They're one of the golden examples of free-to-play working as intended, as the items they sell for real world cash can either be unlocked fairly easily in-game, or they're purely for cosmetic decoration.

Though Riot has regarded eSports as a loss leader, it's served to drive international interest in the game to new heights, and the fact that it's free means anyone can try it out and perhaps someday be a pro themselves (however unlikely that is). Millions tuned in to watch the World Championship finals this year, and hundreds of thousands of players a day watch Twitch streams of their favorite players.

Over the past year, the popularity of League of Legend as a professional eSport has grown dramatically. What's contributed to the massive increase? If we could say outright, we'd all be millionaire game designers, but there are clues. In truth, I'd recently wondered if their numbers had dipped because it had been so long since we'd gotten any concrete figures from Riot. The game has exploded in popularity the past few years, but now it seems to have reached a stratospheric level almost not thought possible for the game. Each player controls a character with special abilities, and must destroy towers, minions and other players in order to detonate the enemies 'nexus' home base. League of Legends is a free-to-play title that pits teams of five against each other. The Fight For The Future Of Video Games is a warts-and-all look at the clashes between the video game business and its passionate fans. If you want to consider it a game, Candy Crush has 46 million monthly players, though by some questionable metrics, that number is 100 or 200 million plus.įanboy Wars: The Newest eBook From Forbes Across all platforms, every Call of Duty game combined had 40 million monthly players in 2011. For context, longtime king of the PC gaming world, World of Warcraft, peaked at 12 million monthly players in 2010 (though those were $15 monthly subscribers). These new stats represent enormous upswings in every category for what was already the most popular game in the world. Last we heard, the game had 12 million daily players with 5 million concurrent and 32 million monthly. In total, 67 million players play the game every month.Īll of these are enormous jumps from the already huge numbers from over a year ago. Riot reports that 27 million people play the game daily, while concurrent players peak at 7.5M. League of Legends now apparently boasts a trio of absolutely astonishing metrics. Riot Games has just released some numbers about the active playerbase of League of Legends that are practically unbelievable.

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