Global game market's size hit $176B in 2021

By Abdulkadir Gunyol

ISTANBUL (AA) – Revenues from the global game market, including console, mobile, and computer games, reached $175.8 billion last year, said the founder of Gaming in Turkey, a gaming and esports agency.

Some $90 billion of total gaming revenues in 2021 were generated by mobile games, followed by console games with1 $49 billion and computer games with $36 billion, Ozan Aydemir added.

The number of gamers reached around 3 billion globally, he told Anadolu Agency.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, offline events were replaced by online tournaments, he added.

The esports ecosystem narrowed due to the pandemic in 2020 to $950 million, he said, but rebounded to $1.1 billion in 2021.

This year, the figure is expected to reach $1.3 billion, he added.

The number of esports players reached 475 million in 2021, up from 435 million, he noted.

- Turkiye

On the gaming market in Turkiye, Aydemir said the gaming sector took the lion’s share of investments in 2020, when Turkish game developers Peak Games and Rollic Games were both purchased by US-based gaming giant Zynga, he recalled.

In 2021, the situation was likely the same, with more than 50 investments attracted by the gaming sector in the country, he noted.

The Turkish gaming industry's volume was $300 million in 2021, while one of the largest investments was that of Dream Games – $155 million – he added.

There are 2,636 game publishers operating in the Google Play Market, among 158,096 publishers, he said, adding that of 424,964 games on Google Play, 8,890 games came from Turkish developers.

*Writing by Gokhan Ergocun