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It may be the industry buzzword of the moment, but freemium games still have a long way to go before they take down retail.

216m will be generated in the UK by virtual goods sold in games such as FarmVille (pictured), League of Legends and World of Tanks, research firm SuperData this week told MCV.

Meanwhile retail – in what is the sector’s most challenging year to date – has already generated 812m from software sales, and that number is expected to grow dramatically over the next eight weeks.

SuperData Research also predicts that the free-to-play market in the UK will keep growing over the next three years, and will be worth 266.1m by 2015. A rise of 22.9 per cent.

However, that’s a slower rate of growth than the rest of the world. According to the research firm, the global free-to-play market will be worth 9.3bn by the end of the year, and by 2015 that will rise to 14.23bn, an increase of 53.5 per cent.

The data also revealed that in August the average revenue per customer in the UK was 11.25p for social games and 11.64p for free-to-play MMO games. That MMO figure increased to 12.15p in September, possibly due to new MMO Guild Wars 2.

You can read more about the state of free-to-play in the UK in this week’s issue of MCV, which is available to download right now for free.