The US Digital Gaming Market

It’s starting to become less and less crazy to call the United States digital games market a billion dollar industry. Thankfully, according to SuperData Research, it is estimated at $995 million, a 2% increase over last year. That number represents money going to the developers, and does not account for in-game trading and betting.

For a taste of how much money trading and in-game economy represents; Yanis Varoufakis, formerly Valve’s chief Team Fortress 2 economist is now the Finance Minister for Greece. Yes, from valuing digital items and pixels to a helping run a country, the economic factor of modern games is not to be understated. A single hat in TF2, the Burning Team Captain, is famous for being a ridiculously priced item, namely about $12,000.

Of the $995 million mentioned, some of that is gathered from monthly subscriptions, mostly from massive multiple games. SuperData Research shows five of the most popular MMO subscription games in the US in the table below.

These subscription-based numbers are missing free-to-play League of Legends and Dota 2, arguably the two biggest multiplayer games in the esports scene. LoL is known for its massive following and Dota 2 is famous for its huge userbase and even bigger prize pool at the yearly tournament known as The International. Esports have become mainstream when the dollars being thrown around rival that of not only major sports franchises, but entire leagues.

(Header image via Shawn Carpenter Photography)