The 5 highest earning pro-gamers till date

Professional gaming is fast becoming a lucrative and engaging profession pursued and followed by many around the world. Here is presenting the 5 highest earning gamers till date!

Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel

One of the most accomplished gamers till date, Wendel has earned 500,000 USD in prize money alone. He is also the first ever professional gaming entrepreneur by setting up the fatality brand which facilitates gaming gear developed by intel and others.

Wendel, who throughout his career played different kinds of games mostly shooters for his bread and butter, earned his name in games like Quake 3 arena, Unreal tournament 2003 and Painkiller. He won 5 world championships during his career making him one of the most celebrated gamers ever in the history of gaming. He was also the first gaming superstar in North America.

Lee “JD” Jae-Dong

It is not a hidden fact that E-sports is the biggest in South Korea. There is no other place in the world apart from South Korea where gamers are more popular than even actors/actresses there. The game that South Koreans are obsessed with is Starcraft. No other player has dominated the Starcraft scene than Lee Jae-Dong or JD for short.

He signed a contract worth 112,000 USD with team Hwaseung Oz and is now the highest earning Asian gamer ever. JD is one of the few gamers ever to get his hands printed on a piece of clay, which is the highest honor for a gamer in South Korea. He is also one of only two players in South Korea who has a winning percentage over 66, which is remarkable considering how competitive the South Korean scene is.

Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen

A Starcraft and World of Warcraft 3 player, Grubby has won 6 world championships in total and has won 38 LAN tournaments, also having earned earned more than 200,000 USD in prize money which makes him the highest earning European gamer ever. In 2009, Grubby married Cassandra Ng of Evil Geniuses, a clan which is spread over North America, and is now one half of the “gaming couple”.

Grubby was a part of the most dominant World of Warcraft team ever, the erstwhile British outfit 4Kings which he ended ties with in 2009 and joined clan MYM or meet your makers and then joined Evil Geniuses in 2009. Grubby will be taking part in the Starcraft 2 competition in the ESWC with a prize pot of a whopping 66,000 USD. With the reputation that he has, we can expect Grubby to increase his prize money tally!

Tom “Tsquared” Taylor

One of the best HALO players to ever grace the HALO scene is Tsquared. He is the team captain of the 2nd most dominant team in MLG (Major League Gaming ). MLG signed him up for a contractual agreement of over a whopping 250,000 USD Apart from that, Tsquared earns in between 120,000 USD to 150,ooo USD every year on advertisement and sponsorship deals alone.

In 2008, he appeared on the can of 175,000 Dr.Pepper soda bottles, an effort by MLG to promote it. He also appeared in “true life”, a show on MTV and has also been featured in Stuff magazine’s “Most influential people below 30″.

Dennis “Thresh” Fong

Dennis Fong is now a retired gamer and a successful entrepreneur. He attained fame by winning the Red Annihilation tournament in 1997 and subsequently John Carmack’s Ferrari 328. He made a whopping 102 million dollars by selling his gaming instant messenger “Xfire” to Viacom.

Fong originally hails from Hong Kong but is now settled in USA. He built his career with consistent wins in Doom 1, Doom 2, Quake 2 , Quake 3 and Starcraft. His total prize money amounts to about 100,000 USD. With Fatal1ty, Thresh makes up the two pro gamers who, post their gaming careers, made a successful living around the aesthetics of gaming.