Star Wars: The Old Republic made $165m last year

EA and BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic is apparently the fourth biggest subscription MMO in the world.

A study by SuperData reported by Games Industry says that the game enjoyed global revenues of $165m in 2013, grabbing a six per cent share of the total subscription MMO market.

That ranks it behind only World of Warcraft ($1.04bn/36%), Lineage ($253m/9%) and TERA: Online ($236m/8%) but ahead of Lord of the Rings Online ($104m/4%), EVE Online ($93m/3%) and Aion ($88m/3%).

The Old Republic figure comes both from legacy subscribers and current free-to-play gamers, with the game having made the switch to F2P in November 2012.

EA took greater control of the title from LucasArts back in November 2010 at a time when onlookers such as Bigpoint’s Heiko Hubertz were claiming it would never be profitable”, although he conceded that a switch to microtransactions would give the game a chance”.

With a reported development budget of between $150m-$200m (not including ongoing development and maintenance costs) it now looks as if the Force is strong with its balance sheet.