Richest esports players ever \u2013 Dota, CS:GO, CoD and more EpicentreEsports athletes are now able to lift one single championship and vault themselves into a game\u2019s highest-earners list. Yet, for some, competitive titles have been their life and have racked up a significant amount of cash in the process \u2013 even when prize pools may not have been what they are today. It\u2019s an increasingly lucrative business, esports, as players get rewarded substantially for the hard work and effort they put into making it to the top level. While some games boast bigger fan bases and higher prize pools than others, ending up as a champion will net you some serious cash, regardless of your selected field. Here are the richest esports players, in history, across numerous different titles \u2013 thanks to EsportsEarnings. Call of Duty: Karma \u2013 $805,847.25 Call of Duty may not have prize pool backing of some other games, but having a long-standing career that spans over multiple titles and world championships isn\u2019t shabby at all. Read More: Top 20 highest earning Call of Duty pros – At the top of the CoD mountain is Seattle Surge star Damon \u2018Karma\u2019 Barlow, who has racked up $804,847.25 in winnings since beginning his career back in 2011. The three-time Call of Duty World Champion has been consistently dominant ever since breaking into the scene but scored his most winnings, $269,500, following his third championship in 2017 with OpTic in Infinite Warfare. It\u2019s also no surprise that he\u2019s closely followed by two veterans of the game in long-time teammate Ian \u2018Crimsix\u2019 Porter and James \u2018Clayster\u2019 Eubanks \u2013 who have both been around as long as Karma. Clayster claimed his second world title at CWL Champs 2019 and could surpass Karma in the near future once Call of Duty\u2019s franchising model really gets into its rhythm. League of Legends: Faker \u2013 $1,254,240.23 League of Legends always has a competitive field, yet, one name stands alone at the top of the card \u2013 Lee \u2018Faker\u2019 Sang Hyeok. Faker is one of the greatest, and most dominant, LoL players of all-time \u2013 racking up huge prize winnings across his three world championship and multiple LCK wins. While recent seasons have been rocky for him and Faker\u2019s eyes will be firmly set on returning to his throne, securing his fourth Worlds title, but, he\u2019ll have to wait another year to do so after failing to pick up the 2019 Worlds title after a defeat at the hands of eventual runners-up G2. Faker may be the only LoL star to break the $1 million mark but Lee \u2018Duke\u2019 Ho Seong and Lee \u2018Wolf\u2019 Jae Wan aren\u2019t far behind either. Bae \u2018Bang\u2019 Jun Sik, a former teammate of Faker, is also an honorable mention. DOTA 2: N0tail \u2013 $6,882,440.18 Dota 2 may not directly compete with LoL, but their prize pools could be enough to make some players think about switching over from Riot Games\u2019 MOBA to Valve\u2019s. Not every Dota event is showered with gold, however, but make it to the incredibly prestigious International \u2013 which OG has now won for two years in a row following TI9 \u2013 and you\u2019re in the money. Read More: Top 20 highest earning Dota 2 Pro Players – At the top of the table following OG\u2019s back-to-back International wins is team captain Johan \u2018N0tail\u2018 Sundstein who\u2019s winnings have now put him well over the $6 million mark. It doesn\u2019t hurt that the International\u2019s prize pools the last two years have been the largest by far in the tournament\u2019s history, with OG players taking home $26,837,290 in winnings from their back-to-back championships. Before the TI9 finals on Sunday, August 25, N0tail was sitting at $3,757,403.98 in lifetime Dota 2 winnings \u2013 which means he made $3,124,036.20 from the weeklong tournament in China. CS:GO: Xyp9x \u2013 $1,745,921.90 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive may not get the prize money support of its DOTA counterpart but that\u2019s not to say that players can\u2019t win head-spinning amounts of money from competing. Winning a CS:GO major will net a team $500,000 before they split it between themselves. Astralis\u2019 Andreas \u2018Xyp9x\u2019 H\u00f8jsleth has climbed that mountain, three times, and began dominating the highest-earners standings alongside his Danish teammates. Since the start of 2018, and the beginning of Astralis\u2019 dominant era, Xyp9x has earned well over $1,000,000. With the Danes capturing success at the StarLadder Berlin Major, Xyp9x added another Major to his trophy cabinet as well as growing his lead at the top of the charts. Fortnite Battle Royale: Bugha \u2013 $3,062,966.67 As the wider esports scene continues to grow, games are doing their best to make a name for themselves \u2013 offering big prize pools, and one such title is Fortnite Battle Royale. The popularity of the game has seen the competitive scene explode, with the Fortnite World Cup cementing Kyle \u2018Bugha\u2019 Gieresdorf as the top earner. With six solo games, the 16-year-old bagged $3 million \u2013 even if he did lose the majority of it to taxation. The fallout of the World Cup has shaken up the highest earners, with players like Tfue and Bizzle \u2013 who dominated pre-World Cup events \u2013 falling by the wayside. CLG\u2019s Harrison \u2018Pslam\u2019 Chang moved into second place with $1,865,800.00 while duos winners Aqua and Nyhrox jumped into third and fourth by winning $1,500,000.00 each. Starcraft II: Maru \u2013 $808,551.50 While Fortnite might be a baby in the esports world, Starcraft II has been around for quite some time. The list is dominated by South Korean players but Cho \u2018Maru\u2019 Sung Choo stands atop them all with $808,551.50 earned. Maru has been competing in Starcraft since 2010 but had to wait until 2018 before he saw his earnings total skyrocket. The Korean earned just shy of 50% of his current total earnings with $370,117.05 across 14 events in 2018. Despite kicking off 2019 with $113,891.35 earned in 13 events, his lead over second-placed Joona \u2018Serral\u2019 Sotala is now only a slender one. The Finnish player is less than $1,000 behind the Korean on $804,994.74 and could, realistically, take the top spot sooner rather than later. As more and more titles decide to get to involved with competitive play \u2013 be it a small dip of the toe, or a huge dive into the deep end \u2013 players will have the chance to earn life-changing amounts solely by finding what they have a knack for. This article was last updated on Tuesday, February 18 at 11:07 AM Eastern Time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Richest esports players ever \u2013 Dota, CS:GO, CoD and more EpicentreEsports athletes are now able to lift one single championship and vault themselves into a game\u2019s highest-earners list. Yet, for some, competitive titles have been their life and have racked up a significant amount of cash in the process \u2013 even when prize pools may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}