Elite: Dangerous Makes One Player $15,000

Late last year, Elite: Dangerous creator Frontier Developments announced a contest with a sizable prize pool of 13,000 British pounds, or just under $20,000. This weekend the winners were announced via YouTube video alongside some impressive statistics.

Four players split the prize pool with one lucky winner receiving about $15,000. The contest awarded the first person to achieve elite status in each of three categories--exploration, trade, and combat--as well as a grand prize for the first player to do so in all three.

A player with the handle Commander Tequila won the exploration award. According to the video, Tequila traversed 190,000 light years and visited almost 8,000 unique star systems. Lordkee won the trade prize, exchanging over 830,000 metric tons of goods. Fromtonrouge took top honors for combat, shooting down more than 8,500 enemy ships.

The appropriately named Onepercent won the grand prize -- matching or exceeding the achievements of all three other winners. Onepercent visited more than 10,000 unique star systems, racked up over 9,000 kills, and traded 835,000 tons of goods over 1,029 game hours.

Elite: Dangerous had a big co-up update earlier this month and will be coming to the Xbox One this later year and the PS4 some time later, but there's no word on whether Frontier Developments will use a similar contest to entice new console players.