Top Core PC Games in May: DOTA 2 Madness and RPGs Rising
Valve’s DoTA2 is rising through the rankings this month as the hype surrounding The International intensifies. RPGS are proving successful and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt makes impressive gains. Counter Strike: Global Offensive’s has retained its #3 spot, likely due to the increased focus on eSports and Twitch regularly featuring the game as one of the top five most popular streaming titles. In line with this ranking, we have developed a brand new service in collaboration with Overwolf. The PC Games Market Monitor provides a monthly overview of the performance, cross-over and churn for the Top 20 PC/MMO games, and covers more than 40 countries across Europe, North America and Latin America. More information below.
The International Frenzy
- Valve’s MOBA DoTA2 climbed another two places to Rank 9, pushed no doubt by the intense global hype surrounding the upcoming DoTA2 International 5. As in 2014, Valve is selling — Compendiums’ to raise money and build attention for this international eSports competition. The 2014 DoTA2 International total prize pool was $10,930,698 million, making it the largest Esports prize in history.
- The 2015 International is poised to smash those numbers, having already reached $10,518,132 by the end of May 2015. With Valve having set the stretch goal at $15,000,000, it’s not difficult to see the Dota 2 International 5 surpassing 2014 numbers, making it the largest Esports prize pool in history yet again.
- Meanwhile, according to Newzoo’s latest eSports research, prize money made available worldwide has almost doubled in the first five months of 2015 compared to the same period last year. At this pace, total prize money will reach $71 million this year.
- Seemingly unfazed by the attention directed toward DoTA2, Blizzard’s MOBA Heroes of the Storm continues to hold strong at Rank 12. This more ‘casual’ MOBA has so far silenced its critics and looks set to be a contender on the PC Game Rankings for some time, proving perhaps that the market for easily accessible, less competitive MOBAs is a core market that Blizzard has effectively tapped into. May 2015 was a good month for Blizzard, as its competitive card MOBA Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft moved up another place to Rank 7, mirroring its one spot climb in April.
RPGs Rising
Role Playing Games have made a strong overall showing in the May 2015 Rankings. Boosted by its free-to-play entry on the Steam platform and the release of additional game extras (including a new free character option and free mount), Tera: Rising makes its entry on the Core PC Game Rankings at Rank 18.
This is interesting considering the fact the title recently celebrated its three year anniversary with more than 17 million registered users, yet this is the first time the title has appeared on our rankings. It’s worth noting that the title originally began as pay-to-play and it was only after its switch in 2013 to a free-to-play business model that the title quickly passed the million registered accounts mark.
Orion Worlds’ ArcheAge, having rolled out fresh updates and new features, rose an impressive four places to Rank 14. This is quite a surprise considering the months of overall negative feedback over the past months from the gaming community regarding the title. Trion in recent months has been vocal in its intent to clean up the game in regards to bots and cheats, especially in the areas of spammers and game play exploits. With the Korean version of the title being upgraded to 2.0 and European server mergers on the way, time will tell if this quick ascension is a momentary community victory as it has been overall a tough few months for the title.
One to Watch: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Despite the fact it was only launched on May 19th, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has by the end of May ascended to Rank 21. Though not officially in our Top 20, this is an amazing feat considering it only had 12 days to do so. A massive and sprawling open world role playing game, the title was released to glowing reviews and is advertised to have more than 200 hours of playtime content. It will remain to be seen if the title is able break into the Top 20 rankings in June, but the outlook looks good for a title that has drawn immense attention and community joy by publisher CD Projekt’s unique approach to DRM and its policy of free as opposed to paid DLC.