It is form of humorous to look again on all of the instances PC gaming has been declared useless, a declare that—to borrow a phrase—was an exaggeration. Lest there be any doubt, GDC’s 2025 State of the Sport Business report says improvement on the platform has “skyrocketed,” with 80% of the greater than 3,000 builders who responded to the survey saying they’re at present making video games for PC.
That is an enormous bounce from the 2024 report, when 66% of respondents mentioned they had been creating for PC, which was ample for GDC to name it “the dominant platform.” It is also greater than double the proportion of builders engaged on the second-most standard platform, the PlayStation 5, which claimed 38% of respondents, and the Xbox Collection X/S, which got here in an in depth third at 34%
The proportion of builders making video games for PC has been monitoring upward for years. 56% of builders mentioned they had been making video games for PC in 2020, a determine that rose to 58% in 2021, 63% in 2022, and 65% in 2023. Curiosity in creating for PC can be method up, reaching 74% of respondents to the survey, an enormous bounce from 62% final 12 months.
“The precise motive for this bounce is unclear, however it might be linked to the rising recognition of Valve’s Steam Deck,” the GDC report says. “This 12 months’s survey did not single out Steam (or Valve’s handheld gaming pc) as its personal platform, as a result of it is a hub for PC and Mac video games. Nevertheless it seems some builders do view it as a novel platform. As an illustration, when requested to call different platforms that curiosity them, nearly half (44%) wrote in Steam Deck.”
I believe that is a really cheap guess, and I would add to it that the straightforward reality of accessibility may additionally play a really massive function within the recognition of PC as a improvement platform. Making video games is difficult, however doing it on PC is about as simple as it will get: Be taught your programming language of alternative, give Valve 100 bucks, and bang, you are promoting your stuff on Steam. Practically 19,000 new video games launched on Steam in 2024 alone, so it is no surprise PC charges so extremely because the platform of alternative. I would not be shocked if the one builders who mentioned they don’t seem to be engaged on PC proper now are from Rockstar. (No, we nonetheless do not have a Grand Theft Auto 6 PC announcement, not that I am aggravated about it or something.)
It is also value noting that the GDC State of the Sport Business survey skews closely towards Western builders. 58% of survey respondents are from the US, as an illustration, whereas the UK, Canada, and Australia make up one other 16%. China, a large market the place cellular gaming is much extra standard, would not rank among the many listing of nations with essentially the most respondents—and even with out taking that into consideration, the recognition of cellular gaming worldwide makes cellular sport improvement really feel underrepresented within the report. Japanese builders are additionally successfully absent. All of that’s clearly going to bias the outcomes to some extent.
Regardless of that limitation, it is nice to see PC not simply holding its personal however truly rising because the dominant improvement platform for video games. I simply want it was occurring in an setting that wasn’t fairly so grim: The GDC survey additionally discovered that 1 in 10 respondents had been laid off in 2024, and 4% mentioned their studios had been closed utterly.