A persistent browser based game is a multiplayer game played in an ordinary browser tab, in a world that keeps going after you close it. The acronym PBBG dates from 2007. The games are older than the label, and the label alone tells you little. We define the genre by three observable things. The game state lives on a server, not your machine. The world advances whether or not you are logged in. Progress is built to span many sessions, often years. Every example below comes from our directory, which records the date we last checked each one.
What a persistent browser based game is: three observable tests
1. The state lives on the server
Close the tab, switch computers, log in from a phone: your character is where you left it. Genesis is the extreme case. Its own history page says a group from Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden, founded it in 1989. The same world has been running since. When we checked, the newest post on its forum was dated 26 August 2026.
2. The world moves without you
Planetarion advances one “tick” per hour in a normal round, per its beginners’ manual. Its newest news post when we checked was dated 25 September 2026. NationStates applies the test with a deadline. Its FAQ, as quoted in search results, says a nation nobody logs into is deleted after 28 days, or 60 in Vacation Mode. Logging in restores it. The page itself returned a 403 error.
3. Progress spans many sessions
Kingdom of Loathing grants 40 adventures per day at its nightly maintenance, capped at 200, per its official documentation. The design assumes you come back tomorrow. Launched 10 February 2003.
What is not required: pbbg.net, which coined the term, says accounts, multiplayer and text are all optional. “It is entirely possible to craft a PBBG that is wholly a singleplayer experience”. Our directory is narrower: multiplayer games only.
Where “PBBG” came from
The PBBG Project coined the acronym in January 2007. Aaron Goertzen is credited with defining it and with offering incentives to other sites and games to adopt it (pbbg.net). pbbg.net calls the older terms, browser game and web game, too broad. Wikipedia no longer has a PBBG article. On 1 October 2026 the title redirected to the general Browser game article, which names Earth 2025 (1995) as an early text-only multiplayer example.
The games predate the label. Hattrick launched on 30 August 1997. Utopia followed on 11 October 1998. Planetarion arrived in early 2000, Miniconomy on 1 January 2002, OGame on 3 October 2002 and NationStates on 13 November 2002. Travian followed in June 2004 and Torn left beta on 15 November 2004. All dates are from Wikipedia. All but Utopia are in our directory, all on our long-running tag.
The three time models that make a game persistent
Real-time ticks
Planetarion’s hour is the reference clock. Its Havoc interim round (26 September to 8 October 2026) shortens the tick to 15 minutes. OGame runs continuously. Mines produce metal, crystal and deuterium around the clock, and deuterium doubles as fleet fuel, so a fleet in flight is a real-time commitment. Travian: Legends is real time on servers that run about 200 days before the endgame. BattleMaster sits at the slow end. Turns resolve every 12 hours, at 6 AM and 6 PM UTC. Its homepage says you can spend as little as 10 minutes a day. Its newest news post is dated 22 July 2026. OGame and Travian carry our real-time tag; Planetarion and BattleMaster, whose worlds move in discrete ticks, sit under turn-based.
Energy and action budgets
Torn gives 5 energy every 15 minutes up to a cap of 100, according to the Torn Stats training guide. Torn’s own wiki returned a 403 error, so we cite the community guide. Fallen London refills one action every 10 minutes “whether or not you’re playing”, to a cap of 20, or 40 for subscribers (Fallen London wiki). Kingdom of Loathing uses a daily grant rather than a drip. All three sit on our energy-system tag.
Numbered rounds and seasons
Miniconomy runs three-week rounds with one-week breaks. Its homepage on 1 October 2026 listed Round 282 (3 to 24 October 2026) through Round 285 (26 December 2026 to 16 January 2027). Planetarion’s Round 119 ticks from 16 October to 4 December 2026, about seven weeks, per the Round 118 and 119 announcement. A Travian round ends when a player builds a World Wonder to level 100. Hattrick’s season is 16 weeks. These are on the seasons-rounds tag.
Boundary cases
A MUD with a web client
Genesis is persistent and multiplayer but older than the web. It qualifies because of an official browser client, which its history page dates to 2013. A MUD client pointed at port 3011 still works too. We file it under MUDs.
Idle games with offline progress
Milky Way Idle (beta 2 July 2022, full release 22 April 2023, per its wiki) lets you queue actions that run server-side. Its Steam page says queued actions give “10+ hours” of offline progress, or days. The shared market and guilds make it a PBBG rather than a solo clicker. A Steam client entered Early Access on 6 March 2025. The newest dated activity we logged for it is from 13 July 2026. We file it under idle games.
Interactive fiction with an action economy
Fallen London is mostly a single-player story, run on a shared server. It counts because the action timer runs while you are away and your qualities persist. Failbetter’s news page showed an Exceptional Story post dated 24 September 2026. We file it under interactive fiction.
Sports managers on a fixed calendar
Hattrick’s persistence is the calendar. League matches fall at the weekend, cup and friendly games midweek, according to Hattrick’s own beginners’ guide as quoted in search results. The site blocked our direct request. Seasons last 16 weeks (Wikipedia) and the game has run since 1997. We file it under sports managers.
Nation sims with timed issues
NationStates delivers “multiple issues per day on timed intervals” (Wikipedia), and a nation nobody visits is eventually deleted, as noted above. We file it under nation sims.
Games that also ship mobile apps
Torn has had an Android app since 2018 (Wikipedia); Google Play lists TORN by TORN LTD, and our listing records iOS too. Hattrick Football Manager is on both stores (App Store update 4 September 2026). Travian: Legends was at App Store version 4.1.0, updated 29 September 2026, when we looked. Gameforge’s OGame page links to iOS and Android apps, though our listing records browser only. Fallen London’s app was retired on 25 April 2018, per the fan wiki’s timeline, so our listing records browser only. The mobile-apps and no-download tags separate the two.
How persistent browser games pay for themselves
Free or donation-supported: BattleMaster (volunteer-run), Genesis (Patreon) and NationStates. Freemium with the timer for sale: Torn donator status lifts the energy cap to 150 (Torn Stats guide). Fallen London’s Exceptional Friendship doubles the cap to 40. Kingdom of Loathing sells a tradeable Mr. Accessory for a $10 donation. Premium currency: Travian’s Gold and OGame’s Dark Matter. Paid rounds: Planetarion’s announcement says Round 119 “will be a paid round”.
Check dates and closed games
We record a check date on every listing, and we mark a game closed when its own site says it has shut down. Urban Dead, a 2005 zombie game whose 50-point action budget regenerated 1 point per 30 minutes (per its wiki), closed at noon UTC on 14 March 2025. Kevan Davis announced it on 3 March 2025, citing the UK Online Safety Act (shutdown notice). Our listing marks it closed. A launch year tells you nothing about today. A check date does.
How we checked
Read-only visits, no accounts. We used the games’ own pages, Wikipedia and long-standing wikis. The Torn and Hattrick wikis and the NationStates FAQ returned 403 errors, and fallenlondon.com renders almost nothing without JavaScript. Where a figure came from a search snippet rather than the page, we say so above. We cite player counts only with a date. Wikipedia gives NationStates 337,296 active nations on 14 May 2026 and Hattrick 201,895 users on 8 October 2022.
Where to start
If you want an hourly clock, start with space strategy or strategy. If you have ten minutes a day, the energy games in crime and RPG fit. If you like a fresh start every few weeks, Miniconomy under business sims resets on a published calendar. If you prefer reading to clicking, the text-based tag covers most of the games on this page.
A server holds the state, the clock runs without you, and the game expects you back. The directory lists more than 260 games that meet it, each with a check date.
