Everybody grew up loving video games. If you told anyone that you wanted a career playing video games 30 years ago, they would think you’re crazy! Today, that is actually quite possible. eSports have become so popular that surely, in the next few years, it’ll become just as popular as sports such as basketball or football. When we were kids, we wanted to play video games all day and even dreamt of making a living by playing video games. Wouldn’t that be living the dream, becoming rich and famous by playing video games? With the popularity of eSports today, it is certainly possible for people to become rich by playing. Here are the 4 most popular video games and how much their largest tournament prize pools were so far.

Call Of Duty: Black OPS III 2016 – $2,000,000

The American Team EnVyUs with their first place prize and trophy

Call of Duty is one of the most popular first-person shooter game franchises today. The first Call of Duty World Championships started in 2013 and is held every year as a new game is released. The teams that always dominate the tournament are the teams from the United States and the United Kingdom. The United States eSports teams have been winning the championship for the past 3 to 4 years now. Call of Duty broke the $1 million prize pool mark in their Call of Duty Championship 2013. The highest prize pool in Call of Duty history was in 2016, during the Call of Duty XP Championship 2016, when the prize pool was over $2,000,000 million. The American Team EnVyUs won the first place and was able to take home $800,000, which was split into four ways between their 4 players that participated in the tournament’s 4 versus 4 structures.

Halo 5: Guardians 2016 – $2,500,000

The American team Counter Logic Gaming winning the 2016 Halo World Championships

Halo 5: Guardians first came out in 2015, and that’s why it doesn’t have as many tournaments as the other games on this list. In the previous Halo World Championship Tournaments the prize pool was always $1 million dollars, but when they decided to use crowd-sourcing methods, they were able to raise up a $2.5 million dollar prize pool for the 2016 Halo World Championships.16 teams battled for supremacy during the 2016 Halo World Championships, and the one to seize the top spot was American team Counter Logic Gaming. They were able to take home the $1 million dollars first place grand prize, which was split into four, for each of the players in the tournaments 4 versus 4 formats, so each player was able to take home $250,000.

League Of Legends 2016 – $5,070,000

South Korean team SK Telecom T1 Winning the League of Legends World Championships For the Third Time

League of Legends is the eSport with the largest active player base today. Even though the 2016 League of Legends World Championships wasn’t able to beat the prize pool record set by Dota 2, it was still able to beat other eSports with a $5,070,000 prize pool, beating the League Of Legends 2015 World Championship’s previous record of $2,130,000. They were able to reach a higher prize pool by introducing a crowd-funding method. The League of Legends competitive world is dominated by the South Korean team, SK Telecom T1 who has won the title 3 times during the 2013, 2015, and 2016 championships. SK Telecom T1 was able to take home the $2,028,000 first place prize which was split into 6 ways, for $338,000 each.

Dota 2 2016 – $20,770,640

The Chinese team Wings Gaming Winning The International 2016

Dota 2 is a highly popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games that have set the record for having the highest prize pools in eSports history. The International, the Dota 2 World Championship tournament has set amazing prize pools year after year. During previous years, Dota 2 has always had really high prize pools, but it was only during The International 2015, that they had a massive $18 million dollar prize pool which was only beaten by the by The International 2016 with a prize pool of $20,770,640. Valve initially offered an initial cash prize of only $1,600,000 but was increased through crowd-funding methods where you purchase in-game items to increase the prize pool. 16 teams joined the tournament, and it was the Chinese team Wings Gaming that took home the first place prize of $9,139,002, which was split between the 5-man team, each taking home $1.8 million.