Best Multiplayer Games

Multiplayer video games have existed since the earliest software in the ‘60s. Even in those early days, developers recognised it was special to collaborate and compete with other human players. We still see this today in the best multiplayer games, where you can take on a hundred other players to be the last person standing, join up with friends to challenge another team of humans, or rally with strangers online to face waves of AI-controlled enemies together.

The best multiplayer games foster and demand teamwork, pushing strangers and friends together to overcome challenges. In those moments where you unite for victory, you can find a satisfaction that single-player games can’t offer. After all, beating a boss is an exciting experience, but doing it with the help of a friend just hits different.

We’ve assembled the best multiplayer games across various genres. Whatever you’re looking for, be it a fun place to hang out with your friends or a demanding tournament with a high skill ceiling, you’ll find it in the games listed below.

Rocket League

In Rocket League, two teams of up to four players compete to get the most goals before the clock hits zero. Much like regular football, just without any complicated rules about offside and handballs. Unlike regular football, however, all of the players are rocket-powered cars.

When you first start Rocket League, you may struggle with the basics of dribbling, passing, and shooting; finding manoeuvring on the pitch is made more complicated by four wheels and three-point turns. However, in time and with practice, you will discover benefits to your mechanical body. When was the last time you saw Mbappé leap into the air, rocket boost 30 meters off the ground to intercept an incoming ball, and hoof it up the pitch into the opposition’s goal with a perfect backflip?

Rocket League’s unique take on football has spawned a dedicated online following and its own esports league. It’s no wonder that it won BAFTA’s awards for Best Multiplayer Game, Sports Game, and Family Game and the DICE award for Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay. Better still, in 2020, developer Psyonix made Rocket League free-to-play and cross-platform, so you can get stuck in on whatever platform you play.

Helldivers 2

As a proud soldier of Super Earth, in Helldivers 2, it is up to you to violently spread democracy through the cosmos. At the start of each match in this third-person shooter, you and three friends drop onto an alien planet’s surface and carve through vicious bugs and homicidal robots to complete objectives such as raising a flag over the battlefield, rescuing human colonists, and fixing communication facilities.

Since launching in February, Helldivers 2 has fast become one of the biggest hits of 2024. Its explosive sci-fi weaponry and satisfying gunplay are certainly part of it, but it’s the slapstick co-op experience that has made it so popular.

Friendly fire is always on in Helldivers 2, and with so many enemies on screen, only the most cautious player can avoid clipping a teammate with a stray plasma round. Then, when you throw in all the airstrikes, mortars, and tanks you’re calling in from your support ship in orbit, Helldivers 2 battles become joyfully chaotic.

Add the constantly shifting battle lines of Super Earth’s galactic war, new weapons, vehicles, and artillery coming in regular updates, and a thriving online community and Helldivers 2 makes an exciting way to spend a few hours with friends.

League of Legends

Most games on this list have a high skill ceiling but offer a gentle entry to their online matches. League of Legends, however, is much more demanding. Still, if you can master its intricacies, you will discover a deeply rewarding game.

Born out of a mod for Blizzard’s real-time strategy game Warcraft 3, if you’re a fan of Age of Empires, Starcraft, or Command & Conquer, League of Legends may appeal to you. In each match, two teams of five face off in battles that call for coordination, tactics, and strategy as you try to destroy your opposition’s base. As well as trying to fend off the other team, you must also contend with waves of an army of AI-controlled minions assaulting your base.

Some of the challenges in League of Legends come from just how many variables there are to contend with. There are over 160 characters to choose from, each armed with different abilities, so you won’t see everything the game offers for hundreds of hours, let alone learn how to counter it in battle. However, if you persist, you will discover a game where the payoff for success is immense: every win in this game is hard-earned and only comes through teamwork.

When League of Legends launched in 2009, it received multiple awards, including Best Game Design and Best New Online Game from the Game Developers Choice Awards. Ten years later, as a sign that it only continued to improve, it won The Game Awards’ prize for Best Esports Game not once but three times, in 2019, 2020, and 2021.

Fortnite: Battle Royale

Since its release in 2017, third-person shooter Fortnite: Battle Royale has been the most popular game in the world, with millions of players logging in every day. The premise is simple: 100 players skydive onto an island and hunt each other until there is just one survivor.

Where Fortnite differed from other battle royale games originally was its building mechanics. Players could collect resources mid-battle and make structures from walls, platforms, and ramps. Creative players would build shelters, sniper towers, and traps for their enemies. Over the years, though, it’s separated itself from the competition in many other ways.

After eight years, you may think the original concept would have grown tired, but developer Epic Games regularly updates and reinvents Fortnite, ensuring it remains fresh.

Every three months, the developer releases a new season that makes sweeping changes to the map, adds new weapons and characters, and often includes a feature that upends gameplay, such as adding vehicles and the ability to revive teammates. Then, every year, Epic releases a new chapter for Fortnite, which includes an entirely new map to master.

Shortly after its release, Fortnite won the Golden Joystick’s Ultimate Game of the Year award, but it’s only grown since then, partnering with major musicians and movie studios to include tie-in events around film releases, new albums, and concert tours. Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to play as Marvel’s Avengers in their fight against Thanos, battle the Empire in time for the release of the final Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker, and bring a bit of style to the battle royale by putting John Wick’s famous black suit.

Fortnite is a singular experience; after all, in what other game could you watch a Lady Gaga concert while dressed as Spider-Man?

Sea of Thieves

On the surface, Sea of Thieves is a first-person pirate game where you crew a ship with your friends and search for buried treasure. But you don’t need to dig deeply to find a sandbox of slapstick comedy.

Sea of Thieves takes place in an open world filled with mysterious islands, deep sea creatures, and other players. Taking on jobs from the game’s different trading companies, you and your friends will crew up a vessel and set sail into those strange waters, dealing with everything you encounter as a team.

As each ship has more tasks to perform than players – such as raising the sails, taking the steering wheel, loading and firing the cannons, and the all-important bailing water from the leaking hold – whenever you run into trouble, it requires communication and teamwork to overcome the challenge – it’s no use operating the cannons if no player turns the ship to face the enemy.

More often than not, your crew will descend into panic, with players running every which way rather than working together. But this chaos can prove more enjoyable than perfect coordination.

Developer Rare wanted casual and experienced players to team up, so as you progress through the game the items you earn are purely cosmetic. This means there’s no danger of a friend levelling ahead of you, taking the fun away of playing together because they’ve become overpowered.

Rare consistently updates and expands Sea of Thieves, so much so that BAFTA gave it the Evolving Game award in 2021, three years after release. If you’re looking for a game where you and friends can while away an evening chatting, working together, and maybe even singing the odd sea shanty then it’s worth checking out.