Keeper 2 from Lazy Bear Games and tinyBuild accumulated 400,000 Steam wishlists in under a week after its announcement. The original Graveyard Keeper set a new peak CCU off the back of the announcement: 46,300 players.
Totally Secure Airport from Longpines Games has crossed 400,000 wishlists and continues to add 2,000 to 4,000 new ones per day. Top countries: US (92,000), Germany (38,700), Brazil (28,500), and Russia (28,300).
Mobile
Konami reports that eFootball has crossed 1 billion downloads. The F2P, a successor to the PES series, launched in 2021.
War Robots from MY.GAMES and Pixonic have reached over 325 million registered players through its 12-year run. The game’s cumulative revenue exceeded $1 billion back in 2025.
AppMagic: Friendslop Games in 2025 and their Retention
AppMagic takes a broad look at the friendslop market and the trend as a whole. I won’t be covering everything here, just the retention section, which I found interesting.
State of the Friendslop Market
In 2025, 4 of the 10 best-selling games on Steam by copies sold were friendslop titles: R.E.P.O. (18.5 million copies), Peak (15.4 million), Schedule I (9.1 million), and RV There Yet? (5.7 million).
AppMagic notes that these games typically cost between $5 and $20. But nobody plays them solo, so the effective spend at least doubles.
❗️AppMagic notes that the low price point makes players more forgiving when it comes to leaving reviews. If the game is fun, that’s often enough.
Retention in Friendslop Games
On average, D30 Retention for friendslop titles sits around 3%. That’s a low number by Steam standards. Some titles run higher (R.E.P.O.), some considerably lower (RV There Yet?).
Ball x Pit, for example, comes in at 4.7% D30, about 1.5x the average. Different genres, but more comparisons are coming.
Dead by Daylight’s D30 is several times higher at 11.3%, and even Phasmophobia, which AppMagic describes as a forerunner to the friendslop genre, sits at 5.3%.
Content Warning, one of the earliest friendslop titles (released April 2024), lands right at that 3% mark.
❗️The low retention is directly tied to why people love these games in the first place. There’s no deep progression or meta systems, which also simplifies development. Teams focus on core gameplay; players have a great time for a couple of weeks, and then move on to the next thing.