Video games may be a popular entertainment medium around the world, with there being some 2.7 billion gamers globally according to December 2025 Statista data, but an analyst has contextualized this popularity a bit with new findings suggesting that video games are really popular in the country in which they are developed.
Rhys Elliott, the head of games market data firm Alinea Analytics, shared his findings in an X post on January 29. Discussing the concept of the “hometown hero,” Elliott had surveyed his company’s recent estimates and discovered that the hometown hero effect bears true within the games industry as well. Elliott cited some recent examples of games developed in a specific country that, although popular globally, were especially popular in the country that they were developed in.
Assassin’s Creed is one example. Although the studio has global offices and the franchise is known worldwide, those games–including Shadows–are particularly popular in French markets, with the series consistently hitting the number-three spot in the “Land of the Franks.” The same is true of Cyberpunk 2077, which also remains in the number-three spot on Steam’s Polish charts–studio CD Projekt Red is Polish. One more: South Korean studio Shift Up’s Stellar Blade, which is number three on the PlayStation 5 chart in South Korea.
