In 2024, video game publisher and software developer Epic Games is projected to generate approximately 5.8 billion U.S. dollars in gross revenues, up from 5.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2020.

How does Epic Games make money? Epic Games' gross does not only include game revenue from the company battle royale hit Fortnite, but also engine revenue derived from game licenses and royalties, as well as Unreal Engine assets. Epic is the developer of the gaming engine Unreal Engine, which is currently monetized under a royalty model, meaning that is can be downloaded for free and Epic claims a percentage of sales revenue. Currently, Epic is not claiming a fee for developers that publish their games on the Epic Games Store. The Epic Games Store (EGS) was launched in December 2018. In May 2020, Epic announced that their share of royalties for games developed in Unreal Engine are waived until developers have earned their first 1 million U.S. dollars in revenue. Other income streams of the company include Epic Games Store revenue, and Merchandise and other revenue. Epic Games Store upsetting the industry standard One of the biggest headlines regarding the launch of Epic’s own digital storefront was the company’s attitude to developer / store revenue split. Gaming stores and app platforms including Valve’s Steam, the Apple App Store, or Google Play, usually take a 30 percent commission cut from game sales and in-game revenues. The Epic Games Store was released with the announcement that the EGS would only claim 12 percent of revenue, leaving 88 percent to the developers. This approach, as well as Epic’s attempt to circumvent Apple’s monetization strategies in the iOS app of Fortnite, has made many headlines, led to Apple removing the app from its App Store, and resulted in the still ongoing lawsuit Epic vs. Apple.

In 2024, video game publisher and software developer Epic Games is projected to generate approximately 907 million U.S. dollars in gross income, down from 1.83 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. In the most recently ended year, the company's gross revenue was estimated to be5.6 billion U.S. dollars.

In 2022, the multi-platform free-to-play (F2P) gaming title Fortnite generated an estimated 4.4 billion U.S. dollars in annual revenues. This figure decreased from the previous year when the battle royale title made about 4.8 billion U.S. dollars in revenues.

First released in 2017, the battle royale game Fortnite has become popular with audiences worldwide. The game also has a sizeable eSports segment, and Kyle Giersdorf, also known as Bugha, is the most successful Fortnite eSports player with lifetime earnings from the game of 3.73 million U.S. dollars. Second-ranked David Wang, also known as Aqua, has accumulated about 2.19 million U.S. dollars in winnings from the game.

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Kyle Giersdorf, more commonly known by his gamertag Bugha, was the most successful Fortnite player in the United States based on prize money earnings as of January 2025. Giersdorf's total career earnings through Fortnite, as of that month, exceeded 3.7 million U.S. dollars. Meanwhile, Harrison Chang aka psalm came in second place with total career earnings amounting to around 1.87 million U.S. dollars. eSports tournament prize pools Professional eSports players can earn up to millions of dollars in prize money at international competitions. As of the year-end 2024, the Dota 2 championships had amassed the highest cumulative prize pool from eSports games worldwide. The International, which is a Dota 2 tournament, was the most lucrative eSports tournament worldwide, with the winners of the 2021 iteration of The International walking away with approximately 40 million U.S. dollars. Popular battle royale games Battle royale games are multiplayer games which combine aspects of free-for-all or team-based shooters with components from survival games, such as having to scavenge for equipment within a hostile open-world environment. As of January 2025, Fortnite was the most popular PlayStation 5 game based on monthly active users worldwide, ranking above entries such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto V. When it came to the most streamed battle royale games worldwide Fortnite also took the top spot, surpassing Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone, which racked up 4.7 million weekly viewer hours in March 2025.

In 2019, video game publisher and software developer Epic Games generated approximately 4.2 billion U.S. dollars in gross revenues, the majority of which was generated through its game revenue segment. Almost all of the segment's revenue was generated via Fortnite, with smaller titles Rocket League and Battle Breakers only netting a fraction of the total. Epic Games also publishes the Unreal Engine, a tool for developing games, as well as the Epic Games Store.

In 2023, video game publisher and software developer Epic Games is estimated to generate approximately 1.5 billion U.S. dollars in losses before interest and taxes with the company's gross income declining while cost of sales goes up.

As of April 2024, it was estimated that ******* was the top-earning creator on Fortnite Creative with total earnings of approximately **** million U.S. dollars. Creator ********* was ranked second with about **** million U.S. dollars in earnings from user-generated content for online gaming title Fortnite.

First released at the start of 2017, PUBG: Battlegrounds (previously known as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds) is one of the most popular games on Steam and had 861,598 peak concurrent players in the last recorded month, April 2025. The highest number of concurrent players was recorded in January 2018 at 3.24 million. One of the biggest games on Steam PUBG gained a devoted legion of fans in a short space of time after its release, and cumulative unit sales of the game hit 75 million in December 2021. The game has also been critically acclaimed — it won the Best Multiplayer Game at The Game Awards in 2017 and its free-to-play mobile version for Android and iOS, released in 2018, was nominated for Best Mobile Game at The 2018 Game Awards. This critical success has also translated into commercial success, as the game generated millions of U.S. dollars of revenue, most successfully in the United States. On January 12, 2022, the game has become free to play. Battle of the Battle Royale games PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is an online battle royale game in which up to 100 hundred players battle it out until there is only one player or one team left standing. This format of game has become very popular in recent years. While PUBG has a strong following, especially on Steam, it has come under pressure from rival battle royale game, Fortnite. First released just several months after PUBG, Fortnite has since become a cultural phenomenon, amassing 500 million registered users in just six years. As of 2025, both PUB and Fortnite are still going strong with their loyal audiences.

The eSports game with the greatest tournament prize pool between January and June 2025 was Dota 2, recording a cumulative prize pool valued at 6.84 million U.S. dollars. This cumulative prize pool was significantly higher than the runner-up, Counter-Strike 2, which had a cumulative prize pool of 4.9 million U.S. dollars during this period. Dota 2 Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena video game (MOBA) developed by Valve Software as a follow-up to 'Defense of the Ancients,' a community-created mod for the game 'Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.' In an effort to grow the popularity of DOTA 2 amongst ‘Defense of the Ancients’ players and to further promote the release of DOTA 2, the development company invited 16 of the world’s leading ‘Defense of the Ancients’ players to participate in a ‘DOTA 2’ tournament, an event that would eventually be held annually. It is this annual event, now referred to as ‘The International’, that offers such a substantial tournament prize pool and results in DOTA 2 consistently offering the greatest cumulative prize pool of any eSports game. eSports overview Whilst competitions have long since been a component of the video gaming industry, it wasn’t until relatively recently that eSports as a professional form of competitive video game play grew in popularity, with video game developers often organizing and funding many of the most popular eSport tournaments, which involve games such as League of Legends, Dota 2, Counter-Strike, Valorant, Overwatch, Street Fighter, Super Smash Bros., and StarCraft. These tournaments often incorporate either multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), first-person shooter (FPS), combat, card, battle royale, and real-time strategy (RTS) games. The most prominent types of video games associated with eSport tournaments include multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), first-person shooter (FPS), fighting, card, battle royale and real-time strategy (RTS) games.

Team Liquid is a professional eSports team founded in the Netherlands in 2000. The team primarily plays in Dota 2 eSports tournaments, with its total prize money won throughout its existence exceeding 32 million U.S dollars. However, the most successful Dota 2 eSports team as of July 2025 is OG, having amassed total winnings of over 37 million U.S. dollars through eSports tournaments. OG is also home to the most successful Dota 2 player of all time, N0tail. Who are the most successful Dota 2 heroes? Defense of the Ancients 2, better known as Dota 2, is a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game which was launched for PC in 2013. In the game, players control characters, known as heroes, with unique skillsets and collaborate to attack a structure called the Ancient within their enemies’ homebase. From among the 124 playable characters to choose from, Zeus was the leading Dota 2 hero based on their kills/deaths/assists (KDA) ratio in the 12 months preceding August 2024. Meanwhile, Abaddon was the leading Dota 2 hero according to win rate, scoring a slightly higher victory percentage than the second placed hero Wraith King. Looking at popularity, Pudge was the Dota 2 hero with the most matches, having been selected in more than 75 million games during the aforementioned time period. How many people stream games on Twitch? Twitch is a live-streaming platform that offers gaming video content, among other forms of online entertainment, to millions of fans worldwide. As of October 2024, there were nearly 6.91 million active Twitch streamers worldwide, although this figure had been experiencing a downward trend since February of that year. As of December 2024, Richard Tyler Blevins was the most followed live streamer on Twitch globally, with close to 19 million fans subscribing to watch his content online. Being a professional gamer himself, Blevins plays and streams under the alias “ninja”, with some of his most famous content being centered around the battle royale videogame Fortnite. As of December 2024, Fortnite was the most popular game on Twitch by hours streamed.

Published by Activision, Call of Duty (CoD) is a popular first person shooter video game series which first launched in 2003. The most successful game in the franchise is Call of Duty: Black Ops, which has sold over 30 million units worldwide since it was first released in 2010.

The continued success of CoD While the franchise was originally created exclusively for Windows, later versions were made available for numerous other platforms, including Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, and OS X. In 2020, Activision branched out even further and released Call of Duty: Warzone, a free-to-play online battle royale game which pits up to 150 players against each other at one time. Within two months of its release, Warzone had amassed 60 million players across the globe, rivaling some of the other battle royale giants on the market, including Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

Call of Duty goes mobile Although Call of Duty is traditionally seen as a console game, the mobile edition has also been a great success. In the first few months after its release in October 2019, the game amassed 250 million downloads worldwide, far eclipsing the respective downloads of its shooter rivals, PUBG Mobile and Fortnite. The biggest regional market for the mobile game was the United States, where it was downloaded 28.5 million times in the first two months of its release. Indeed, players in the United States spent more than 36 million U.S. dollars combined on in-game purchases within the mobile app in the first two months after the game's release.