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Though primarily a physical card game, attempts to make video games based on Magic: The Gathering, from digital implementations of Magic to other genres of games using Magic characters and lore (and even some combinations of the two), are nearly as old as Magic itself.

Online multiplayer implementations of Magic

Though perhaps the most straightforward category of Magic video game in concept, digital implementations of paper Magic are difficult to create due in no small part to the highly complex rules of the game. For these online clients, that difficulty is amplified by the need to continually program new cards as new sets release. Despite this, Magic has the somewhat unusual arrangement of having two different official clients that exist completely independently of one another. Though they feature very different graphics, in-game economies, card availability, and event structures, they nonetheless are both highly accurate digital implementations of the paper game and are continuously updated with every new premier set and some supplemental sets.

Magic Online

Magic Online is a digital client for playing Magic that launched on June 24, 2002. Though the oldest set programmed at launch was Invasion, Magic Online gradually backfilled most cards from older sets over the first decade of its existence. Due to having existed for over 20 years, Magic Online has amassed an incredibly large card pool that supports a wide variety of formats and a dedicated player base. However, its age is also reflected in ways that some players may find off-putting, such as its spartan design. Magic Online is only available for Windows.

Magic: The Gathering Arena

Magic: The Gathering Arena is a digital client for playing Magic that officially launched on September 26, 2019 after a beta period. At launch, Arena offered an experience that, while more visually striking and easier to navigate than Magic Online, was also far more bare-bones. Only sets from Ixalan forward, supporting only a single constructed format (Standard), were available at launch. However, similar to Magic Online, the client has grown far more capable after years of additions to its card availability and other features. While it still lacks the largest formats from Magic Online (e.g., Modern, Legacy, and Vintage), Arena now supports seven permanently available constructed formats, including larger non-rotating formats like Pioneer and Timeless. Additionally, Arena boasts far wider platform compatibility than Magic Online, being available on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.

Currently supported spin-offs

Puzzle Quest

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest is a mobile game developed by Hibernum Creations and published by D3 Go! and Wizards of the Coast on December 10, 2015. It is a Magic-themed match-three game based on the original Puzzle Quest.

Single-player abandonware

From the late 90s into the early 2000s, Magic experimented several times with video games focused on a primarily single-player experience. As of 2026, all of these games are abandonware, meaning that they are not available to purchase new from Wizards of the Coast nor from any digital storefront. As such, the only legal way to acquire any of these games is to purchase used copies second-hand. Additionally, running some of these games on modern operating systems may pose challenges due to their age.

Armageddon

SUMMARY

Battlegrounds

SUMMARY

BattleMage

SUMMARY

Dreamcast

SUMMARY

Shandalar

SUMMARY

Duels of the Planeswalkers

INTRO

Cancelled and discontinued live service projects

In stark contrast to Magic's single-player games from its early years, the 2010s marked the beginning of an era of live service games that were overwhelmingly shut down within years or even months of launch or even cancelled pre-launch. Whereas games like MicroPose's Shandalar, though difficult to acquire, can still be fully enjoyed to this day, the live service games listed here that did launch still cannot be played today due to their reliance on servers that have since been shut down.

Tactics

Magic: The Gathering – Tactics was an online turn-based Magic strategy game developed by Sony Online Entertainment in collaboration with Wizards of the Coast. First announced on November 2, 2009, the game was released January 18, 2011 for the PC and February 3, 2012 on Steam. The game was shutdown on March 28, 2014.

Rise of the Mana Wraith

Rise of the Mana Wraith was a planned role-playing game that was ultimately cancelled. The Planeswalker War comic, whose story the game was planned to act as a sequel to, was also cancelled.

Magic: Legends

Development of a free-to-play Magic themed role-playing videogame was announced on June 7, 2017.

Originally marketed as an MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) it was to be a collaboration between Wizards of the Coast, Cryptic Studios and Perfect World. Cryptic Studios is an American video game developer specializing in massively multiplayer online role-playing games. It is responsible for the major MMO hits Star Trek Online, Champions Online and Neverwinter (based on WotC-owned Dungeons & Dragons).

“	Experience stunning visuals and sound as we bring Magic to life in this next generation MMORPG. As a Planeswalker, you explore amazing worlds, combat powerful creatures, and meet the legendary beings that shape the fate of the multiverse.	”
—Cryptic Studios

Cryptic Studios CEO Stephen D'Angelo explained that his "intent is to go forward with a Magic game that is not about the card game. It's about jumping into the world and the fiction of Magic: The Gathering."

The name of the game, Magic: Legends, was officially revealed on December 12, 2019, at The Game Awards, a year and a half after the game was announced to be in development. It was shut down on October 31, 2021, due to poor financial performance.

ManaStrike

On January 23, 2018, WOTC filed two new trademarks: "Manastrike" (later revealed to be the Netmarble game) and "Planesiege". The latter also appeared to refer to something related to electronic, online multiplayer gaming, although the exact purpose for this trademark seemingly never came to fruition and thus remains unknown to this day.

On February 5, 2018, Wizards of the Coast and South Korean mobile phone giant Netmarble Games announced they were working on Project M, the codename for a new game for smartphones coming sometime in that year. They called Project M a “multiplayer battling game” in which “players show off their creativity and strategy as they battle across the planes of the "Magic: The Gathering Multiverse", and “game avatars will be fully animated as they race across the battlefield to defeat their opponent.” The released video and images look like a multiplayer online battle arena, or MOBA.

This game, ultimately named ManaStrike, officially launched globally on January 30, 2020. In November 2020, less than a year after its launch, a termination notice was posted in the game's official forum. The game servers remained open until February 24, 2021.

SpellSlingers

Magic SpellSlingers was a Magic-inspired mobile game developed by Pipeworks Studios and Seismic Games and published by Wizards of the Coast. Though also a card game, the rules and mechanics of Magic SpellSlingers differed significantly from ordinary Magic. It launched on August 10, 2022 and was shut down less than two years later on June 4, 2024.

Other acquisitions, cancellations, and statements

In 2017, Chris Cocks (then the CEO of Wizards of the Coast) started an effort to continue the expansion of the firm's intellectual property into video games. This concerned both Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons.

By December of 2017, a half-dozen video-games were in development for Magic: the Gathering.

In October 2019, Wizards of the Coast acquired Montreal-based Tuque Games. Tuque had already been working on a game using Wizards' Dungeons & Dragons license and aimed to continue to work on video games employing the tabletop gaming company's stable of brands. Their first result was Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance.

By 2022, Hasbro / Wizards of the coast had six Video studios, many working on unannounced projects: Skeleton Key, Atomic Arcade, an unnamed studio in Eastgate, Washington, Archetype Entertainment, Tuque Games and MTG Arena. In october 2022, Tuque Games was renamed to Invoke Studios.

In 2023, Wizards of the Coast canceled at least five D&D or Magic video games amid a post-pandemic contraction in the video game industry.

As of 2024, Hasbro is looking to invest more in Magic's video-game format. Sales of the fantasy card game have grown each of the last six years, and in 2022 crossed $1 billion in revenue. Cocks, now CEO of Hasbro, remarked that Magic Arena, while popular, didn’t harness Magic's two biggest growth areas: collectability and its Commander format, which involves more players and cards.

As of December 2024, Hasbro is testing a video game version of Commander, which would potentially be separate from Arena and allow for more than two players to compete. Hasbro is also looking to make the digital versions of its cards more collectible, like the popular game Marvel Snap.