5 biggest developers for esports games

Video games take a lot of time, investment and effort to make, even more so in the case of an esports title that might bring millions of players. There is character or weapon balance, anti-cheat and many other things to consider before launching esports-ready titles.

However, the most important aspect is making the game engaging and fun enough to retain players. Few companies have already solidified their spot, while others are trying to innovate on the current trends in esports. Most of these are the parent companies of the studio that made those games.

Here are the five biggest game developers who created some of the most popular esports games:

5. Valve

Anyone who plays video games has heard about Valve. The company was founded by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington in 1996. Valve released its first game in 1998, Half-Life, developed using the Quake engine. The game was a commercial success and encouraged the company to continue work.

Since then, Valve has released two esports titles, Dota/Dota 2 and Counter-Strike. Both games were widely successful and are now the biggest games in the esports industry. Both games bring in a million concurrent players every day and feature some of the largest prize pools in esports.

Interestingly enough, both Dota and Counter-Strike were made as mods for other popular games before Valve hired the developers behind them and started working on further improving the game.

4. Tencent

Tencent is the second-largest company in the world. While they do not directly develop games, there are a lot of other big development studious who work under them and the company handles publishing. A few of the development studios include Riot Games, Supercell, TiMi Studio and Level Infinite.

The company have created a lot of esports titles for both mobile and PC. These include League of Legends, Valorant, PUBG Mobile, Honor of Kings and many more that now have a huge esports presence with multiple large-scale tournaments each year.

3. Activision Blizzard

Although the company was recently acquired by Microsoft, Activision Blizzard is also one of the biggest names in the esports industry. Before 2008 Activision and Blizzard were two separate studios. Blizzard was under Vivendi Games, which merged with Activision back in 2008.

Some of the most popular esports titles from Activision include the Call of Duty and Quake series, while Blizzard created the StarCraft and Overwatch series. There are other titles like Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm that did not make it as big as their other games.

2. Electronics Arts

Another popular game development studio, Electronics Arts, has lost some of its charm recently. This is not particularly due to controversies but rather lacklustre releases in the last few years. However, the company did give gamers some of the biggest esports titles that are played across the globe.

Games like Apex Legends, Battlefield, FIFA and Madden series are very popular among players. FIFA is even featured across multiple events hosted by the Olympics and other sports events featuring esports as one of the categories. Apex Legends is currently one of the most popular Battle Royale games in the market.

1. Epic Games 

Developers of another popular Battle Royale game, Fortnite, Epic Games is one of the biggest rivals of Valve. Apart from Fortnite, the company also manages Rocket League and has its digital market for video games.

The company did not directly make Rocket League, instead, the development studio Psyonix was acquired by them in 2019 after its success. Like Valve, it is also a private company with majority shares held by Tim Sweeney

Epic Games is also known for Unreal Engine, which is used for creating several video games by other development studios. It is currently the most powerful game engine available to the public. Fortnite itself is also made using Unreal Engine.