Introduction
The video game industry is officially losing its grip on our free time across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Instead of logging hours into the latest blockbuster releases, players are increasingly migrating toward short-form videos, AI tools, and other rapid-fire digital distractions . According to an early access release of Epyllion’s “State of Video Gaming in 2026” from games industry analyst Matthew Ball, this massive shift in the attention economy has stalled consumer spending and forced the games industry into a compounding crisis . Ultimately, the industry isn’t just competing against other games anymore—it is fighting a losing battle against our phones. This article examines the scale of player decline across these four major English-speaking markets, where gamers are going, and what this means for the future of the industry.
The ‘Mature Market 8’ and the Shrinking Global Gamer Pool
The writing is on the wall for what Matthew Ball refers to as the “Mature Market 8″—the US, Japan, South Korea, the UK, Germany, France, Canada, and Italy . These countries traditionally drove over 60% of global consumer spending on PC, console, and mobile content before the COVID-19 pandemic . Today, these major regions are facing a severe and persistent reality: they are losing the war for our attention.
In half of these countries, surveys reveal that the number of people who describe themselves as regular gamers is noticeably shrinking, dropping below pre-pandemic levels . The data across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia tells a consistent story of decline driven by the same competitive forces.
United States: The Epicenter of the Attention War
In the United States, data from organizations like Circana, the ESA, Ampere, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that the share of the population playing games has dropped by 2.5 to 4 percentage points since before the pandemic . An Ipsos survey from January 2026 found that 46 out of every 100 Americans say they play games less than they used to, with that number rising to 59 out of every 100 among those aged 18 to 45 .
American men aged 18 to 34 are at the epicenter of this attention war. This demographic is 1.4 to 2.0 times as likely as the average adult to play video games, but they are also up to 3.6 times as likely to trade crypto, 3.3 times as likely to sports bet, 3.1 times as likely to use prediction markets, 3.0 times as likely to use OnlyFans, and 2.0 to 2.4 times as likely to use AI tools .
Canada: One in Six Players Lost
Canada’s situation is even more stark. Even with the temporary boosts of pandemic lockdowns, the country lost roughly one in six of its adult players between 2018 and 2022, according to the Canadian trade association’s most recent report cited in Ball’s data . This represents a permanent contraction in the country’s gaming population that industry growth has not been able to offset.
United Kingdom: Pandemic Gains Evaporate
In the UK, where the player population jumped a massive 21% in 2020 during lockdowns, those gains have steadily eroded, with a third of that increase already lost in the years since . The British gaming market, once buoyed by captive audiences during COVID-19 restrictions, has proven vulnerable to the same attention competitors affecting other Western markets.
Australia: A Market at Risk
While Australia is not explicitly included in the Mature Market 8 data, the same trends apply. With 91% of Australian households owning a gaming device, the market is saturated and highly vulnerable to the same attention competitors [citation:4 from previous articles]. Australian players face the same barrage of notifications from TikTok, AI apps, and other platforms as their counterparts in the US, UK, and Canada.
Where Is the Screen Time Going?
The decline in gaming aligns precisely with a massive surge in rival entertainment platforms competing for the same hours in the day . Americans now spend 122 million more hours on social media per day than they did in 2020/2021, with TikTok alone accounting for 39 million of those additional daily hours compared to post-COVID normalized levels . Meanwhile, US mobile game installs have hit a 12-year low and mobile gaming hours have tumbled.
Consumer spending on platforms like OnlyFans has exploded in that same window. Americans spent roughly $5 billion on OnlyFans in 2025, up from $215 million in 2019—a more than 23-fold increase . Combined spending on OnlyFans, online sports betting, and iGaming grew from $1.2 billion to $32.8 billion since 2019, a $31.6 billion increase that dwarfs the $12.9 billion increase in video game spending over the same period .
Quarterly installations of consumer AI apps have skyrocketed from around 100 million to nearly 1 billion since 2023 . Prediction markets, which saw essentially zero activity before 2024, have exploded, with users placing 1.5 million bets a day by Q4 2025 . Online sports betting gross gaming revenue has quadrupled from $17.6 billion in 2019 to $69.7 billion in 2025 .
The Vicious Cycle
This shrinking audience creates a frustrating, vicious cycle for the average player. As the global pool of gamers decreases, the massive revenue demands of modern game development are pushed onto a smaller, more dedicated group . With fewer new gamers to pull from, growth can only come from greater monetization of ever fewer remaining players .
This pressure feeds into rising prices, increased ads, heavy microtransactions, live-service grinds, and other business strategies aimed at extracting more from those who remain . These strategies, in turn, make gaming feel less welcoming and more extractive, potentially driving away additional players.
Conclusion
As Matthew Ball’s report makes clear, the core issue isn’t that players choose to watch TikTok instead of buying a AAA game, or subscribe to OnlyFans instead of buying a PlayStation. It’s that on a Friday evening, players are placing a growing share of their time and spend elsewhere . Before gamers even have a chance to pick up a controller, their attention has already been claimed by an endless stream of notifications from competing platforms. For the gaming industry across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, the challenge is existential: adapt or continue losing players to platforms that have mastered the art of capturing human attention