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15 Video Games Everyone Was Playing During Lockdown

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Video games that got us through.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

Gaming - May 20th 2026, 22:00 GMT+2

15. FIFA 20 (2019)
*FIFA 20* arrived just as everyone needed something familiar to fill the endless hours at home. The game kept its core football simulation intact while adding VOLTA Football, a street soccer mode that felt like a different sport entirely. Players could recreate real-world matches that weren't happening anymore, or dive into career modes that stretched for months of lockdown time. EA managed to give people both the comfort of routine gameplay and enough new content to justify another year of the same essential experience. | © EA Sports

14. Outer Wilds (2019)
*Outer Wilds* traps you in a 22-minute time loop where the sun explodes, and you die, then wake up to do it all again. The genius is how each death teaches you something new about the solar system's mysteries, turning repetition into discovery. Most games punish failure, but this one makes dying feel like progress because every loop brings you closer to understanding why the universe keeps ending. It's a rare puzzle game where the solution isn't hidden in your inventory but scattered across planets you have to explore before time runs out. | © Annapurna Interactive

13. Rocket League (2015)
*Rocket League* turned soccer with cars from a ridiculous premise into an addiction that consumed entire friend groups. The physics feel just right in that specific way where missing an aerial shot makes you immediately queue up another match instead of rage-quitting. What started as a free novelty became a legitimate esport because the skill ceiling stretches infinitely upward, while anyone can score their first lucky goal in minutes. Lockdown gave people the time to discover that few games scratch the "one more match" itch quite this efficiently. | © Psyonix

12. Phasmophobia (2020)
*Phasmophobia* turned ghost hunting into the most terrifying group project imaginable, where four friends with EMF readers and spirit boxes try to identify supernatural entities without losing their minds. The brilliance comes from how it weaponizes voice chat against you, forcing players to call out ghost names and ask questions while knowing the ghost might actually hear them and respond with violence. Every investigation becomes a careful balance between gathering evidence and getting out before someone dies screaming. Nothing matches the panic of hearing footsteps behind you while your friends are safely outside the haunted house. | © Kinetic Games

Red dead redemption 2 — 11. Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)
*Red Dead Redemption 2* demanded something most games never ask for: genuine patience. Rockstar built a Western where skinning animals happens in real time, where you manually pump shotgun shells, and where your horse needs to be brushed or it gets dirty. The obsessive attention to detail either pulled you completely into 1899 or drove you absolutely insane depending on whether you wanted a game or a historical reenactment. When lockdown hit, suddenly having nowhere to rush made all that slowness feel like luxury instead of tedium. | © Rockstar Games

10. League of Legends (2009)
*League of Legends* turned a genre most people had never heard of into the biggest competitive game on the planet. The MOBA formula sounds complicated on paper, but Riot found the exact balance between strategy and chaos that keeps matches feeling different every time. Ten years after launch, it was still pulling in over 100 million monthly players during lockdown because the learning curve never really ends. Every patch changes something, every team composition creates new problems to solve, and every rank feels like both an achievement and a starting point. | © Riot Games

9. Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)
*Cyberpunk 2077* promised a futuristic open world where every choice mattered, then launched as one of the most broken AAA games in years. The console versions were so buggy that Sony pulled it from the PlayStation Store entirely, while PC players dealt with game-breaking glitches that turned serious story moments into accidental comedy. CD Projekt Red had built massive hype around Keanu Reeves and countless gameplay trailers, but the final product felt like an unfinished experiment that somehow shipped anyway. What made it stranger was how people kept playing through the mess, fascinated by the disaster unfolding in real time. | © CD Projekt

Stardew valley — 8. Stardew Valley (2016)
*Stardew Valley* lets you inherit a farm and then quietly becomes the most addictive thing on your computer. The pixel art looks simple until you realize you've been playing for six hours straight, perfecting crop rotations and trying to befriend the local blacksmith. ConcernedApe built the entire game himself, and that singular vision shows in every detail, from the way seasons change to how each villager feels like an actual person with problems. It's a farming simulation that somehow makes pulling virtual turnips feel more satisfying than most action games make shooting things. | © ConcernedApe

7. Genshin Impact (2020)
*Genshin Impact* proved that a free-to-play gacha game could look and feel like a premium console adventure, then made billions by getting players emotionally attached to anime characters they might never actually pull from loot boxes. The game borrowed heavily from Breath of the Wild's exploration formula but wrapped it in a live-service model designed to keep you logging in daily for months. What started as "that Zelda clone" became a cultural phenomenon when people realized the combat was genuinely fun and the world was massive enough to explore for hundreds of hours. The real genius was making the gambling feel optional until you were already hooked on the characters and their stories. | © miHoYo

6. Valorant (2020)
*Valorant* arrived in 2020 with a simple promise: take Counter-Strike's tactical shooting and add just enough magic to keep things interesting. Riot Games built their shooter around precise gunplay where every bullet matters, then dropped in characters with abilities that could stop time, create walls, or reveal enemy positions. The real hook was how those powers never overshadowed the fundamentals. You still had to aim well and think strategically, but now you could also resurrect teammates or throw up a smoke screen made of stars. | © Riot Games

Minecraft cropped processed by imagy — 5. Minecraft (2011)
*Minecraft* became the perfect lockdown escape because it offered something most games couldn't: infinite possibility with zero pressure. While other titles demanded skill or story progression, this one just handed players a world of blocks and said, "build whatever you want." The timing was everything, as millions of people stuck at home discovered they could recreate their offices, dream houses, or entire fantasy kingdoms using nothing but cubes. That creative freedom, combined with the ability to invite friends into your digital world, made it the ultimate social distancing solution. | © Microsoft

Call of Duty Warzone — 4. Call of Duty: Warzone (2020)
*Call of Duty: Warzone* dropped in March 2020 with perfect timing, offering 150-player battle royale chaos right when people needed something loud and competitive to fill their days. The game nailed the formula by mixing familiar Call of Duty gunplay with smart ideas like the Gulag system, where dead players fight for a second chance instead of just spectating. Warzone felt bigger and more polished than other free-to-play shooters, with detailed maps and mechanics that rewarded both solo skill and team coordination. It became the default answer to "what should we play tonight" for millions of friend groups stuck at home. | © Activision

Animal Crossing New Horizons — 3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020)
*Animal Crossing: New Horizons* arrived at the exact moment when millions of people needed a gentle place to exist while the real world felt impossible. The game hands you a deserted island and asks for nothing more urgent than catching bugs, decorating your house, and maybe talking to a cheerful cartoon animal about their day. It became a social lifeline disguised as a Nintendo game, where friends could visit each other's islands when visiting actual friends wasn't allowed. That timing turned a cozy life simulator into something closer to collective therapy. | © Nintendo

2. Among Us (2018)
*Among Us* turned a simple concept into social chaos: find the impostor before they kill everyone else. The game thrived on paranoia and bad lying, turning every emergency meeting into a frantic courtroom where your best friend might vote you into space based on pure suspicion. What started as a 2018 release nobody noticed became 2020's biggest streaming phenomenon when people realized they could destroy friendships from the safety of their own homes. Nothing else captured the specific joy of watching someone fumble through an obviously fake alibi while everyone else piled on. | © InnerSloth

1. Fortnite (2017)
*Fortnite* turned a simple premise into a cultural takeover by making every match feel like controlled chaos. The building mechanic separated it from every other battle royale, forcing players to think in three dimensions while 99 other people tried to eliminate them. Epic kept the momentum alive with constant updates, celebrity concerts, and crossover events that made the game feel less like software and more like a living world. Kids weren't just playing it; they were using it as their primary social space when everything else shut down. | © Epic Games

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When the world shut down in 2020, video games became one of the few reliable escapes available, and certain titles became a shared cultural experience in a way that hadn't happened in years. These are the games that defined that strange, frozen moment in time, the ones everyone seemed to be playing at the same time.

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When the world shut down in 2020, video games became one of the few reliable escapes available, and certain titles became a shared cultural experience in a way that hadn't happened in years. These are the games that defined that strange, frozen moment in time, the ones everyone seemed to be playing at the same time.