The most popular online games in Australia

In 2019, every man and his dog has played Fortnite. That bully who threw your bag in the bin because you played Pokémon? They play Fortnite. The hipster barista who claims they don't own a television? They play Fortnite on an expensive 4K TV. Your sweet grammy who still has a big yellow post-it on the power button of her PC? She just dunked on some 14-year-old kid from New Zealand who was giving her guff on Fortnite.

As popular as Fortnite has become, it’s not the only online game still getting a workout in Australia and if the Google Trends data is to be believed, it’s not even the most searched game in Australia anymore. Minecraft has taken the reins a few times over this year but it’s starting to look like Fortnite’s star might fading for real this time.

We’ve been digging through the data for the most popular online games and it’s been interesting to see which city in Australia has the highest concentration of Minecraft fans and which city can take credit for keeping GTA V on the Australian retail leaderboards year in, year out.

For example, did you know Bathurst has the highest density of Fortnite players in Australia? Or that Townsville has the biggest first-person shooter fetish in the country? Take a look at the infographic above to see if your home town is repping one of the world’s most popular games.

We analysed the search trends and volume for over 25 games with considerations for alternative search terms (e.g combining search volume for “PUBG” and “Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds”).

Below are the online games we analysed and the Australian average monthly search volume for each title.

1. Fortnite: 467,000
2. Minecraft: 343,000
3. League of Legends: 218,000
4. Overwatch: 144,000
5. Red Dead Redemption 2: 114,600
6. PUBG: 99,700
7. Destiny 2: 93,000
8. Apex Legends: 88,000
9. Warframe: 72,000
10. World of Warcraft: 52,000
11. Rainbow Six Siege: 40,900
12. Black Ops 4: 38,100
13. Grand Theft Auto V: 36,000
14. Diablo III: 33,000
15. Hearthstone: 32,000
16. CS: GO: 29,200
17. Rocket League: 25,000
18. DOTA 2: 22,000
19. World of Tanks: 21,000
20. Heroes of the Storm: 20,000
21. Battlefield V: 16,500
22. FIFA 19: 16,000
23. Smite: 13,000
24. Super Smash Bros: 11,000
25. Starcraft 2: 10,000
26. NBA 2K19: 7,200

The rising popularity of online gaming in Australia has coincided with the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN). Since April 2018, the majority of Australian residences have been ready to connect to the NBN and if online gaming and streaming is a big consideration household, the availability of NBN 100 plans has been a godsend. For a select few, gigabit internet in Australia is also slowly becoming a reality.

Below is a list of Australia's fastest NBN providers and plans. Use the dropdown at the top of the table to choose between different NBN speed tiers.