Overwatch breaks $4 million in prize money

The total prize money paid out by Overwatch tournaments has crossed the $4 million USD mark following the conclusion of China's Overwatch Premier Series 2017 Summer season on Sunday, exactly 16 months since the game was released.

The running total, currently calculated to be $4,114,579.47 USD by esportsearnings.com, has be climbing at a fairly linear rate of roughly $1 million USD every four months since Overwatch's launch. The first million was reached last October after APAC 2016, the second in January 2017 following Team Story Chapter 1.

The doubling to $4 million USD over the last eight months has continued the trend in spite of the drought of major tournaments in the West earlier in 2017. The Overwatch Open remains the high-water mark for pay outs at a whopping $300,000, but the Asia majors have continued to contribute to the coffers of professional Overwatch players, including the Overwatch Pacific Championship's purse of $272,240 and the $256,468 already paid out by Premier Series 2017 events.

Currently ranked 13th in the list of total pay-outs by game, Overwatch may be able to overtake Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Halo 5: Guardians and WarCraft III to break the all-time Top 10 before the end of the year with an estimated $848,735 USD still to be paid out by Contenders, APEX, APAC, Team Story, Pacific Championship and Premier Series events in 2017.

With Blizzard's own Overwatch League Season 1 set to pay out a $3.5 million USD prize purse in 2018 on top of continued 3rd party tournament pay-outs, it would not be unreasonable to expect Overwatch to break the Top 5 in 2018. Still, it will have some way to go to top the Scrooge McDuck-esque mountains of moolah amassed by Dota 2 players, which currently stands at $126,124,801 USD - 30 times today's Overwatch total.

One step at a time.