With $1.6b in 2015, League Of Legends Is The Biggest Digital Game In The World

By Jason Winter, News Editor January 26, 2016

League of Legends brings in more money than any other video game in the world -- and it's not especially close.

That's the news from SuperData Research today, which came out with worldwide top 10 lists for the highest-grossing digital games of 2015. At the top of all three lists sits League of Legends, which SuperData computes has having brought in $1.628 billion over the previous calendar year. That's nearly $300 million more than the next best game, Supercell's mobile Clash of Clans and $500 million more than the #2 PC game, SmileGate's CrossFire. The top-grossing console game, Activision's Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, made just $355 million total, putting it at #14 if you were to combine all three lists.

In terms of free-to-play games, World of Tanks is #5 on PCs, with revenues of $446 million, followed by Lineage ($339m), MapleStory ($253m), and Dota 2 ($238m). However, remember that these are estimates, and one is at least certain to be off by a significant margin. According to NCSoft's own reporting, Lineage brought in about $192 million for the first 3/4 of 2015. Getting to $339 million with the final quarter's sales -- which we should know any day now -- seems highly unlikely. A total closer to $250 million seems more likely.

Still, even taking some margin for error into account, League of Legends is almost certainly #1 in the business, several times larger than its closest MOBA competitor, Dota 2. No, this isn't a firm statement that it's better, but numbers are numbers.

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In this article: MapleStory, League of Legends, DOTA 2, Riot Games, Ncsoft, Lineage.

About the Author

Jason Winter, News Editor
Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.

trionisshit 7 years ago

PURE SHII T FOR BRAINLESS! Over and over one map, for sick degenerates , CONTROLS SUCK ALSO,Anyway even with good controls its a poop

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Zingy 7 years ago

I am not surprised by LoL being first. I'm surprised by CrossFire even being on that list. Srsly, CrossFire? I supposed it has to be thanks to Chinesse market or something like that. I remember i was playing it 5 or more years ago and it felt outdated already (and a lot of cheaters). So this number really surprises me!

Reader 7 years ago

Sad is the fact that the company is too greedy and never gave anything solid to players (like Heroes of the storm or Dota 2 did, so many times). All we got are small portrait icons and for Christmas, a very limited number of skins with discounts, made me feel like we didn't even deserved the discounts. (I bought one, and after I read this article title, I feel regret)
Even worse than this is the chroma packs addition (Heroes of the storm rip off) wich they charge money for, this being an excuse for money issues on future development.
I'm interested to see how far they can go with the skins, without giving any of them to players for free.

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