With the rapid growth of video streaming (OTT) services and short-form content, the game usage rate, which once reached 74%, has fallen to a record low of around 50%.
On the 22nd, according to the 2025 game user survey conducted by the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) of 10,000 people nationwide ages 10 to 69, Korea's game usage rate this year was 50.2%, down about 9.7 percentage points (p) from 59.9% a year earlier.
This is the lowest figure since the agency began compiling overall game usage rates in 2015. The game usage rate maintained the 60–70% range — ◇2015: 74.5% ◇2016: 67.9% ◇2017: 70.3% ◇2018: 67.2% ◇2019: 65.7% — and then rose during the COVID-19 period to ◇2020: 70.5% and ◇2021: 71.3%. In 2022, it reached 74.4%, showing that 3 out of 4 people enjoyed games.
However, in the 2023 survey after social distancing ended, it plunged to 62.9%, and this year it fell to the 50% level. Among 3,828 people who said they had played games before but do not currently, 44% (multiple responses allowed below) cited "lack of time to play" as the reason. That was followed by ▲"decreased interest in games" 36% ▲"found alternative leisure" 34.9% ▲"lack of motivation to play games" 33.1%.
Among 1,331 respondents who said they found leisure activities to replace games, 86.3% pointed to viewing-centered activities such as "OTT, movies, TV, and animation." Next, 40.3% chose exercise, 37.5% chose "comics, webtoons, (web) novels, and books," and 32.6% said they enjoy "exhibitions and sports" instead of games.
By platform, the usage rate for mobile games dipped slightly to 89.1% from 91.7% a year earlier, while PC games rose from 53.8% to 58.1% and console games increased from 26.7% to 28.6%. Average annual expenditure per person was 186,000 won for PC games, 89,000 won for mobile games, and 323,000 won for console games.
This year's survey included, for the first time, awareness of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in games. Users who said they knew AI technology is being used in game development accounted for 50.5%, while 49.5% said they did not know. Regarding AI's impact on game development, 69.6% viewed it positively, 22.1% thought it would have no impact, and 8.2% viewed it negatively.