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English-language “free-to-play” online games will rake in $2B by 2015

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

With the growing popularity of free-to-play games on the PC, a new study from game market analyst DFC Intelligence reports that the English language free-to-play industry is expected to grow from $250 million in 2009 to over $2 billion by 2015. The increasing willingness of consumers to buy digital content and improved payment options have been a considerable factor in the surge, says DFC. An earlier report from DFC and Live Gamer put the global number at over $7 billion.

“For many Korean companies the market in North America has not taken off nearly as fast as they expected,” says DFC analyst Insun Yoon.

In free-to-play games, such as Electronic Arts Battlefield Heroes (pictured), users play a game for free. They can use real money to pay for virtual goods as they progress. See Industry Gamers for more. industry gamers 1

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.