Check carefully, because we leave the best from Twitch and YouTube. US female gamers dominate the international scene.
In the last decade, eSports have experienced rapid growth worldwide, attracting more fans and ever-increasing prizes. Although dominated by men, some women are defying stereotypes and climbing the ranks to international popularity.
It is estimated that women represent 45% of global players, around 1.3 billion. Gaming culture is slowly changing, reducing negative experiences and resulting in an increase of women in professional gaming.
On the occasion of Gamer’s Day, Acer shared a list of the top ten highest paid women in eSports, based on tournament earnings calculated by eSport Earnings. Earnings from sponsorships or donations through Twitch are not included.
Highest paid female eSports players.
Maureen Gabriella Stephany: Although Alice has played online games like Counter Strike, DOTA2, Clash of Clans and 8 Ball Pool for quite some time, her eSports journey really began in April 2019 when she joined Belletron Ace, Bigetron Esports’ all-female PUBG Mobile team. As a starter on the squad, Alice has been a key player for Bigetron Esports in several tournaments and officially became the team’s Model Ambassador in February 2021. As part of Bigetron Red Aliens, she won numerous local, national and international PUBG Mobile championships and tournaments. Some of them are PMCO: Fall Split 2019 Global Finals (winner), PMWL East 2020 League and Finals (winner) and PMPL: Fall Split SEA Finals (winner).
Main game: PUBG mobile
Player name: BTRXAlice
Country: Indonesia
Overall Winnings: 81k USD
Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AliceMG
Ricki Sophie Ortiz: a fighting game player who specializes in the Marvel vs. Capcom and Street Fighter series. Ortiz prefers the Marvel vs. Capcom franchise to other fighting game series, and has found herself juggling it and the more popular Street Fighter franchise. He also prefers to play tournaments in person rather than online due to the lag inherent in online gaming. In 2010, Ortiz took second place in the Evolution Super Street Fighter IV tournament. He also took second place in the 2016 Capcom Cup, winning $60k USD at the end of the competition.
Main game: Street Fighter V
Player name: Ricki Ortiz
Country: United States
Overall Winnings: 83k USD
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/HelloKittyRicki
Benita Novshadian: American of Armenian descent, she is most famous for her career as a professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player. She was a founding member of CLG RED, the women’s team of the e-sports organization Counter Logic Gaming. In 2020, she helped CLG select players and create a Valorant team for the organization, and retired from CS:GO in June of that year to continue her professional career at Valorant. In November 2023, his team placed second in Valorant’s Game Changers Championship and took home a $110,000 prize.
Main game: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Valorant
Player name: bENITA
Country: United States
Overall Winnings: 83k USD
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/benita
Rumay Wang: has been playing since he was 14 years old, when he got hooked on them. Wang is a former World Of Warcraft pro and BlizzCon 3v3 champion. She is also a Bloodline Champions DreamHack champion and League of Legends streamer who picked up Hearthstone during beta and quickly became the most prominent player in the scene. She has even played in chess tournaments. He competed in and won the second PogChamps chess tournament organized by chess.com in September 2020, which came with a prize of $50k USD. In 2019, his team placed second in Hearthstone Battlegrounds Brawl.
Main Game: Hearthstone, Teamfight Tactics, World of Warcraft, League of Legends
Player name: Hafu
Country: United States
Overall Winnings: 90k USD
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/itshafu
Nina Qual: Nina Qual, who used to use the player name puCK, is a professional StarCraft II player. Qual has played in several North American competitions and continues to be active in the scene. She is currently a member of License to Kill, a team that recently focused on StarCraft II and Heroes of the Storm. Nina is known for, among other things, using Colossus drops effectively in Wings of Liberty.
Main game: StarCraft II
Player name: Nina
Country: United States
Overall earnings: 92k USD
Channel of contraction: https://www.twitch.tv/ninasc2
Julia Kiran: Kiran rose to fame when her team, Druidz, defeated ALTERNATE in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament at Electronic World Sports Cup 2013 (women’s category). Kiran was the leader of Team Secret, with whom she played from March 2016 to June 2017. She retired from competitive Counter-Strike in September 2021 to pursue a career in Valorant, but returned in March 2023 to play for the newly formed G2 Oya. In 2022, Kiran’s team, G2 Gozen, won the Valorant Game Changers Championship in Berlin. This tournament had a total prize pool of $500k, possibly the largest prize pool in any women’s eSports tournament.
Main game: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Player name: juliano
Country: Sweden
Overall Winnings: 96k USD
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/julianoGO
Ksenia Kliuenkova: has won first place in 17 tournaments since 2015. Her biggest win was at the Electronic World Sports Cup 2017 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament (women’s category). She has publicly stated that she was sad when zAAz and juliano, the top-ranked women’s CS:GO team at the time, switched to Valorant, because her goal was to beat them. Klyuenkova hopes that the number of female players and teams will continue to increase to improve the gaming scene for women.
Main game: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Player name: vilga
Country: Russia
Overall earnings: 113k USD
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@vilga
Katherine Gunn: became famous for her performances in Dead or Alive 4 on Championship Gaming Series and during WCG Ultimate Gamer events in 2010, and has since performed in countless tournaments in dozens of different eSports genres. As a teenager, Gunn traveled to local tournaments to play Halo and Street Fighter and collectible card games such as Magic the Gathering and Lord of the Rings. Accompanied by her father Wolf, Gunn would rank high among all the competitors. She also loves female costuming and anime, a combination that inspired her to get involved in cosplay and create the professional cosplay and gaming team, Less Than 3.
Main Game: Hearthstone, Dead or Alive, Call of Duty, Halo, Fortnight and others.
Player name: Mystik
Country: United States
Overall earnings: 123k USD
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/katgunn/
Xiao-Meng Li: She is the first woman to win the Hearthstone Grandmasters global final and to win a BlizzCon Esports tournament. In November 2019, Liooon defeated Bloodyface in the Hearthstone Global Finals to become the Hearthstone Global Champion. She was also the first Hearthstone global champion from mainland China since the tournaments began in 2014.
Main game: Hearthstone
Player name: Liooon
Country: China
Overall Winnings: 242k USD
Link: https://twitter.com/lxm1996
Sasha Hostyn: Scarlett is officially the highest paid professional gamer in the world. Scarlett mainly plays Starcraft II and usually plays as a Zerg. She is a member of Shopify Rebellion. In her early days in 2012, she played with Team Acer, first appearing in Acer colors in a team event in July 2012 when the team faced Team SCV Life in the loser’s bracket of IPL Team Arena Challenge 3. There, she managed three kills (beating Revival, Cyrano, and Inori) before losing to Polt. Her hobbies include Magic: The Gathering and map making in Warcraft III. She and especially her brother, as Bobo_The_Kodo and PurplePoot respectively, are reputed Warcraft cartographers.
Main game: StarCraft II
Player name: Scarlett
Country: Canada
Overall earnings: 453k USD
Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/scarlettm
