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Previous studies have shown that zealots\u2014individuals who always cooperate\u2014can promote cooperation in prisoner's dilemmas. Yet real-world cooperation also involves multiplayer coordination problems, where their role remains less understood. Here, we examine the role of zealots in N-person stag-hunt games in both finite and infinite, well-mixed populations. We show that a minority of zealots facilitates the emergence of cooperation by lowering the barrier to coordination, but at the cost of reducing the equilibrium level of cooperation. More strikingly, zealots can create two new attractors in infinite populations\u2014full cooperation and stable coexistence\u2014that extend beyond the classical equilibrium of full defection or bistability between defection and cooperation (or coexistence). In finite populations, this dual effect largely persists as population size approaches infinity; otherwise, zealots either matter little or consistently enhance cooperation. Together, these findings revise the conventional view that zealots enhance cooperation in well-mixed populations, revealing instead their dual role in multiplayer coordination dilemmas. This nuanced influence may also shape broader collective problems, from collective-risk dilemmas to the emergence of social conventions.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1098\/rspb.2026.0923","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]],"date-time":"2026-08-19T00:15:08Z","timestamp":1787098508000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Zealots lower coordination barriers but undermine cooperation in multiplayer games"],"prefix":"10.1098","volume":"293","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0001-8132-4351","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yuting","family":"Dong","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Statistics and Mathematics, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics 1 , Kunming, Yunnan 650221, People's Republic of China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6242-9003","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hao","family":"Guo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Independent Researcher 2 , Beijing 100080, People's Republic of China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2725-9763","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Chen","family":"Shen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Kyushu University 3 , Fukuoka 816-8580, Japan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1203-9984","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Lei","family":"Shi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Statistics and Mathematics, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics 1 , Kunming, Yunnan 650221, People's Republic of China"},{"name":"School of Statistics and Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Research Institute of Data Science, Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance 4 , Shanghai 201209, People's Republic of China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"175","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]]},"reference":[{"key":"2026081820145953100_bib1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1257","DOI":"10.1016\/S0278-4343(00)00022-4","article-title":"Microbial biofilms in intertidal systems: an overview","volume":"20","author":"Decho","year":"2000","journal-title":"Cont. 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