Home Gaming Free to Play games make bank in 2013

Free to Play games make bank in 2013

1 min read
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Money

Free to Play games get a lot of flak – often referred to as pay to win, it’s assumed that you actually need to pay money to enjoy them. While this may or may not be true, the reality is that these games rake in some big bucks, but you may be surprised which ones earn the most money.

Let’s remember that these games are free to play – you can enjoy plenty (or even all) of gameplay without coughing up a cent. But people do cough up a lot of cents. SuperData Research compiled data to give us a top ten list:

F2P Top10 2013 1

Have you ever even heard of CrossFire? Apparently it’s a tactical FPS that’s huge in South Korea – enough so that it has raked in almost a billion US dollars. That makes League of Legends’ $624 million look almost insignificant, and what about Team Fortress 2 sitting at $139 million? That’s still a ton of money from both. World of Tanks has taken Eastern Europe by storm, already netting $372 million – you could buy some real tanks with that loot.

What I find most shocking is the disclaimer at the bottom:

World of Warcraft (Activision/Blizzard) and Star Wars: The Old Republic (Electronic Arts) are primarily subscription-based titles, but also generate revenue through the sale of micro-transactions.

Does that mean that these earnings numbers are based on micro transactions? If so, people are buying a lot of mounts! Insane – as much as we might hate micro transactions as gamers, they certainly seem to make publishers a pretty penny.

I can’t help but wonder where Dota 2 is on this list – perhaps it wasn’t included because it technically only launched (came out of beta) in the middle of this year? I’m curious to see how eSports affects this list in 2014. Also, with the immense popularity of Hearthstone (and its reasonably priced micro transactions), especially when it launches on iPad, I wonder if Blizzard will be getting another entry on the list.

Last Updated: January 20, 2014

21 Comments

  1. General JJ PanGirl

    January 20, 2014 at 15:36

    Few games I haven’t even heard of before. Well, good for them I suppose. It was an idea and it paid off.
    I’m just not one of those people to spend money per item.

    Reply

  2. Alien Emperor Trevor

    January 20, 2014 at 15:37

    But… PC gaming is dead! This necrophilia disgusts me!

    Reply

    • Sageville

      January 20, 2014 at 15:49

      Necro-Equinus-Flagellation

      Reply

  3. Weanerdog

    January 20, 2014 at 15:42

    World of tanks is also sort of subscription, you get 1.5 times xp and funds for a premium account. Which makes the grind easier.

    Reply

    • Eric

      January 20, 2014 at 16:19

      And gold rounds… dont forget those. It’s pretty expensive buying them with in-game credits.

      Reply

      • Weanerdog

        January 20, 2014 at 16:36

        No its expensive buying them with actual money, buying them with in game credits are free. But yes grinding for them is a pain, especially when you are trying to get new modules, equipment, consumables and the next tank.

        Reply

  4. Hammersteyn

    January 20, 2014 at 15:43

    No Planetside 2. I wonder where they would come in?

    Reply

    • Admiral Chief in Vegas

      January 20, 2014 at 15:52

      REAL players unlock their stuff

      Reply

      • Hammersteyn

        January 20, 2014 at 15:55

        True

        Reply

        • Admiral Chief in Vegas

          January 20, 2014 at 16:02

          I will only buy membership for two reasons:
          1. Passive cert gain/cap when offline
          2. Enhanced resource gain (for moar MAX time)

          Reply

          • Hammersteyn

            January 20, 2014 at 16:05

            Did you check the sale During December. There was lots of stuff daily for 1SC

          • Admiral Chief in Vegas

            January 20, 2014 at 16:06

            No, I did not unfortunately 🙁

            Did you get something?

          • Hammersteyn

            January 20, 2014 at 16:19

            Yeah, got cammo,guns and various other stuff. Felt silly not picking it up for only 1SC

  5. VampyricSquirrel Monk

    January 20, 2014 at 15:44

    Being a WoW player, there are a LOT of people that buy a bunch of the mounts and pets off the store. It’s actually rather insane.

    Reply

  6. Milesh Bhana

    January 20, 2014 at 15:48

    I think in 2014, Hearthstone will definitely make this top 10 list.

    Reply

  7. DarthofZA

    January 20, 2014 at 16:23

    I don’t think Dota2 will be there because it isn’t near as big. It is still 10% of the daily player base compared to LoL.

    Reply

    • Johan du Preez

      January 20, 2014 at 17:22

      Last time I checked Dota2 surpassed LOL as the most played PC game in the World. That was 10 April 2013 already …

      http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/04/10/dota-2-overtakes-league-of-legends-as-most-played-pc-game-of-2013-claims-report/

      Reply

      • Gustav Minnie

        January 20, 2014 at 18:26

        Johan… eerstens add my op Steam “Kaaskyker”.
        Tweedens…. as jy verder lees. 🙂

        Riot have questioned DFC’s findings, League of Legends sees “over 500,000 peak concurrent players every day on just the EU West shard.” Note that Dota 2’s highest ever concurrent player count, according to SteamGraph, is 325,897 users worldwide.

        We contacted DFC’s David Cole for more info. He pointed out that their findings were based on hours played rather than concurrent users, stating that “LOL does have a lot more users and we may have underestimated LOL. Thing is we have never seen anything like it so have been pretty conservative. But Dota 2 is still big.” The press release announcing DFC’s report has since been removed.

        DOTA2 het ‘n lang pad om te stap.
        Vriendlike groete… jou Starcraft baas.

        Reply

        • DarthofZA

          January 21, 2014 at 09:00

          To add to that, last I checked Steam had 3.2mil unique players each month, and LoL was sitting at over 32mil. That is where I get the 10% of the amount of players.

          Reply

  8. ahmed ehab

    March 6, 2014 at 03:27

    As a Crossfire (NA/UK version) player I must tell you that the game has a real epidemic situation with hackers and also the game is damn pay to win , it’s the most pay to win game you will ever play ( and you shouldn’t play it) for example , you can a get a version of the AK weapon ( called AK Fury ) for 100$ to have 200% extra EXP and also it gives the damn unfair ability to ignore any bad kills and deaths score while still gaining the huge amount of exp and gp and that have lead to people joining certain rooms ( or lobbies whatever your F2P game is ) and throwing grenades at their selves and keep dying fast to finish the game and gain huge amount of exp , so that what a normal player can do in 4 years the noobs who pay thousands of dollars in the game can do that in 6 months, so it have never been about earnings at all and of course no free armor or any addons at all you just have to play with bad and mediocre weapons if you are a player who isn’t willing to pay at least 300 or 400$ in that game ( and believe me you need waaaay more than that) so as to get extra benefits to surpass everyone else unless of course someone paid more , you feel like that game is a prostitute that goes with the highest bidder so just for your own mental health , never ever play this game because earnings are totally misleading.

    I have been playing the game for 3 years and I stopped recently after actually realizing that there is no use of trying any longer , I now play loadout the totally most F2P game of all time because there is NO single upgrade of weapons that can be bought with money and all you can get for money is taunts and clothes plus the game is pretty funny too with lots of humor and fun.

    Reply

  9. agfgfg

    July 12, 2014 at 22:53

    World of Warcraft isn’t free to play. If you meant “Games with microtransactions” you should have said so.

    Reply

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