At GDC 2024, the Elder Scrolls Online development team had a major milestone to report: after ten years in operation, the game has now earned over USD $2 billion in customer spend. According to the team, the reason it’s now talking about about that statistic is because ESO is so often ignored in conversations around live service games.
“ESO isn’t often talked about as one of the successful live service games,” Matt Firor, game director recently told GamesRadar. “But it is, it very much is on just about every level.”
It’s a strange phenomenon. Head into gameplay in The Elder Scrolls Online, and you’ll find a hearty community of players travelling together. It’s estimated there are around 23 million total players, per MMO Populations. The same statistics place it as the 11th most popular modern MMO.
Yet despite this, The Elder Scrolls Online isn’t spoken about widely in the mainstream. Its players are seemingly contented with travelling in their own circles, quietly enjoying the game at their own pace.
Read: The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road celebrates Oblivion
A consequence of this more laidback fandom is that the successes of The Elder Scrolls Online aren’t often celebrated. Ten years on from launch, the game’s development team is now looking to toot its own horn, and ensure that The Elder Scrolls Online is understood as a major, sustained success in the live service games arena.
“I think that [USD $2 billion] just shows the commitment that the players have to the game and also that we at Zenimax Online have,” Firor told GamesRadar. “It’s hugely successful, and we love working on it.”
While Firor did not dwell on the reasons why The Elder Scrolls Online players continue to support the game in droves, there’s certainly clear motivations. ZeniMax releases frequent, meaty updates for the game to encourage players to visit and revisit its lands, and each major game expansion comes packed rewarding plots, and new features that shake up gameplay.
We’ve written extensively about The Elder Scrolls Online at GamesHub, for good reason.
It’s a solid MMO, with a wonderful player base, and a team that consistently delivers high quality, passion-fuelled stories that are well worth exploring. While ZeniMax has stayed relatively quiet about the game’s success to date, there’s no doubt it’s earned the chance to celebrate its USD $2 billion milestone, a decade on from the game’s launch.
