Introducing Web-based Game Engine Rankings: First Issue (H1 2025)

Infographic: Game Engine Ranking H1 2025

TL;DR

• The web games market is booming: over 15,000 new browser games were released in H1 2025 — 2.7x more than the same period in 2024, and 4.9x more than H1 2023.

• Unity leads the pack: it powered 55% of all new web games, thanks to WebGPU support and strong cross-platform tooling.

• But its leadership is being challenged by growing engines/frameworks like Construct, Cocos and Phaser.

• AI is accelerating production: dev teams report up to 5x faster iteration using AI for tasks like bug fixing, documentation, and code optimization.

• Experienced studios are moving to the web, attracted by shorter time-to-market and improving browser-based tech.

While the global games industry faces stagnation, one segment is breaking the curve: web gaming. According to research released by Playgama, the browser games market has grown 2.7 times over the past year, and 4.9 more than H1 2023. In Q2 2025 alone, over 15,000+ new games were released.

At Playgama.com we set out to explore which engines are currently in highest demand, how frequently games are published using different technologies, and what development stacks are shaping the future of web gaming.

Our research shows that Unity remains the market leader, powering 55% of all new web games in Q2 2025. Over the past two years, the company has significantly strengthened its dominance in web game development. Unity’s adoption of WebGPU starting with Unity 6 (released in 2024) is already enabling smoother and higher-fidelity experiences directly in the browser. Combined with more AI-powered tooling and cross-platform frameworks, the entire stack of web game development is becoming faster, cheaper, and more scalable.

However, Unity's dominance is increasingly challenged by lighter, more accessible engines such as Construct (16.5%), Cocos (8.1%), Phaser (7.1%), and LayaAir (5.3%).

Construct, the no-code engine that’s particularly popular among solo developers, saw one of the most significant gains — rising from 12% market share in early 2024 to 15% in 2025. By this engine games can be built using a visual editor and block-based logic, which makes Construct easy to use for those who make their first steps in web-gaming.

Phaser is growing alongside the market and carving out its own niche. It stands out for its high performance and, as an open-source solution with an active community, is steadily securing its position in the market.

Engines previously dominant in regional markets, such as Cocos and LayaAir, lost positions over time. While still used for specific use cases, their share declined due to a lack of global support infrastructure and limited access to modern monetization SDKs.

At the same time, a competitive landscape is forming among a plethora of engines, including GDevelop, GODOT, libGDX, Defold, PlayCanvas, GameMaker, and Scratch, each competing for the attention of indie developers and studios entering the space.

The growing interest in web games is driven by the oversaturation of the mobile, PC, and console markets. Competition for traffic in mobile apps has reached its peak — ad auctions are overheated, and advertisers are fighting for ROI with time horizons of one to two years. Meanwhile, the production standards for AAA titles have become so high that building a major PC or console game now costs a fortune.

Dmitry Kachmar, Playgama founder: “Web games are becoming the new black: the processing power of mobile devices and tablets has nearly caught up with that of average laptops, and new technologies now make it possible to run fully-fledged 3D games directly in the browser. Add AI to the mix, and by 2030, over half of all games could be developed on cross-platform engines with instant web export as default. In this future, every screen becomes a gaming device, and distribution is no longer bound to app stores. The future belongs to cross platform game engines, they’re no longer just a niche for browser titles.”

It’s worth mentioning that game development with AI is accelerating by a factor of five or more. Tasks like documentation, refactoring, and bug fixing are increasingly handled through AI tools. Our internal client surveys point to the growing role of AI in day-to-day development processes. In addition, our analysis of the qualifications of new teams entering the web gaming space shows that more experienced studios are now shifting to the web, driven by strong revenue potential. With new technologies bringing browser games closer to AAA desktop quality, these teams see not only technical challenges worth pursuing but also clear economic advantages in building for the web.

According to a16z’s State of AI in Games survey, most studios have yet to adopt AI in production, but expectations are shifting. As adoption accelerates, tools that enable rapid iteration and web-native deployment will only gain ground.

This is the very first edition of our Web-based Game Engine Rankings. Moving forward, we’ll be updating this report quarterly, expanding the number of metrics we track, and improving the accuracy of our analysis.

Our findings are based entirely on publicly available data and don’t include private catalogs or proprietary databases. We’re sharing this as a resource for the industry and are fully open to partnerships and suggestions on how to improve it. If you’re working in this space and want to collaborate, we’d love to hear from you.