This study investigates three lower-secondary school ESL teachers’ perception of digital games as material in ESL teaching in Sweden. To investigate this, the following questions are asked: (1) Do English teachers use digital games as teaching material? (2) If they do, how do teachers use digital games to improve students’ communicative skills? and (3) Why do teachers include or exclude digital games as teaching material? The method for the study consists of semi-structured interviews with three lower-secondary school ESL teachers from two different schools in Sweden, followed by an inductive analysis and selective coding process, which led to the core categories inclusion/exclusion, practices and motives. The main findings show that the teachers in my study use digital games in their teaching, but to a limited extent. Two reasons for this are a lack of knowledge on the topic and insufficient resources provided for them. DGBL is only used partly by the teachers in my study in ESL teaching, and with the purpose of tricking the students into acquiring language by making the material more enjoyable to engage with. The primary motive for the teachers to include digital games in ESL teaching is to intrinsically or extrinsically motivate students to engage with the material. DGBL seems to be perceived by the teachers in my study as a valid way of making bothersome or neurodivergent students focus on the material. This study shows that the three teachers in this study use digital games and perceive them as a positive addition to ESL teaching in lower-secondary school. To develop DGBL in lower-secondary school ESL teaching, teachers need to have more material accessible to them and more opportunities to increase their competencies in working with this material.