In 1972, Allan Alcorn created Pong, and gaming has grown unstoppable ever since. Throughout the last half-century, countless games have come and gone. Some, however, have left a permanent mark on society — and on our collective wallets, while at it. From Pac-Man to Grand Theft Auto, we’ve scoured gaming history for the most successful titles. Let’s dive in, shall we?
Biggest Earners in Gaming History
Video games are the highest-grossing entertainment industry, but what are the highest-grossing video games? Who keeps games on top? The answer will surprise you.
7. Grand Theft Auto V
With themes of graphic violence, crime, drug use, and sex you’d think GTA’s potential audience would be severely limited, but the numbers speak for themselves. Having over 200 million players and 8.6 billion dollars in revenue, GTA 5 easily takes the throne as the highest-grossing Triple-A game. With Grand Theft Auto 6 currently in development, the franchise will be in this discussion for years to come.
6. World Of Warcraft
No matter how much people love your game, you can only sell it to them once. Right? Enter: games as a service. By consistently updating your game and maintaining player interest with new content, you can continuously monetize the same product for years.
Blizzard pioneered this model in World of Warcraft by requiring players to pay a monthly subscription service of fifteen dollars. That’s 3 sixty dollar purchases a year! This strategy naturally results in lower player counts, but Blizzard more than compensates for this by getting way more value out of each player.
5. League of Legends
In many ways, League of Legends is a child of Blizzard as well. It originated with a popular player-made mod of the game Warcraft III. Two teams of five players fight one another on a small map until one side finally destroys the other’s base or “Nexus.”
The game is completely free to play with no upfront costs or subscriptions. Instead, it makes money by charging players to unlock specific “champions,” as well as purely cosmetic “skins” for champions they already own. This business model at first seems counterintuitive, but it consistently nets Riot Games over 1.8 billion dollars a year.
4. Fortnite
What started as a plucky little survival game has ballooned into one of the biggest gaming icons of all time. As last-man-standing games exploded in popularity, Epic Games saw an opportunity.
What if we put our freshly developed 3rd person gunplay and building mechanics into an action-packed 100-player battle royale extravaganza with fun emotes and characters from every franchise we can get our hands on? The answer: 4.4 billion dollars in revenue.
3. Arena of Valor (Honor of Kings)
With nearly 18.7 billion dollars in revenue, Arena of Valor is far and away one of the highest-grossing video games in recent years. So why have you likely never heard of it? Honor of Kings (王者荣耀) in its original name, was primarily made for and marketed to a Chinese audience, and boy does the Chinese audience love it. Gameplay-wise and monetarily it’s a more streamlined, mobile-friendly version of League of Legends.
2. Pac-Man
Is there a more fitting game to take the crown than Pac-Man? If only reality was so romantic. Gaming’s glutinous, yellow mascot burst onto the scene in 1980 as an arcade machine. By 1982 it had sold 400,000 units and made 6 billion dollars in revenue.
When adjusted for inflation you get 18.9 billion dollars in the first two years of its creation alone. And that was all in quarters! It’s unknown how much it’s made since, but it will always be number one in our hearts.
1. Dungeon Fighter Online
This game is up and away the highest-grossing game of all time with 22 billion dollars. Its gameplay is simple, yet unique: A classic 2D beat-em-up style MMO developed in South Korea, and massively marketed in Korea and China. The game is free-to-play, meaning the 22 billion dollars comes from players buying cosmetic skins to personalize one’s character, as well as items to speed up the gameplay and make grinding easier.
The Best of the Best
There we have it. The definite answer to the question, “What game has made the most money in history?” It’s astounding how diverse it is at the top of gaming. Your game can be third-person, first-person, competitive, casual, old, new, violent, perverse, family-friendly, straightforward, open-ended, massive, small, simple, complex, or anything else. There’s no common thread that connects all these great games except that people like them! What do you think will be the biggest ten years from now?
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