Digital CCG Genre Booming, Hearthstone Earns $395M in 2016, Shadowverse $100M

Latest data from Superdataresearch shows that the digital collectible card game market is set to generate $1.4B in revenue in 2017. Of the entire collectible card game market (including physical CCGs), digital CCGs made up 61% of the market. Hearthstone led the pack in 2016 with worldwide earnings of $395M and Shadowverse trailed at #2 and surprised everyone with $100M in revenue last year despite launching halfway through the year. WWE Supercard ($28.4M) took the #3 spot, followed by Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Link ($23.9M) at #4, then Magic: The Gathering Online ($20.6M) at #5, Star Wars: Force Collection ($16.9M) at #6, and Magic Duels ($9.4M) at #7.

Another interesting tidbit of data from the Superdata report was that of U.S. CCG players, 7.6% spend real cash on in-game content, a far higher rate of monetization than most free to play games. The average spend is $34.22 a month. Another interesting bit of data was that the digital CCG market was surprisingly evenly split, with 11.6M in Asia and 9.1M in North America (remember, the overall F2P market in Asia is over 4x bigger revenue-wise). Hearthstone really got the ball rolling on digital card games and since its release we've seen countless major studios try their luck at the genre. Time will tell if anyone can dethrone them or not though.

I'm surprised Shadowverse got the numbers it did in 2016. I actually really like the game so I hope it does even better in 2017. The entire digital CCG market is set to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 4% between 2017-2020 according to the report.

Source: SuperData Full Digital Collectible Card Games Report 2017