If your multiplayer gaming sessions are getting stale, we’ve got you covered. With a near-endless selection of online games and blockbuster titles vying for your attention, the task of choosing what games to play can feel a bit overwhelming, but when your status in the friend group is up for debate, the stakes are even higher.

For some, the idea of playing alone might sound like the perfect escape from the rigours of day-to-day life, but for most of us, a truly immersive gaming experience is better enjoyed with friends. Whether you’re looking for a chilled-out campaign that allows you to chat and play along without too much stress, or an excellent multiplayer mode that demands all your attention, there will always be a fun online game to suit your needs.

While we could have easily kept listing all our favourite video games to play with friends, we did our best to keep the list a bit more manageable. This list will be updated as new games prove themselves worthy throughout 2026, so keep your eyes peeled! 

These are the best multiplayer video games that you and your friends should play right now.

Best Games to Play with Friends

Whether you’re looking for free-to-play games to kill some time, or a new virtual life to lose yourself in for 100 hours, you’ll find it with one of these online multiplayer games. To choose the best games to play with friends, we focused on gameplay and mechanics, difficulty, campaign length and replayability, taking into consideration each title’s visual storytelling and multiplayer features.

1. ARC Raiders

• Genre: PvPvE Extraction Shooter
• Platforms: Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X
• Players: 1-3 per team
• Price: AUD$60

One of two big new games to drop recently and make a splash in the multiplayer-shooter arena, ARC Raiders takes some of the best bits of other extraction shooters (like Escape from Tarkoff and Hunt: The Showdown), and mixes it in with the kind of near-future post-apocalyptic world you’re likely to find in Horizon: Zero Dawn or Destiny—at least in the Cosmodrome. 

You are a raider, and your job is to go topside to the ruined lands of Speranza, explore the destroyed and partially buried world above, and bring whatever useful stuff you can back to your home base. There, you can mission prep, build better weapons, and take a load off before heading back out on your next job. As is common in the extraction genre, though, you’ll have to watch out for other players, who can decide at any point to take you out and bring your hard-earned spoils back for themselves. 

If that sounds stressful, know that ARC Raiders is a bit more forgiving than some of the other games in the genre, and has a whole PvE element to it that I haven’t really even touched on — a whole faction of robots that roam the world and seemingly want to murder any human they come across. Wonderful!

If you and your friends are a bit burned out on the endless deathmatches of other shooters, it might be worth giving ARC Raiders a look in.

2. skate

• Genre: Skateboarding MMO
• Platforms: Windows (Steam), PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One
• Players: Up to 150 players per server
• Price: Free-to-play, with microtransactions

Skateboarding was a huge part of my childhood, and while I had some run-ins with the Skate franchise back in the day I was always more of a Tony Hawks’ Pro Skater kinda kid. Well, after a few weeks of dropping in to last years’ skate revival I’m happy to report that it’s really fun—especially when played with some mates. 

This new version of skate had a rough start: early reviews critically blasted the game’s story and presentation, but to be honest, I haven’t engaged in the story at all. Thankfully, outside of a short tutorial at the beginning of the game that teaches you the absolute basics of the series’ infamous flick-it controls, you’re not required to engage in the critical path for longer than half-an-hour. Once you’re free of that, you’re able to explore a huge city absolutely packed with ramps, skate spots, and buildings to climb and trick off of.

When my friends and I log in we find a new spot to skate, drop a session marker (which you can return to at the press of a button, making it easy to recover from failed attempts at some of the game’s more ludicrous gaps and stunts), and spend some time laughing at one another as we throw ourselves at our own self-imposed challenges. You can even drop your own ramps and launchers, enabling you to make your own little skate spots and opportunities for chaos.

If you and your friends are able to make your own fun in a freeform world, you’ll have a lot to do with skate. I’ll be coming back to this one throughout the year, so I’ll hopefully see you in San Vansterdam.

3. Battlefield 6

• Genre: First-Person Shooter
• Platforms: Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X
• Players: 4 players per party, up to 64-players per match
• Price: AUD$109.95

One of the two biggest first-person military shooter franchises of gaming, Battlefield has had a few ups and downs over the course of its life as a franchise — but the new Battlefield 6 seems to be a return to form in many ways, delivering the destructible, open maps series veterans have been asking for, alongside a modern coat of paint. 

To put it bluntly, Battlefield 6 is awesome but it’s even better when you’re playing with a group of buddies. There are few things better than jumping into a lobby together with your friends, gearing up for a match together, and then… probably getting sniped from across the map. 

If you’re not keen on simply serving as a modern infantryman, you can always jump into a tank and shell your enemies. Or a helicopter. Or a jet. Vehicles are a staple of Battlefield’s multiplayer, and while the new iterations are a bit buggy, they’re still fun.

There’s also a single-player campaign if you’re more into that, but that’s not really gonna work for a list of the best online multiplayer games, is it? It’s there if you want it, but we all know why people play these games. 

4. Peak

• Genre: Climbing
• Platforms: Steam
• Players: 1-4
• Price: AUD$11.79

Peak is an interesting game. There isn’t a lot else like it, as you’re effectively just climbing a procedurally-generated mountain solo or with some buddies. Where it gets interesting is in the social aspects — it’s part of a new trend called ‘friendship’, which are smaller-scale games centred almost entirely around getting you and your friends together to make your own fun. You can definitely help your friends scale the giant mountain-shaped problem you’re all facing, but there are also ways you can hinder them, or consume them.

See, each game starts with you and your buddies crash landing on a deserted island, and you’re left with the daunting task of making it to the highest point of the landmass before a strange, deadly fog suffocates you. Oh, and the fog slowly rises, so you’ll need to get moving.

To keep climbing, you’ll need energy, and to get energy you’ll need to eat. There’s plenty of food found naturally in the environment for those willing to look for it — but sometimes, in particularly dire situations, a fellow starving climber might start to look pretty tasty. What’s better — both of you dying on a mountain, or one of you potentially making it to safety? These are the important questions. 

It sounds bleak, but Peak is very much wrapped in a cute, pastel style, so you don’t feel as bad eating your friend once their head starts looking like a cartoon roast chicken.

5. Elden Ring Nightreign

• Genre: Rogue-like Souls Action
• Platforms: Steam (Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
• Players: 1 or 3
• Price: AUD$54.95

If you’ve bounced off of Dark Souls-maker From Software’s games before, Elden Ring Nightreign may be a smoother entry point. Rather than heading into a cold, desolate and unforgiving world alone, in Nightreign you can do it with two of your friends, and with a built-in way of reviving downed team-mates you’re less likely to get frustrated at the series’ characteristic difficulty.

This isn’t just Elden Ring with friends, though. Rather than being dropped into a world you’re meant to take your time to explore and understand, here you’re literally dropped into a reflection of the original games’ world and are given a time limit of three in-world days to survive, power up, and take down your target Nightlord. Whether you (and your team) live or die, at the end of a run you’re whisked back to the Roundtable Hold to prepare for your next incursion into Limveld.

You can practice each character’s specific playstyle, as well as try out all the potential weapon drops you could find in the open world so that when that Moonveil finally appears you’re ready to rock and roll. The game is very difficult for solo players, though, so best to bring some buddies.

There has been some additional content added since launch (a more difficult series of challenges for once you’ve exhausted the base-game’s content) and a bigger, expansion-style paid DLC—as well as a whole new multiplayer From Software game, exclusive to the Nintendo Switch 2, called The Duskbloods — so we’ll be eating good for a while. 

6. Enshrouded

• Genre: Survival
• Platforms: Steam (Windows)
• Players: 1 – 16
• Price: AU$42.99

If you’re like me and have sunk a few hundred hours into Valheim (yes, really), you’re probably already well aware of this one, but for those of you who aren’t in the know, let me break it down. Enshrouded is a third-person survival crafting game set in a fantasy world called Embervale, where you (and up to 15 friends) explore the world with the goal of gearing up before diving into swathes of the map that are covered in magical and oppressive fog.

You’ll spend a lot of time out of the fog, but when you enter it you’ll start running into more dangerous foes, but likewise find better rewards. Together, you may just be able to get out alive to return to your base, regroup, and build out your operations.

You can certainly play games like this alone, but it becomes a bit easier when you have multiple players taking on different aspects of the game at once. For example, my friends love being in charge of building up our base and coming up with fun new designs, whereas I prefer to take care of farming and alchemy. Additionally, with a fairly flexible class system, we can each build out our own characters to support one another.

It’s still in Early Access, like a few other games on this list, but it’s already had a massive content drop in the form of the northern mountains. That update brought on a whole new biome, as well as a new boss, a new tier of weapons and armour, new mechanics, and an expanded farming system. There’s more updates planned for Enshrouded as well, so there’ll be life in the game for quite a while. 

7. Lethal Company

• Genre: Horror
• Platforms: Windows (Steam)
• Players: 1-4 players
• Price: AU$14.50

Another ‘friendslop’ game, Lethal Company is the work of a single developer putting their love of spooky capitalism into a fun, strange, and sometimes terrifying multiplayer survival roguelike thing. You and your friends play as the disposable employees of ‘The Company’, which tasks you with salvaging scrap from dangerous places across the galaxy. You’ll explore abandoned exomoons and facilities in an effort to bring anything valuable back for a pay-day, all while dodging ‘anomalies’ — hostile creatures that want you dead.

If that sounds scary, know that the fun of this one is less about jumpscares — though those are still present, of course. Instead, Lethal Company’s biggest moments come as you grapple with the increasingly unpredictable situations you and your friends find yourselves in. Since the maps are procedurally generated, and the creatures you face are often difficult to predict, every time you land on a new planet you’ll face a slightly different situation to anyone before you. 

Newer games, like R.E.P.O. and Content Warning, have emerged to bring a new spin to its formula, but Lethal Company hasn’t lost any of its charm over the past few years.

8. Fortnite

• Genre: Battle Royale
• Platforms: Epic Store (Windows), Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S/One
• Players: 1 – 4
• Price: Free to play

Fortnite is an interesting game because not only is it incredibly popular, but it’s also evolving beyond just being a battle royale murder simulator. You can go to concerts in Fortnite now, race cars, or play a survival game as a Lego figure. There’s even a Counter-Strike-esque first-person shooter attached to the game now called Fortnite Ballistic, which has essentially changed the game entirely.

Despite getting weirder with every new season (which tends to last around three months each), Fortnite remains one of the most popular games to play online due to its tried-and-tested formula. The basic act of dropping out of the battle bus, scavenging for weapons, and teaming up with your friends is a lot of fun, whether it be in the ‘modern’ playlist or in the ‘OG’ recreation of season one.

There’s a lot to talk about with Fortnite, and honestly, we just don’t have the time to highlight it all. Compared to other games of its ilk, Fortnite’s main difference from its competition is that you can build defensive structures almost instantly, provided you have the resources. 

There is also a zero-build mode if, like us, you’d rather just scope out the competition mano-a-mano. Or, if you’re like me specifically, you can let your teammates do most of the killing while you play around with whatever melee weapon got added each season. 

9. Marvel Rivals

• Genre: Hero Shooter
• Platforms: Steam (Windows), Epic Store (Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
• Players: 1 – 5
• Price: Free to play

In the lead-up to its release, Marvel Rivals was called a lot of things: an Overwatch rip-off, just another big-budget trend-chasing shooter conceived of in a board room, doomed to follow Concord‘s lead and be dead on arrival. Almost a year after launch, though, the game is still consistently in the top ten games played on Steam.

Admittedly, this online multiplayer title does play very similarly to Overwatch, in that you pick a (super)hero and engage in a team-based deathmatch. The game is played entirely from a third-person perspective, though, and defaults to a 6v6 fight, rather than 5v5. Plus, you’re playing as your favourite superheroes and villains from Marvel’s varied comic-and-movie empire: Iron Man, Wolverine, Spiderman, Venom, Magneto, Loki, and the rest of the gang are all here, and all fill the necessary roles of Duelist, Strategist and Vanguard.

In fact, perhaps the game’s biggest difficulty curve is that it has launched with 33 different heroes to choose from, making it difficult for newer players to know where to start, and has only added more as the game has aged. Hero shooter veterans might have an easier time, but suffice to say, there’s a lot of choice and with some good coordination, you can pull off some pretty awesome combos.

Best of all, Marvel Rivals is a free online game to play with friends, and that usually means microtransactions are pretty egregious. That’s true here, but you can also just not spend any money and enjoy the fun gameplay, rather than needing new costumes. I know, I’m not even fooling myself.

10. Minecraft

• Genre: Survival Crafting
• Platforms: Everything
• Players: Up to 20 for self-hosted servers, but the sky’s the limit
• Price: AUD$49

The granddaddy of the modern survival crafting renaissance and a cultural icon, it’s easy to forget that the original release of Minecraft was made by a team of less than 10 people, and yet has gone on to become the most commercially successful video game ever made. 

It’s also hard to keep in mind, given how ‘big’ the game has become over the years, that it is still just a fun, cozy game to jump into with your friends. Minecraft is the definition of value-for-money, giving you a seemingly endless world to explore, deep caverns to spelunk, vast oceans to dredge, and whole other dimensions to visit. And that isn’t even taking the crafting into account. 

The main loop of the game, beyond just taking your time, is mining materials from the procedurally generated world in order to build new and better things — from wooden tools, to stone and iron, etc. With these new tools, you’re able to better survive the world, dig deeper, and live longer. Pair this cycle with the added fun of having a few friends around, breeding animals for food (or company), and planting crops for more ingredients, and you have a lot to do.

There’s plenty of really, really cool automation you can make happen in Minecraft if you’re getting serious about it, but sometimes it’s more fun to keep the game simple and just live off the land, as Notch intended.

11. Abiotic Factor

• Genre: Survival
• Platforms: Windows (Steam), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
• Players: 1-6 players
• Price: AU$50.95

If you’re a fan of Valve’s combined Half Life and Portal universe, you’ve probably wondered what it would have been like to be a scientist at either Black Mesa or Aperture Science — you know, when things weren’t completely apocalyptic. Well, Abiotic Factor seeks to answer that question. Very much inspired by Valve’s work, Abiotic Factor puts you and up to five of your friends in the shoes of those scientists in question, though working in an underground research facility deep below the Australian outback. 

When you start the game, it just so happens to be your first day on the job, and everything is going smoothly until an interdimensional rift opens and alien creatures start invading the facility and killing everyone (okay, so things are completely apocalyptic here too). To survive, you and your friends will need to explore the complex, salvage whatever you can, and build up your defenses against the extra-dimensional threats pouring in. There’s no Gordan Freeman here, you’re on your own.

Unlike many of the co-op games on this list, Abiotic Factor actually does feature a story that you can play through together with your friends: so if you’re keen to figure out what happens at the GATE facility, bring a couple mates along for the ride.

12. Path of Exile 2

• Genre: Action RPG
• Platforms: Steam (Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
• Players: 1-6
• Price: AUD$46 for Early Access, but will be Free to Play on release

This one is for all the jaded Diablo fans out there who have been left wanting by the last few decades of Blizzard games. Path of Exile was already well known as a fantastic alternative demon-slaying ARPG, but with the launch of its sequel the series has shown off what it’s really capable of. And it’s capable of a lot.

The game is still in early access, so expect more to come, but for now you’ll get access to six fully fleshed-out classes: the crossbow-wielding Mercenary, pet summoning Witch, elemental archer Ranger, ki-powered Monk, martial powerhouse Warrior, shapeshifting Druid, agile Huntress, and arcane adept Sorceress.

Each of those classes gets access to an absolutely massive skill tree that gives me nightmares and can be further ascended into a more focused subclass a bit further into the game. Everyone who complained that Diablo III and IV failed on the skills front should be salivating at this game — and that’s just the character customisation. There’s a whole dark fantasy world out there to explore, with up to five of your friends, and plenty of whoop-ass to unleash on the nightmarish creatures of Wraeclast.

13. Webfishing

• Genre: Cozy, Social
• Platforms: Windows (Steam)
• Players: 1-12 players
• Price: AU$7.50

A lot of the games on this list are frantic, action-packed affairs pitting you and your friends against dangerous situations, often with little room for mistakes. Webfishing is a bit different. You trade your loadout for a fishing rod, your favourite hero for a little humanoid animal, and check out a small island with your friends with the aim of catching fish and hanging out. It’s like a small, private Discord server, but with a cool lo-fi world to explore while you’re chatting away.

There’s over 100 fish to catch if you’re a completionist, and there are some secondary activities to try (like learning to play a guitar, picking the right finger positions for the right chord and everything), but that’s not really the point of webfishing. Instead, this is a game to play to wind down, or to catch up.

It’s the perfect kind of game for those evenings where you’re all a bit stressed out or busy with work, and just need something to help you slow down and connect with your friends. It doesn’t deliver a ton of ‘content’, but it’s so cheap and relaxing that it’s worth having in your library anyway— you never know when someone needs a good chat by the water’s edge, after all.

14. Phasmaphobia

• Genre: Horror
• Platforms: Windows (Steam), Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
• Players: 1-4
• Price: AU$29.50

If you’ve ever watched any of The Conjuring films, or really any ghost-related movie, you already have a pretty good idea of what you’ll be getting into with Phasmophobia. You play as a paranormal investigator — a ghost hunter — who is investigating one of several places that are reportedly haunted, reading the various signs and clues that pop up as a result of anything spooky, and using that to figure out what kind of spirit or being has decided to make this house its home. 

The beauty of it, of course, is that you can play with up to 3 others, and that at any point any of you can be killed off by the malevolent being stalking the halls. Phasmaphobia is one of the best cases for not simply sticking to the tried-and-true Discord call, and instead using the in-game communication, as when you find yourself alone on the other side of a site from your friends, no one can hear you scream. 

Beyond that, the developers behind the project have hinted that there’s still more to come from Phasmophobia — the game performed better than anyone involved expected, and that success is already being reinvested back into the game and being used to support other studios, making more cool stuff. We love that.

15. Palworld

• Genre: Survival crafting
• Platforms: Windows (Steam), macOS, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
• Players: 1-4
• Price: AU$43.95

If you’re looking for games to play with your friends you’ve probably already heard about Palworld, but it’s worth noting this game isn’t just ‘Pokemon with guns’. It is that, don’t get me wrong, but it takes way more inspiration from survival-crafting games like Ark: Survival Evolved or Valheim — though with a whole new spin on the base management, and a new reason to explore with your buddies, with the introduction of pals. 

Those pals, which are definitely heavily inspired by Pokemon, serve as the backbone of Palworld. If you’re not interested in finding interesting new little creatures (with very obvious type matchups) to collect, train up, and exploit with poor working conditions this one probably isn’t for you. However, it’s worth noting that if, like me, you grew up wanting to see Nintendo take Pokemon in a whole new direction— something open-world, for example — Palworld is a very un-Nintendo way of doing that.

You’ll also be building bases, unlocking new equipment, gunning down poachers and raiders and exploring new environments: all with the goal of escaping the island you’ve mysteriously woken up on. It’s pretty standard survival fare, but made a lot more fun when played with your buddies and pals.

16. Apex Legends

• Genre: Battle-Royale Hero Shooter
• Platforms: Windows (Steam), PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One
• Players: 1-3
• Price: Free to play

It’s been out for a while at this point, but Apex Legends is still one of the best hero shooters you can get your grubby little hands on these days. Offering a whole lot for the very fair price of free*, Apex takes several of the tried and true concepts of the wildly successful battle royale genre, mixes it with the gunplay and movement of developer Respawn’s prior series, Titanfall, and adds in a hero-based roster of 25 characters: each of which have their own individual playstyles and niches within the game’s meta.

Depending on which character you choose, you’ll be reversing the flow of gravity around you, teleporting through space to reach locations unseen or unexpected, overheating your enemies weapons as they try to shoot you down, or shielding your teammates from danger. Or a whole bunch of other things: each character has three abilities, meaning a team will have access to nine at a time, and, across the 60-player maps, there’s always someone doing something cool.

If that sounds complicated: know that while there’s a lot to learn, Apex is actually one of the more easily parsed competitive shooters on the market, and thankfully has managed to cultivate a healthy, and supportive, player base — a rarity these days, if we’re being honest. Ask for help and you shall (hopefully) receive!

17. Split Fiction

• Genre: Action adventure, platformer
• Platforms: Windows (Steam)., PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S
• Players: 2
• Price: AUD$69.95

Have you ever wondered what it’d be like if you and your friend got sucked into a series of ever-more weird and wacky worlds, based off of sci-fi and fantasy stories you and that friend have written, and had to figure out how to escape? No? Too niche?

Split Fiction is exactly that, following sci-fi author Mio and fantasy author Zoe as they make their way through simulations of the worlds they’ve created. The game is made from the ground up for co-op multiplayer, either or online, so you cannot play this one alone and will need to bring a friend along.

What it lacks in a single-player mode, though, Split Fiction more than delivers in gameplay variety. While each level will effectively play like a 3D platformer, you’ll be doing very different things in each: flying dragons in one, grappling through a techno city in another. It changes so often that it feels like multiple games in one, which is definitely a good thing.

---

What do you think about our list of great online games? Any fantastic co-op games we missed? Let us know in the comments!