The Most-Played Game on the Internet Is 35 Years Old
It has no graphics, no storyline, no online multiplayer, and no loot boxes. It shipped free on a computer you didn’t choose, and it has outlasted almost every game that ever tried to be bigger than it. Microsoft Solitaire — the card game that came bundled with Windows — turns 35 this year, and it is still one of the most played games on the planet. Not bad for something that was originally designed to teach people how to use a mouse.
The Numbers Are Absurd
Microsoft Solitaire has been played by more than 500 million people worldwide and was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2019. Even today, it pulls in around 35 million monthly players who collectively play more than 100 million hands every single day. That’s not a nostalgia spike. That’s a permanent fixture of global computing. By almost any measure, it is the most played computer game in history.