Time spent on gaming grows 30%, 18-30 ages dominate India's market

Lumikai report shows gaming time in India rose to 13 hours a week in 2024, driven by young users aged 18-30, with UPI accelerating in-game payments and monetisation

Indians spent 13 hours per week playing games in 2024, a 30 per cent increase from the 10 hours spent weekly in previous years, according to a report.

 

A preference for games comes on the back of motivations such as relaxation, socialisation, and self-expression, data from gaming venture capital (VC) firm Lumikai shows.

 

Demographics between the ages of 18 and 30 dominate gaming in India, making up 43 per cent of the survey’s respondents. About three out of ten gamers belong to the 30–45 and 45+ age groups, respectively.

 

“India has become a country where people started to play online games during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was habit-forming behaviour, and that has not gone away. Respondents in the survey started with casual games and have now moved on to all kinds of games,” Salone Sehgal, Founder and Managing Partner at Lumikai, told Business Standard.

 

This trend is reflected in the survey, which shows gamers spend an average of 3.9 hours a week playing hardcore games. This is followed by midcore games at 3.8 hours and real-money games (RMG) at 3.7 hours.

 

Sehgal added that as more games are launched in the country, the time spent on gaming platforms may continue to rise.

 

“I do believe we’re going to see an increase because as more and more games get launched, there is a lot more government focus as well. I believe that time spent will increase,” she said.

 

When it comes to the propensity to pay for games, India’s west leads the category with 31 per cent of paying customers among the player pool. This is followed by the east at 23 per cent, and the north and south at 20 per cent each.

 

“Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a big catalyst for that microtransaction behaviour now taking place. Monetisation has been slow to take off in India simply because credit and debit card penetration was so low. UPI is basically a two-to-three-year-old phenomenon,” she added.

 

UPI is India’s real-time payments system.

 

However, the primary reasons cited for avoiding payments include players using games purely for relaxation, distrust of online platforms, and high costs associated with accessing premium gaming features.