How do MMOs make money?
by Brooke Pilley 
Mar 15th 2009 at 8:00PM
Filed under: MMO industry, Making money, News items, Academic
The Simple Lifeforms blog went through a recent DFC Intelligence report on the most commercially successful MMOs and pulled out some interesting points. World of Warcraft took home the most revenue for a single game in 2008 with an estimated $500M+ and all MMOs combined (worldwide) earned an estimated $1,875M.The top 10 earners list for 2008 included only one game that launched in the 1990s and that MMO was Lineage I. The majority of the top 10 list also featured MMOs of the fantasy genre, which probably won't come as a surprise.
Simple Lifeforms classified four primary ways that make MMOs money: retail, subscription, virtual goods sales (aka RMT), and hybrid models. While the retail/subscription model is generally considered the tried and true way to run your MMO business by most of the big publishers, you might find it interesting that only half of the top 10 list is comprised of these types of MMOs.
An unfortunate drawback of the DFC Intelligence report is that the revenue figures for the nine titles other than WoW have very large spreads. We see they made more than $150M and less than $500M but aren't given anything more specific than that.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Anticrawl said on 9:39PM 3-15-2009
What a stupid question. They make money off the sale of the game, the subscription fee (which is just a steady flow of free money that goes towards nothing) and expansion packs. The only cost in running a server is the front-end cost setting it up. After that you hire onstaff techs to maintain it (which is nothing) and pay the fee of electricity to run the servers and massive AC units for the server rooms. Part of my job is running a massive server for a biomedical research center. There is little to no maintanence cost. Atleast not one that would warrent 15 dollars a month from 10million people.
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Mr Angry said on 9:46PM 3-15-2009
You definitely deserve a pay rise!
Pzychotix said on 11:09AM 3-17-2009
What about the continuing development of the software on the servers? Developers don't work for free.
What about the large numbers of customers that MMORPGS have to deal with? Customer service is another cost.
An MMORPG isn't just as simple as setting up a server and letting people come and pay you.
Verit said on 11:12PM 3-15-2009
Makes sad that Lineage and Lineage 2 are beating AoC and WAR - makes me think there is no hope for new mmo's out there.
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GMRDUDE7 said on 11:35PM 3-15-2009
There is this new gaming reality show on Sci Fi Channel. I decided to check it out because I noticed XBOX is in the show and it's all about video games and I actually really liked it. It's on Tuesdays at 10pm on the Sci Fi Channel. Here is a drinking game I found on another site to play during this Tuesday's episode b/c it's on St. Pattys day.
www.wcgultimategamer.com
• Every time you hear Samsung or see a logo, drink for 5 seconds
• Every time you hear WCG or see a logo, drink for 8 seconds
• Every time you hear Virtua Fighter or see a logo, drink until you don’t hear/see it anymore
• Every time Dante plays with his hair, drink for 10 seconds
• Pick a gamer – every time they cry, drink while in a funny position
• Pick a gamer – every time they curse, assign a drink to someone
• Predict whether a team will pass or fail the real world challenge.
o If you are correct, make someone else drink.
o If you are incorrect, you drink.
• Predict which gamer will win the Isolation Challenge.
o If you are correct, make someone else drink.
o If you are incorrect, you drink.
• Predict which gamer will win the Elimination Challenge.
o If you are correct, make someone else drink.
o If you are incorrect, you drink.
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danarchy said on 11:50AM 3-16-2009
Well one expense you missed was the bandwidth pipe to allow all those people to actually access your servers simultaneously. Not to mention business insurance to cover your exposure from the half bajillion frivolous lawsuits a year. Oh then there's marketing, that runs up in the millions, MR T and The Shatt don't come cheap! Then there's the cost of the buildings that house your servers, taxes on everything in and out of your doors, other buildings and servers in other countries....ya you missed allot, hell I am probably missing a bunch myself! It is a great business model in the end, your going to make FAR more than you spend if you have a fun game that keeps people coming back and fanbois flaming (your free marketing, how ya like that?).
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