10 Video Game Trophy Stats You Won't Believe

Trophies and achievements are in many ways the lifeblood of modern gaming, given that there are hundreds of millions of achievement-addicted players out there who will toil away for hours in an attempt to hoover up ever last one of the digital "rewards."

As such, developers are of course incentivised to fill their game with trophies in order to keep players as engaged with their new releases for as long as possible.

Yet trophies and achievements are so much more than mere pats on the back - they also ultimately tell a story and say a lot about the modern gaming landscape.

From looking at trophies and achievements across platforms, we can glean what players are and aren't connecting with, allowing us and especially developers to draw some pretty surprising conclusions.

Now, trophy/achievement data is far from an exact science for a multitude of reasons, but it does nevertheless provides a strong and often shocking indication of modern player trends, as this list will cement.

As tough as it might be to believe some of these absolutely wild stats, the proof is very much in the dopamine-filled pudding...

It's worth pointing out from the outset that achievement data consistently indicates the vast majority of gamers don't actually complete that many of the games they buy.

Look at the stats for just about any major AAA game and you'll find that the number of players who beat the final boss and roll credits is staggeringly low.

Even Insomniac's first Spider-Man game, which offered up a relatively short and not-particularly-difficult single-player campaign, has only seen 49.3% of players reach the end.

And so, with that in mind, it's legitimately quite flabbergasting that The Last of Us Part II - an extremely polarising sequel that's roughly 25 hours long and a brutal, miserable experience for the most part - rocks one of the highest completion rates of any AAA game this generation.

At present, 58% of players have completed the story, placing it far above not only Spider-Man but most other major first-party Sony titles like 2018's God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone, as well as many other comparable AAA offerings.

Even accepting that The Last of Us Part II released during a particularly bleak period of the pandemic where players were encouraged to remain indoors and may have found a strange comfort in its like-minded narrative, that can't fully explain how such a disproportionate number of gamers made it all the way to the end.

Impressive isn't even the word.