Summary
Though new releases are coming out daily, it’s the titles that have been around for years that maintain the die-hard fans. Combined worldwide, millions of hours are spent weekly meeting up with our friends, grinding experience points, and defeating bosses. There’s a reason you’re still playing the same game with friends years later.
Most of us have awesome memories of starting out gaming through worlds like these. Whether it’s anMMORPG,FPS, orsandbox survival, it’s about how many friends have been made. With hundreds of thousands of accounts, these are the games that have kept us coming back.
Statistics quoted in this list came fromSteam Chartsand were accurate as of August 2024.
Updated on May 13, 2025, by Dennis Moiseyev:Multiplayer games are best enjoyed when there’s a huge player base to support them, and more and more are launching and impressively topping the Steam charts. While some of the ones you’ll see here remain classic options, there are new multiplayer games that have launched since this article was last updated, and their numbers don’t lie.
Rocket Leagueis a super unique concept involving scoring giant balls into the enemy goal while driving rocket-powered toy cars. Being able to play with friends online or locally, as well as by yourself, has opened up the possibility of tournaments where teams can register to win prizes. The peak number of players was almost 147,000 in September 2020.
There are other game modes, such as basketball and ice-hockey-themed games.It’s all free to playand can be downloaded from Epic Games; however, to keep it profitable, Psyonix has added in-game purchases in the form of loot crates and blueprints to spruce up your vehicles.
Commonly known asRainbow Six, this game has eight modes and 20 maps as of 2023, each involving first-person Operators making tactical decisions. Usually, two multiplayer teams are made up of specialists representing secret services from different countries.
Ubisoft interviewed real counter-terrorist units to learn about the roles in these squads. From here, you battle for objectives such as hostages and bombs in short rounds. Plant traps, augment the environment, and use drones to gather intel on the enemy team’s tactics. There are around 50,000 people online daily.
The latest post-apocalyptic open-world multiplayer survival game isOnce Human, and itreally wears its inspirations on its sleeves, the enemy design and overall concept being very inspired by Remedy’s 2019 game Control. Because of its mix of cosmic horror and survival game mechanics, and the fact it’s free to play, it’s no wonder Once Human continues to receive a steady stream of players.
The world of Once Human has been affected by an alien substance called Stardust, transforming the flora and fauna of Earth into corrupted and eerie mutations, and now also leaving you a Meta-Human with the ability to manipulate Stardust. With over 100,000 players consistently online, facing the alien threat will seem a little less scary.
Slightly ‘out-peaking’ Once Human is another 2024 multiplayer title,The First Descendantfrom developer Nexon. It’s likewise free to play and about an alien invasion, but it’s more of a third-person looter shooter to the tune of titles like Warframe and Destiny 2 and created with Unreal Engine 5. However,don’t expect it to be quite as good as Destiny 2.
The Descendant characters(of which there are 14 total) are all really inventive and fun to use, each having their own unique abilities, like Viessa and frost damage, Valby and water damage, and Bunny and electricity. The enemies and bosses are also a new brilliant and original alien race introduced to gaming – the Vulgus – and there’s a compelling mystery in the storyline.
2017 saw the launch ofDestiny 2, a first-person shooter in a massive multiplayer online world where you defend the last city of humans on Earth. In 2019,it was made free to playand released across many more platforms. Sometimes you’ll see over a hundred thousand players on average logging in daily to explore and interact with NPCs, meet other Guardians of Earth, and defeat the aliens that bring Darkness with them.
Team up with other players to patrol regions or join death matches to fight your friends. Expansions are added semi-regularly, providing new parts of the planet to investigate and protect. Shaders can be used to customize gear and emotes to communicate with others. These are bought with Silver, the in-game currency.
Hearthstoneis an online game with digital collectible cards, each featuring items, spells, minions, heroes, and locations based on the lore of World of Warcraft. Players construct a deck of 30 cards, as well as a Hero, and use strategy to take each other down.
It was developed by a small, experimental team at Blizzard in 2014 and now grosses $20 million per month despite being their first-ever free-to-play game; this is through paid expansion packs and deck customization. Hearthstone also sees more than five million monthly players and regular tournaments with cash prizes.
The seventh game in the series,Grand Theft Auto Onlineis an action RPG where you can play with up to 30 other people in online lobbies. Tour around Los Santos in a tricked-out Sentinel Classic, or beat up someone waiting at a stop sign on their way home from work.
GTA has been around for decades and is a fond memory of many childhoods. The beauty of GTA Online is the regular updates, tweaks, and additions to the game, without requiring players to purchase a new game. Team up with your friends (or strangers) to take on massive heists, complete contact missions,invest in businesses, or just cause general havoc in the streets.
Yetanother free-to-play gamewith a massive number of players engaged in it isNaraka: Bladepoint. This is a Battle Royale-style game, and it puts its own unique spin on the genre. With its name being Naraka: Bladepoint, you might already discern that instead of it being a shooter, the gameplay liesmore in swordplay and hack-and-slash.
Naraka: Bladepoint is set in the fictional fantasy land of Morus Isle, and your heroes here will wield blades and take on rivals in a Battle Royale map of up to 60 players. It’s very similar to titles like Nioh and Sekiro if they had a Battle Royale mode. Naraka: Bladepoint also continues to get well over 200,000 (and sometimes over 300,00) monthly players on Steam.
Released as the world went into lockdown, many streamers and YouTubers gained a name for themselves playingAmong Us. At one point, there were even 60 million daily players! Among Us is a tactical, puzzle-solving game where one or two players are alien imposters on a ship of astronauts, trying to kill innocent crew mates who are completing technical tasks.
In 2022,new roles were added to this game of deception, giving further levels of paranoia as engineers can use vents like imposters. Mods have been developed, including 3D first-person play and proximity speaking. Play on your mobile, console, or PC, and customize your cute little astronaut with hats and pets for a small fee.
The original Helldivers was a very different form of co-op shooter than its sequel, using a twin stick approach with top-down gameplay.Helldivers 2improved upon virtually everything and quickly becameone of the newest video game phenomenonsto grace the medium. It reached nearly half a million players on Steam alone during the first month of its launch.
Aside from starting at a reasonable $40compared to other PS5-exclusive games, part of what attracts so much traffic to Helldivers 2 is its unbelievably satirical and fun concept of Helldiver soldiers fighting for Super Earth and killing swarms of space bugs like Starship Troopers. In fact, you’ll find more people playing Helldivers 2 than 2023’s licensed Starship Troopers: Extermination multiplayer game.
