Who are the highest-earning esports players of all time?

In the past, esports was seen by many outside of the community as a way to ‘earn money by playing games’. While that is mostly an exaggeration, several players have managed to win big by playing esports titles.

In this article, Esports Insider delves into the players who have earned the most money in their careers for their respective games. This list does not include sponsorship revenues or wages, but the prize money distributed to the players, due to the inability to accurately know the ins and outs of player contracts and deals with partners.

Some Dota 2 players have earned the highest amount at events globally by far, due to The International having immense prize pools in the past. Interestingly, Fortnite comes second, followed by Counter-Strike (Largely CS:GO), League of Legends and mobile MOBA Arena of Valor.

The values shared in this article represent prize money recorded by Esports Earnings, a platform that records prize money earned by players across dozens of games by aggregating sources such as videos, interviews, official statements and social media data.