Ever wondered what the prize pools for Quake III Arena, Quake 4, Quake Live and DOOM 3 were? What game out of the four previously mentioned had the most tournaments? Who was the top earner?

Those were the questions that got me started on this quest to write the article. With the help of esportsearnings.com website I was able to compile data to find the answers and some interesting facts. Out of the vast amounts of data available on the website, for the sake of readers attention, I have gathered what I think was most important and entertaining. So if you have the desire to dive in more deeply, be my guest, I thoroughly recommend it.
Now that we got the introduction out of the way it is time 'to face facts'!


"BAM!" Looks complicated, doesn't it? Hope, not. As I've spent several hours simplifying it ha-ha. Nonetheless, let me hold your hand while we go over some of the stats and facts.

This is basically an overview of the data that I compiled and it shows various figures and values about each game and an overall total. I suggest we start off easy... with the overall TOTAL.

What we find here is the following, for the past 17 years, all four games have accumulated nearly $2.6 million in prize money spreading across 516 tournaments. Pitting these two facts against each other alone, gives us a $5000 average per tournament in prize money. Let's seize the opportunity and do some comparisons and draw conclusions. Spanning over four games $2.6m is definitely not something to brag home about, especially when we know that Counter Strike 1.6 in its 14 year reign has accumulated more than $10m in prize money. Yes, it's not an arena first person shooter but it's still a first person shooter. But, on the other hand, Quake is the king of arena first person shooters considering that Unreal Tournament, Quake's biggest rival, hasn't even entered the top 50 chart. Even though we have to show credit to Painkiller, a one-hit wonder with its $1m money purse certainly is worth noting.


The number of players that have taken part in tournaments is 529, with 230 being from Quake III Arena alone interestingly enough. An even distribution of the total prize money gives us roughly $4890 per player. But for a fact we know that is not how the distribution went as we can see from the top 3 earners from all four games. The absolute Rockefeller of Quake and DOOM earnings is Fatal1ty from the Land of the Free! Standing on top of the money mountain with $161,539.23 in his pocket, Fatal1ty is definitely the king of the hill. By the way, total earnings for Fatal1ty are an impressive $456,089.23, that being just tournament prize money not counting sponsors and what not. The runner up is just a little shy of $160k, $159,255.33 to be exact, and another yank named ZeRo4. Mr. 04 has made his fortunes almost entirely in Quake 3 in which he has crowned himself with the first place as the top earner in the aforementioned game. Now, you are thinking "Where the f**k is Cooller?!", "This writer is probably nuts! Can he add, can he count?! Surely, third place belongs to Mother Russia!". "Nyet". Sorry, to disappoint all of you daughters and sons of Mother Russia because third place actually belongs to a Swedish bloke, Toxjq! He rails like a train when it comes to Quake 4, he apparently rides the money train as well. With $155,304.99 in winnings this man has earned his place amongst the richest.

If you want to see how other players fair in this money earning extravaganza look no further as our favorite way of informing is an image! You know a picture is worth a thousand words, yo!


We are now left with only one more ranking and that is the top 3 countries by earnings. United States are an obvious winner with $885,295.57, while being second with $456,825.09 Sweden has a nice pricy gift to bring home. Always third is the Russian Federation with $237,135.63 boosting their economy and they have mostly Cooller to thank for.

Not to prolong this agony of TL;DR any further, it is time to wrap it up. Bottom line is Quake III Arena over the course of 10 years has accumulated the largest prize pool amongst the four games listed here. On the other hand Quake Live has clearly the most tournaments but almost half of the prize pool Quake 3 had, which only shows how much effort the community is putting in this game. Yes, more tournaments but tournaments like 125FPS and FACEIT and others don't have a hefty prize purse which brings us to lower amounts of money distributed. Judging by DOOM 3 and comparing it to Quake games it is hard to believe and to expect anything competitive wise from the upcoming DOOM game (hopefully it will prove me wrong). DOOM is definitely a far cry from what Quake was and is still trying to be.


PS Had been writing this for hours. I seriously hope I got all the numbers right. Did a few checks and it should be legit but do excuse any mistakes if you do encounter any while reading this. If you find anything out of ordinary, please do point it out and I will correct it. Thanks and have a good read!

Links: esportsearnings
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