2022's List of Top 10 Most-Played Games Includes Some Surprises

05/25/2022 12:43 pm EDT

The list of the most-played games in 2022 so far is out, and some may be surprised to see which games made the cut and, more specifically which games didn't. Some familiar titles topped the chart including games which released nearly or over a decade ago, though the rankings were noticeably devoid of any games that actually released this year. The chart in question from the NDP only looked at the rankings from Q1 2022, however, so there's certainly reason to believe some of this year's games could break into the top 10 in the future.

That list can be seen below via NPD Group executive director and adviser Mat Piscatella. The information represented in the list of this year's top 10 most-played games comes from panelists who listed the games they'd played within the past month whenever this survey was conducted. Games in the list aren't in the order of which one was played more than the other and are instead organized chronologically by their release year, but that does even more to put into perspective just how persistent some of these games have managed to be.

Some of the games on the list won't come as surprises at all. Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto V, for example, are the two best-selling games of all time, so it's hard to imagine any quarter of any year where these two would depart the list of the top 10 games in terms of players. The same goes for established franchises like Call of Duty, NBA 2K, and Madden which were the only representatives from 2021. Perhaps a bit more surprising though was the fact that Animal Crossing: New Horizons remained in the top 10 despite it getting its last major update in 2021, though it still gets seasonal festivities to keep people entertained. Among Us was another somewhat surprising inclusion in the list, though that should show that some of these games that capitalize on sudden bouts of fame end up persisting afterwards to avoid being simply a flash in the pan.

One of the biggest surprises expressed by those who saw these stats was that Elden Ring did not break into the upper echelon of 2022's most-played games so far. The game sold exceptionally well, but as Piscatella pointed out, it didn't manage to get higher than No. 20 in the overall ranking.

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