Video Games That Made Their Creators Stupid Rich

Don't let your parents tell you that there is no money in video games. There's actually a ridiculous amount of money in video games. The global games market value is on the rise: video games are a $134.9 billion industry. Tell that to your folks at your next family get-together.

In a world where streamers like Ninja can get rich by playing games for an audience, imagine just how much the creators of those games are making. Successful games have made their creators billionaires many times over, especially today when AAA titles break sales records and multiplayer games have more people online than ever before. We're not talking about indie hits that put their creators on the map. We're talking ultra-successful games that now sit on millions of consoles, making their creators stupid rich. These developers and designers could get a couple Teslas, a Ferrari, and a Porsche without making much of a dent in their bank accounts.

Like Fortnite, Minecraft became a household name fast. To this day, long after its 2011 release, there are still around 91 million monthly active players punching trees and avoiding creepers. The game, simple in aesthetic and aim, has sold over 154 million copies, making Minecraft the second best selling game in history. The year after Minecraft's release, developer Mojang had already amassed $240 million. Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson made a whopping $101 million in 2012. For him, it was surreal ... or, in his own words via one Reddit post, "It's weird as f***."

Notch became revered as the god of Minecraft. His name (and impressive paycheck) became well known to the world at large when Microsoft acquired Mojang to the tune of $2.5 billion. Notch is more than set for life, and as it turns out, he doesn't know what to do with all his success. With the kind of money he had made from Minecraft, he was able to get anything and everything he wanted, which included the acquisition of a $70 million mega mansion. He outbid Jay-Z and Beyoncé to get the enviable, if not over the top, Beverly Hills home.

But in Notch's case, money does not equal happiness. In a Twitter rant, Notch said that the billions made him miserable: former employees hate him, love interests are intimidated by his wealth, and his friends with regular lives have trouble relating to the most unrelatable problem ever: having too much money.

It might come as no surprise that Gabe Newell is one of the richest men alive. This made people blink a bit back in 2012 when video games weren't exactly the powerhouse multimedia industry they are today. However, gaming was well on its way to record success, and good guy Gabe was going to help. Valve's Half-Life (which turned 20 years old in 2018 — yikes) and Portal series put the developer on the map with millions in sales, but the real revolution in gaming was just around the corner.

Even with continuing hits like Dota and Counter Strike, the revenue Valve made from Steam quickly overtook that which they made from the sales of their own games (just one reason we haven't seen Half-Life 3). Back in 2012, Newell was estimated to be worth $1.5 billion, approximately half the worth of Valve. Today, the man who owns half of Valve is Forbes' 97th richest man with a valuation of $5.5 billion. It's a nice boost from back in the day.

A trillion is an unfathomable number, and while it's not how much money Candy Crush developer King has made, it is an approximation of how many times people have idly played a round or two of the insanely simple, utterly addicting mobile game. As small and easy as Candy Crush is, the game is big in all other ways: it currently has around 4,000 levels and has amassed over 2 billion downloads.

Candy Crush is free, but that doesn't stop players from shelling out on in-app purchases, which can really add up. The heads of King, including chief creative Sebastian Knutsson, are millionaires several times over. The value of matching up colorful candy can't be underestimated. Knutsson has a valuation of approximately $396 million due to his shares in the company. He's the one constantly adding new levels, even though he initially thought that Candy Crush would be just a passing fad. 

Now, it allows him to live a life of luxury. He bought a $3 million house in his hometown of Stockholm, before it nearly caved in due to flooding from the above ground pool ... not that he was strapped for cash for repairs.

Konami enjoys the success of some of the best known and most beloved games in existence, but they started out with fairly humble beginnings. Founder Kagemasa Kozuki, now worth $1.2 billion, was there from the start. In the '70s, he transformed his jukebox repair business into the Konami we know now — or at least the one that started with making coin-operated arcade games like Frogger. They found success both in traditional arcade games before moving into the home. The NES took Konami to a whole new level.

Konami is a family affair. The "ko" in the company's name comes from the founder's last name, and is carried on by his son Takuya Kozuki, who now serves as the president. His father is still the chairman, but it was speculated that this shift in leadership from father to son is what made tensions come to a head with genius game-designer-in-residence at Konami, Hideo Kojima, who left the company after the cancellation of Silent Hills back in 2015.

Despite the bad press Konami got because of the messy break-up with Kojima, the company is still valuable and stands to make more with a shifting focus on mobile, which Konami CEO Hideki Hayakawa says is the future of gaming.

We fondly remember Flappy Bird's fifteen weird and wonderful minutes of fame. The game was basic, yet intensely frustrating. Somehow it felt near impossible to make this ugly little bird navigate past green Mario-esque pipes. Somehow, it made a stupid amount of money.

Flappy Bird only lived for 28 days, but in that time, it managed to captivate (and frustrate) the world. To the shock of humble creator Dong Nguyen, Flappy Bird became one of the top ten apps on the Apple App Store. That success translated to cold hard cash. Nguyen was making a reported $50,000 a day in ad revenue.

However, Flappy Bird had its detractors. Kotaku called it out for the allegedly stolen Mario pipes, and people speculated that bots were involved with the game's sudden success. All the attention started to get under Nguyen's skin. He didn't want to talk to the press and seemed to take all of the angry tweets very personally. Things came to a head when he said in a tweet that Flappy Bird had ruined his "simple life." Not long after, he announced that he would be taking Flappy Bird down permanently. "I cannot take this anymore," he said simply.