Hi, I'm Dan Fremant, and welcome to Axios Recap, where we dig into one big story.

Today is Monday, May 3rd.

Facebook is preparing to make a call on Donald Trump.

COVID restrictions are off in Florida, and we're focused on all of that money sitting inside your video games.

Video gaming used to be a very one-sided business.

You pop your quarter into an arcade machine or shell out for a disc, and you play the game

they give you until you finish it or get bored of it, and then you pay for another game.

But gaming in 2021 is very different, more interactive, and not just in terms of how people

play, but in terms of how

they pay to play, or even how they get paid to play. The big picture here is that gaming is more

popular than ever before. Nielsen estimates that 55% of all Americans picked up a game during the

pandemic, while a different research firm said that revenue jumped 24% between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2020. But again, revenue here

isn't just buying a disc or spending a few bucks on the app store. It's hundreds of millions

of dollars spent inside the games, buying virtual goods. Some of this is even playing out in a

courtroom today with opening arguments

in a massive lawsuit brought by the maker of Fortnite against Apple, primarily about the rules

of in-app and in-game purchases. Trust me, these in-game purchases are a very, very big deal.

My kids spent most of the pandemic playing Roblox with their friends, and my head is still ringing

from, can you buy me some Robux so I can get this cute outfit? And to be clear, those cute

outfits were in pixels, not cloth. Oh, and she also wanted to develop a game because that's

something you can do now. These platforms allow you to. Roblox, for example, said it paid game developers

$329 million last year.

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