Game development is an interdisciplinary concept that embraces software engineering, business, management, and artistic disciplines. This research facilitates a better understanding of the business dimension of digital games. The main objective of this research is to investigate empirically the effect of business factors on the performance of digital games in the market and to answer the research questions asked in this study. Game development organizations are facing high pressure and competition in the digital game industry. Business has become a crucial dimension, especially for game development organizations. The main contribution of this paper is to investigate empirically the influence of key business factors on the business performance of games. This is the first study in the domain of game development that demonstrates the interrelationship between key business factors and game performance in the market. The results of the study provide evidence that game development organizations must deal with multiple business key factors to remain competitive and handle the high pressure in the digital game industry. Furthermore, the results of the study support the theoretical assertion that key business factors play an important role in game business performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.