Tencent was 2014’s top-grossing public global games company

More money was ploughed into games made by Tencent in 2014 than those made by any other publisher.

VentureBeat reports that Newzoo data showed that in FY 2014 Tencent’s games attracted revenues of $7.2bn. That’s up on 2013’s $5.3bn, which was also enough to see it top the rankings. It was also the second largest grower (up 37 per cent) behind only Google (up 89 per cent).

Tencent is the owner of Riot Games, which is the creator of the world’s biggest free-to-play MOBA League of Legends.

The success of PS4 has helped Sony overtake Microsoft to claim second place, with revenues of $6bn in 2014. By comparison Microsoft’s gaming revenues totalled $5bn. In 2013 those figures stood at $4.7bn and $4.9bn respectively.

The other companies in the Top Ten were EA ($4.5bn), Activision Blizzard ($4.4bn), Apple ($3.2bn), Google ($2.6bn), King ($2.3bn), Nintendo ($2.1bn) and Ubisoft ($1.8bn).

Activision and Nintendo were the only companies in the Top Ten whose games revenues decreased year-on-year. Social gaming was the only unrepresented sector, with both Zynga and Facebook missing out on the list.

In total the games industry’s top 25 public companies generated revenue of $54.1bn, up 10.4 per cent year-on-year. Between them they accounted for 65 per cent of the overall global games market.