Money, Money!

I was browsing around the web, nothing particular just a few random sites and I stumbled upon a blog’s article speaking about Wow. The guy over at Serial Ganker who wrote the article, which by the way I recommand reading, was saying how he is disgusted by Blizzard because they don’t care about the players anymore and how they just want to milk the cow as much as possible.

And then something struck me.

• World of Warcraft subscription per month
  • 12.99€ / 13.99$
  • Asian fee is approximatively 0.04$/hour no monthly fee exists

• Number of World of Warcraft subscribers
  • 10’000’000 in the World
    • 5’500’000 in Asia
    • 2’500’000 in Northern America
    • 2’000’000 in Europe

• Revenue per month
  • 25’980’000€ / 34’975’000$

• Revenue per year
  • 311’760’000€ / 419’700’000$

• Total Revenue
  • 641’896’020€ / 816’038’673$

Of course all of these numbers are approximates that I found on the Internet™. I did not take into account the Asian community as well, which is half the World of Warcraft subscribers, because they do not have a monthly fee but rather a hourly fee which is harder to calculate and I’m tired! The money earned by selling the actual game was discarded, this is only about the fees.

The monthly fee I used is the one announced on the official website but I did not take into account that you pay less if you subscribe for 3 months at once for example.

There is also another thing that must be taken into account, the upkeep of all the servers, building and of course the salaries.

Still Blizzard receives each month A LOT of money, Mythic does too of course, approximately 9’742’500€ / 11’242’500$ per month in comparison, but since not everyone is paying already they did not get much money at the moment.

I never really thought about that and now I clearly see that this business involves a lot of money.