The most-searched for game of the year isn’t Call Of Duty or Battlefield 6, as Google posts its top 10 list for 2025.
With the final month of 2025 in full swing, we’re officially in the season of Game Of The Year accolades and end of year round-ups.
While The Game Awards serves as the focal point for these kinds of discussions, especially for the Game Of The Year prize, there are other barometers of success by the year’s end – like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 taking the top spot as the most played third party game on Xbox Game Pass.
Another measurement of a game’s popularity is Google’s most-searched rankings of the year, and in 2025, there’s a surprising winner at the top of the list.
Instead of Battlefield 6 or GTA 6, Embark Studio’s Arc Raiders was Google’s most-searched game of 2025. While the game is hugely popular (it’s the fourth most-played game on Steam right now), it’s surprising how many IP heavyweights it managed to beat.
The extraction shooter topped the rankings just above Battlefield 6, while GTA 6 finished in seventh. Other games you might expect to rule the roost, like Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Minecraft, and Roblox, placed in eighth, ninth, and tenth, respectively.
Incredibly, the word puzzle game Strands is in third place, although it perhaps shouldn’t be too surprising considering new puzzles are released daily. The middle chunk of the top 10 is a peculiar mix though, with Split Fiction, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Path Of Exile 2.
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Google’s most-searched games of 2025
- Arc Raiders
- Battlefield 6
- Strands
- Split Fiction
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Path Of Exile 2
- Grand Theft Auto 6
- Pokémon Legends: Z-A
- Minecraft
- Roblox
Arc Raiders has come out on top because it is both a new sensation in a relatively obscure genre, and a game which greatly benefits from online guides – in terms of the best loot locations and where to find certain components.
Similarly, it’s a game which has seen several player tests throughout the year, so while it only officially only launched in October, the conversation around it has been ongoing almost the whole year.
Arc Raiders is the second game from developer Embark Studios, following 2023’s team-based shooter The Finals. It’s a PvPvE extraction shooter, where players, either solo or in squads of up to three players, have to find loot in a world occupied by hostile robots and other human players – who might, or might not, want to kill you.
The game has maintained a high player count on Steam since it launched on October 30, and over the past 24 hours (via SteamDB), has achieved a concurrent player peak of 279,545 players.
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