Depending on where you look, the freemium model is either beloved or despised by the gaming community. On the one hand, it underpins most of the biggest eSports games. On the other, it has been leveraged extensively in the mobile space to create games that are wildly popular and convenient, as well as having irritating time walls and paywalls. It’s very much a mixed bag of opinions, but regardless of which side you back, freemium’s popularity can’t be denied.
So, it makes sense that not only has the abundance of different freemium games expanded, but there are many more on the way that are actually gaining a fair bit of hype. Given the prominence and continued expansion of those that headline the scene so far, we should expect more and more major titles to choose freemium over premium pricing.
Freemium Continues to be Huge for Gaming
Freemium gaming has been popular for a very long time, but it wasn’t given this more official portmanteau title until after mobile app stores began to fuel a massive, money-printing sector around 2009 or 2010. Since then, many app games have collected millions from microtransactions. In 2025, the year-to-date findings as of June set Honor of Kings at over $895 million, followed by Last War: Survival at over $752 million.
Of course, it’s not just on mobile that freemium flourishes. The most prominent ongoing example is Fortnite. In 2023 alone, the 2017-launched battle royale game landed itself some $3.5 billion in revenue. In its short spell on mobile, it made another $1.1 billion. Such is its prominence that the 22nd movie of the MCU, Avengers: Endgame, included Fortnite its crescendo of an entry.
Such is the audience for Fortnite and several other freemium games that the model has become a huge point of interest for another form of gaming entertainment. With the reach of real money online casinos being limited in the US, the best social casinos have stepped up to fill the void. They, too, are freemium gaming platforms. Newcomers get welcome bonuses, but deposits aren’t required and winnings remain as virtual currencies. They’ve made themselves much more accessible through this setup, leading to an influx of new users.
Big-Name Freemium Projects Arriving in 2025
Two major free-to-play projects hit the virtual gaming libraries before the first half of 2025 was done, and both were shooters. The first was FragPunk. The incredibly stylized 5v5 hero shooter has collected very positive reviews and a strong player base. The second was the much more audacious Splitgate 2, which incorporates portals into the equation. While heavily played, it didn’t land anywhere near as well as FragPunk when it launched in full.
On the way are two huge publishers making another big freemium push. Side-stepping their usual approach of premium-pricing games and infusing freemium models therein, Electronic Arts will be launching the new always online Skate game in 2025 as a free-to-play title. Ubisoft is also looking to get in on the action with the Tom Clancy’s The Division Resurgence, which looks to add more competition to the mobile shooter corner of gaming.
Throw in the MMORPG Aura Kingdom – Impact, Path of Exile 2 – which strangely charges for early access but will be free-to-play at launch – and Dungeon Stalkers, and 2025 looks to have plenty of top-tier freemium games in the works. It’s got plenty of momentum, so we can expect many more major freemium launches in the years to come, too.
Lynn Martelli is an editor at Readability. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and has worked as an editor for over 10 years. Lynn has edited a wide variety of books, including fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, and more. In her free time, Lynn enjoys reading, writing, and spending time with her family and friends.
