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The Best-Selling Video Games of All Time

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Nazarii Verbitskiy

Gaming - May 16th 2026, 16:00 GMT+2

Sonic the Hedgehog 1991 cropped processed by imagy — 20. Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) — 40,000,000 Copies Sold

Sega did not just need a mascot in 1991; it needed a blue blur with enough attitude to make Nintendo look suddenly polite. *Sonic the Hedgehog* sold speed as personality, turning loops, springs, spikes, and Green Hill Zone into a full-on brand identity before “brand identity” sounded exhausting. The number includes its long life across bundles and later releases, but the original spark is still easy to understand: Sonic made momentum feel cool. | © Sega

PAYDAY 2 — 19. Payday 2 (2013) — 40,000,000 Copies Sold

A co-op heist shooter with clown masks, screaming alarms, and plans that collapse in eight seconds should not have lasted this long, but *Payday 2* found the perfect kind of multiplayer panic. Overkill kept feeding it with new jobs, weapons, skill trees, and DLC until the game became less of a sequel and more of a criminal lifestyle simulator. It is ugly in places, chaotic everywhere, and still weirdly irresistible when the vault finally opens. | © OVERKILL Software

18. Hogwarts Legacy (2023) — 40,000,000 Copies Sold

*Hogwarts Legacy* sold the fantasy fans had been building in their heads since childhood: walk into Hogwarts, pick a wand, learn spells, fly a broom, and wander into trouble with suspicious confidence. Its open-world structure was familiar, but the setting did most of the heavy lifting with staircases, classrooms, forests, and little magical details everywhere. For millions of players, the appeal was not just combat or quests; it was finally getting the school-year daydream in game form. | © Avalanche Software

All ghillied up — 17. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) — 41,000,000 Copies Sold

The 2019 *Modern Warfare* reboot arrived like Activision pressing the reset button with both hands. Infinity Ward brought back the name, sharpened the gunplay, pushed crossplay harder, and set the stage for the *Warzone* era that would dominate the franchise’s next chapter. Its campaign went for grit with a capital G, while multiplayer did what *Call of Duty* does best: turn tiny maps, loud footsteps, and instant revenge into a global routine. | © Infinity Ward

Cropped Call of Duty Black Ops III — 16. Call of Duty: Black Ops III (2015) — 43,000,000 Copies Sold

The 43 million figure belongs to *Call of Duty: Black Ops III*, not *Black Ops II*, and the distinction matters because this was the entry that went all-in on specialists, wall-running, and near-future chaos. Treyarch’s campaign divided players, but the multiplayer had the twitchy, competitive stickiness that keeps lobbies alive for years. Add a Zombies mode that treated lore like a conspiracy board, and the whole thing became much bigger than its most confused plot beats. | © Treyarch

15. Wii Fit / Wii Fit Plus (2007/2009) — 43,800,000 Copies Sold

Nintendo looked at exercise, one of humanity’s most avoided activities, and somehow sold it through a balance board that politely judged your posture. *Wii Fit* and *Wii Fit Plus* were not trying to replace a gym; they made fitness feel approachable enough for living rooms, parents, grandparents, and people who just wanted to ski in socks. The miracle is not that it sold well, but that millions willingly stepped onto a plastic board and accepted feedback from a cartoon instructor. | © Nintendo EAD

Pokemon Red Green Blue Yellow — 14. Pokémon Red / Green / Blue / Yellow (1996) — 47,440,000 Copies Sold

The first *Pokémon* generation did not merely launch a series; it rewired playground culture. One kid had a link cable, another had a rumor about Mew, somebody refused to trade their Charizard, and suddenly collecting 151 monsters became both a game and a social contract. The original RPGs look simple now, but trading, battling, version exclusives, and pure creature-design genius gave them a hook that never really let go. | © Game Freak

Animal Crossing New Horizons — 13. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020) — 49,910,000 Copies Sold

*Animal Crossing: New Horizons* landed at a moment when people desperately needed somewhere calm to go, and Nintendo accidentally handed the world a tiny island therapist. Fishing, decorating, terraforming, turnip gambling, and awkwardly loving villagers gave players a routine when real routines were falling apart. It was cozy, yes, but also quietly obsessive: one minute you are placing a chair, the next you are redesigning an entire coastline at 2 a.m. | © Nintendo EPD

12. Stardew Valley (2016) — 50,000,000 Copies Sold

A farming RPG made largely by one person reaching 50 million copies still sounds like a typo from a more optimistic universe. *Stardew Valley* worked because Eric Barone understood that routine can be dramatic when every crop, cave run, friendship, and town festival nudges the next decision forward. It feels gentle, but it is secretly one of the most efficient time machines in gaming; blink twice and your real Sunday has become virtual blueberry season. | © ConcernedApe

Human Fall Flat — 11. Human: Fall Flat (2016) — 55,000,000 Copies Sold

The whole joke of *Human: Fall Flat* is that your character moves like a shopping bag trying to become a person, and somehow that joke has sold tens of millions of copies. No Brakes Games built physics puzzles where half the fun comes from failing with maximum dignity loss. It became perfect multiplayer nonsense: climbing badly, grabbing the wrong thing, dragging friends into disaster, and laughing because the solution technically worked, just not in a way anyone should respect. | © No Brakes Games

Super mario bros — 10. Super Mario Bros. (1985) — 58,000,000 Copies Sold

*Super Mario Bros.* is so baked into gaming history that it can be hard to see how elegant it still is. World 1-1 teaches movement, danger, momentum, secrets, and confidence without pausing to explain itself, which is why designers are still dissecting it decades later. Its sales were helped by the NES explosion, but the reason it endured is simpler: running right, jumping cleanly, and finding a mushroom still feels like video games learning to speak. | © Nintendo

9. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) — 60,000,000 Copies Sold

*The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt* did not become an RPG giant just by putting question marks all over a map. CD Projekt Red made side quests feel like short stories, monster contracts feel morally sticky, and Geralt’s exhausted grumbling feel like a valid worldview. The open world was huge, but the real selling point was how often a random errand turned into something sad, funny, gross, or impossible to cleanly solve. | © CD Projekt Red

8. Terraria (2011) — 64,000,000 Copies Sold

Calling *Terraria* “2D Minecraft” was always too neat for a game that keeps opening trapdoors under its own trapdoors. Re-Logic’s sandbox became a strange, bottomless machine of mining, crafting, boss fights, biomes, loot, and updates that made “final version” sound like a dare. It rewards curiosity with danger, danger with gear, gear with bigger danger, and somehow turns a tiny pixel character into the center of an enormous obsession. | © Re-Logic

7. PUBG: Battlegrounds (2017) — 75,000,000 Copies Sold

Before battle royale became an industry-wide stampede, *PUBG: Battlegrounds* proved that jumping from a plane with 99 strangers was a business plan. It made empty fields terrifying, frying pans legendary, and the shrinking circle one of gaming’s most effective anxiety devices. The game could be awkward and brutal, but that was part of its identity: every match felt like a survival story that ended either in glory or in being shot while looting shoes. | © PUBG Studios

6. Mario Kart 8 / Deluxe (2014/2017) — 79,050,000 Copies Sold

*Mario Kart 8* was already one of the Wii U’s best arguments, then *Mario Kart 8 Deluxe* moved to Switch and became the multiplayer game everyone apparently agreed to keep buying forever. The handling is clean, the tracks are gorgeous, and the expanded content turned it into a bright little museum of Nintendo road rage. It is family-friendly until the blue shell arrives, at which point family becomes a temporary legal concept. | © Nintendo

5. Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) — 82,000,000 Copies Sold

*Red Dead Redemption 2* sells a fantasy of outlaw freedom, then slowly makes that freedom feel heavy, doomed, and expensive. Rockstar built a frontier where brushing a horse, watching camp arguments, robbing trains, and sitting through long rides all serve the same larger mood. It is not interested in rushing for anyone, which is exactly why Arthur Morgan’s story hits so hard: the world feels alive because it is always already dying. | © Rockstar Games

4. Wii Sports (2006) — 82,900,000 Copies Sold

*Wii Sports* was bundled into history, but reducing its success to packaging misses how instantly it made sense to people who never cared about games. Swing the remote, bowl the ball, embarrass yourself at tennis, and suddenly the living room had a new social ritual. Nintendo did not need complex rules or cinematic lore; it needed one motion-control idea clear enough for grandparents, cousins, roommates, and dangerously enthusiastic uncles. | © Nintendo

3. Grand Theft Auto V (2013) — 225,000,000 Copies Sold

*Grand Theft Auto V* has been around so long that calling it a 2013 release now feels like describing a skyscraper as “that new building.” The campaign gave Los Santos three criminal angles, but *GTA Online* turned the game into a decade-spanning economy of heists, cars, chaos, cosmetics, and questionable financial decisions. Rockstar did not just sell a massive open-world game; it sold a place people kept moving back into. | © Rockstar North

2. Minecraft (2011) — 350,000,000 Copies Sold

*Minecraft* barely functions like one game anymore, which is probably why its sales are so absurd. It can be survival horror, architecture software, a classroom tool, a speedrunning gauntlet, a YouTube empire, or a private little world where someone spends six hours perfecting a roof. Mojang’s genius was leaving enough blank space for players to bring their own ambition, which is how a blocky sandbox became practically endless. | © Mojang Studios

Tetris Effect Connected — 1. Tetris (1988) — 520,000,000 Copies Sold Across Versions

*Tetris* sits in a strange category because its record combines many versions across decades, but the scale still feels appropriate for a game this universal. No lore, no mascot speech, no battle pass, no dramatic cutscene — just falling blocks, rising panic, and the eternal lie that you can fix everything with the next long piece. Its design is so clean that it barely ages; it just keeps reappearing, ruining focus, and making straight lines feel heroic. | © Enhance

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Sales numbers do not always tell the whole story, but they do show which games managed to escape the usual limits of genre, platform, and generation. The best-selling video games of all time are not just massive commercial hits; they are the titles people kept buying, replaying, gifting, upgrading, and returning to years after release. From sandbox giants to family favorites and cultural obsessions, these games became bigger than launch windows or console cycles.

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Sales numbers do not always tell the whole story, but they do show which games managed to escape the usual limits of genre, platform, and generation. The best-selling video games of all time are not just massive commercial hits; they are the titles people kept buying, replaying, gifting, upgrading, and returning to years after release. From sandbox giants to family favorites and cultural obsessions, these games became bigger than launch windows or console cycles.