With 2013 firmly over at this point, data has begun to roll in from the collected studies that took place throughout the year, even with regards to gaming, and one of the more interesting ones is how well Chinese publisher Tencent is doing, owning two of the highest earning games of the year: League of Legends and Chinese free to play shooter Crossfire.
Combined those two games earned over $1.5 billion for Tencent ($625 and $957 million respectively) though World of Tanks from Wargaming wasn't far behind, pulling in an impressive $372 million.
What is an impressive stat however, is how much these games dominate the once king of gaming revenue, World of Warcraft, which has made a substantial move to improve its revenue streams outside of the ageing subscriber model. However, despite this push and one of the largest player bases on the list, it pulled in only $213 million from its micro-transactions.
You could say that this was a fine achievement considering the game is almost nine years old, but Lineage I is higher up on the list, earning $257 million for its publishers, despite having been released way back in 1998.
Other big earners in the free to play scene included both Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike Online, which combined pulled in just over over $250 million.
[Thanks to SuperData for the research data]
