2019's Top 'Free' Games Each Made $1.5 Billion-Plus

Which do you think is a bigger deal, Avengers: Endgame or Fortnite? Okay, sure, for 2019, the superheroes made a killing globally, pulling in $2.8 billion in box office grosses. But Fortnite—a game that is "free-to-play" for anyone, on any platform, managed to make $1.8 billion. And it is far from alone. The top 5 free-to-play games each made over $1.5 billion in 2019, according to SuperData.

The Statista chart above shows the other big names in the top five: Dungeon Fighter Online, Honour of Kings (a.k.a. Arena of Valor), League of Legends, and old stalwart Candy Crush Saga. The rest of the top ten include Pokemon Go, Crossfire, Fate/Grand Order, Game for Peace, and Last Shelter: Survival. All had over $1.1 billion in revenue last year.

Compare that number two "free" game (Dungeon Figher Online at $1.6 billion in revenue) to the second biggest movie of the year, The Lion King, which didn't even crack a billion, at $968 million. It's obvious: The gaming industry is (candy) crushing it.

Break it down by platform, and you'll be even more astonished. The free-to-play games are racking in cash like a thresher pulls in hay, to the tune of $87.1 billion total. Mobile "free" games alone made $64.4 billion; on the low end, console games had a mere $1.5 billion in revenue from free games.

If you're not up on what the "freemium" model is all about, it means anyone can download the games for nothing and play them. But to get additional content—new levels, virtual equipment, looks for characters, and so on—people tend to pay. And handsomely. The revenue increase from 2018 to 2019 for free-to-play games is 6 percent.

Of course, comparing movie box-office to in-app purchases isn't exactly apples to apples. For movies, the equivalent is probably ancillary things, like tie-in merchandising. But chances are slim that Disney is going to release a future Avengers or Star Wars movie for free in hope that some Happy Meal toys will make up for it.

To keep it in perspective, SuperData's report (entitled 2019 Year In Review: Digital Games and Interactive Media) says that in 2019, all games and interactive media— including things like Twitch and Mixer streaming channels, and virtual reality on headsets like Oculus Quest—earned $120.1 billion worldwide. There was a dip in premium paid game revenue from 2018, which had a lot of big name releases such as Marvel's Spider-Man. It's almost at the point where charging at all for a game probably isn't worth it for developers when they can make so much "giving it away free." TANSTAAFL.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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