It’s no surprise to anyone that Activision Blizzard has done extremely well from in-game purchases and recurring player payment. It’s almost a bigger business than selling the games themselves.
In their Q4 2017 financial results, the publisher revealed it experienced a banner year, raking in $7.16 billion in revenue for the entire fiscal year.
Of that enormous figure, $4 billion came by way of microtransactions. Of course, Activision owns King, the creators of Candy Crush and other in-app purchase heavy titles. Though, when you separate their $2 billion takings from the equation, that still leaves another $2 billion coming from PC and console.
This is thanks to flagship games like Overwatch, Call of Duty WWII and Destiny 2, which all feature cases of post-launch monetisation.
With numbers like that, it’s clear that no matter the outcry, microtransactions are here to stay for at least a little while.
