Earlier this year, The Elder Scrolls Online announced it had generated more than $2 billion in customer spending, and its studio head says that number was highlighted in part to help highlight the game's ongoing success.
In an interview with GamesRadar+, studio head Matt Firor said that the $2 billion figure, announced at GDC last month, was revealed “mostly to highlight the game.” This is because, in Firor's opinion, “ESO is not often talked about as one of the successful live service games. But it is there on almost every level.”
I can see where FireWare is coming from. In a world where a handful of giants often seem to maintain a stranglehold on the genre, even ESO's association with the likes of Skyrim rarely brings it to mainstream attention in the way, say, World of Warcraft. But making headlines is rarely what matters most to dedicated fan communities, and Ferror knows that.
“I think that [$2 billion figure] It just shows the players' commitment to the game, he continues, “and also what we at Zenimax Online have. It's been a huge success, and we love working on it.”
There's no denying that a game that has been raking in an average of $200 million a year for a decade is doing very well. Interestingly, Firor's comments come on the heels of a recent report (also from GDC) suggesting that legacy games accounted for the majority of total playtime in 2023, but while games like Fortnite and League of Legends were among the main ones there, It is interesting to note that there are a lot of other highly successful alternatives existing in the background.
Skyrim completely changed what people thought of the Elder Scrolls RPG, so the MMO had to “change a lot of things radically.”
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