Medal Gaming Insights Report 2025

2025 was an amazing year on Medal, and we're so excited to be shaping the future of gaming. In this post, we’re sharing some of our key takeaways from the 2025 Gaming Insights Report, plus a link to the full deep-dive at the end!

Medal is home to the world’s largest community of gamers clipping, saving, and sharing their favorite moments. We dug into nearly 2 billion hours of gameplay and tons of user research to understand what actually shaped gaming this year. With over 10 million monthly users, Medal gives us a unique window into player behavior and trends that defined the year.

Community Over Creators

About 65% of Medal’s users trust their friends and family for gaming information, outpacing long and short-form videos, livestreams, critics, and content creators.

Authentic Integration is Non-Negotiable

60% of Medal users consume UGC content – making it the largest part of this audience’s media diet and isolating them from traditional advertising channels.

Passion Drives Purchasing

Gaming’s core 18-24 male demo outspends the average gamer upwards of 2x on their passions (gaming and electronics).

Convenience is the New Currency

Price remains the top purchasing factor, but "ease of purchase" (availability, delivery) is a close second, far outpacing customer reviews.

"Friendslop" is the New Word-of-Mouth

Chaotic, co-op indie games ("friendslop" titles like R.E.P.O and PEAK) are manufacturing massive hits. 66 of the 200 most-played titles on Medal being made by independent developers.

Stickiness > Novelty

Discoverability is in crisis. With nearly 90% of the top 200 games being legacy titles, the market is dominated by "sticky" community platforms and shareable multiplayer games, not new releases. Only 12 of the top 200 most-played games were new this year.

Read the full report with many more insights here: