League of Legends was released in 2009 and since then it has been growing massively over the period. This game is also popularly known as LoL (League of Legends). This online multiplayer game has a unique interface that is filled with thrill and adventure. The uniqueness of 5 vs 5 battle game and an extensive list of characters helped it gain a lot of love from players all over the world. But, do you know how many people play League of Legends? This is actually what many players are wondering about recently. If you have been thinking about the number of users on League of Legends, then do not worry, we will provide you all the information.
According to Riot Games, the developer of LoL, the game holds the top spot worldwide for the number of active players and it has been there for a while, only growing in its popularity over the years. The figures for player count come from Riot. The company accesses data from its servers to provide a count of how many active daily, weekly and monthly players the game has. While there are several different ways to try and arrive at similar numbers, the best statistics on the number of players in the League have to come from Riot themselves and they are pretty accurate. Let’s take a look at the player count of this game over the years.
PLAYER COUNT IN 2011
While Riot Games currently operates the game and all of its service aspects in North America, the company has distribution deals for LoL throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. By 2013, LoL expanded to many other countries including Canada, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, South Korea, and the Philippines. With such a huge presence internationally, it should come as no surprise that in 2011, Riot Games announced that the game had over 32.5 million players. Of those, 11.5 million played monthly and of those monthly players, 4.2 million played daily. There were 5 million registered users in 2011 as well. For a game that was only 2 years old, these numbers were pretty darn impressive and this was only the beginning.
PLAYER COUNT IN 2012
After the first two years, League of Legends would continue to grow massively amongst the fans. In 2012, Riot released new figures on their website which shows the increasing popularity of this game. This statement also compared the game’s popularity with some other top games such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and the Top 100 games on Steam. In November 2012, the number of registered users for League of Legends increased from just 5 million in 2011 to 70 million in 2012.
In just 12 months, the number of registered users climbed up to 14 times their original size. The number of monthly players nearly tripled to 32 million and Riot reported that there were 12 million daily players and 3 million peak concurrent players. These numbers were hugely impressive for an online video game. Not only had LoL garnered a huge following, but, practically it has destroyed its competition.
PLAYER COUNT IN 2014
In 2013, Riot Games reached another landmark, which is 5 million concurrent players. However, fans would wait until January 2014 to celebrate with Riot as it reported 27 million active daily players and 67 million monthly players. It was apparent to fans and followers alike that LoL’s steam wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon. While growth has begun to slow down a bit as it has approached its peak, Riot still managed to double their monthly and daily players from previous figures. From 11.5 million monthly players in 2011 to 67 million three years later is a fantastic achievement.
CURRENT SCENARIO OF LOL
League of Legends is one of the most well-received video games in modern history. Since the release, the game has continually expanded and its popularity rivals some of the world’s most celebrated games, like Candy Crush which is played by millions of gamers on Facebook. Not surprisingly, by the end of the summer of 2012, LoL was hailed as the most played PC game in North America and Europe based on the total number of hours users played. And while LoL is very popular online, it also currently has a very large and impressive presence on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch.tv. LoL currently ranks number one in the most-watched hours based on those who tune in just to watch other players play the game which is called “spectating”.
In 2016, there was an estimated more than 100 million active players each month. The popularity of the game has led Riot to offer various merchandise that ties-in to the game such as clothes, toys, accessories, books, and more. The popularity of LoL is also evident in its active and widespread competitive scenes around the world such as in North America and Europe, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Regional competitions lead to the annual World Championship such as the one held in 2016 which boasted 43 million unique viewers and a total prize offering of more than 6 million dollars.
Top 5 Countries Playing League of Legends as per active daily participation in 2021.
Below is the list of Top 5 countries playing League of Legends.
United States – 14.44 %
Turkey – 9.26 %
Brazil – 9.11 %
Germany – 5.97 %
Russia – 4.98 %
A MASSIVE COMMUNITY OF GAMERS
One of the biggest things that draw players of League of Legends to become so addicted to the game is the fact that LoL has a massive community. You will find pro players streaming their games for others to watch and these pros have massive followings. But pro players are not the only ones who stream their matches. Casual gamers also stream where they try out new tactics and try to have fun with friends online. Watching streams helps some players get into the game because it serves as perfect word-of-mouth advertising for the game. LoL gamers also have access to hundreds of forums and Reddit sub-threads where players discuss the game, the newest patches, and give advice on strategy. Some several coaches and commentators run their podcasts about the league as well. A great sense of community tends to bind LoL fans together and pushes them to keep up with the latest goings-on in League of Legends which creates loyalty to the game.
SOME OF THE COMPETITIONS OF LOL
LoL vs Minecraft
Minecraft is one of the most popular game categories on YouTube and it is one of the most famous games all over the world. It has only 10 Million more players than League of Legends. After seeing this, you can tell how big League of Legends really is.
LoL vs CS:GO
CSGO is one of the biggest FPS games in the world and it still has only 26 Million monthly players. LoL almost has 100 Million more than that! Now you know how popular LoL is and now no one will say LoL is a small indie game.
A 10-YEAR-OLD JOURNEY
The last 10 years have been amazing for Riot Games and it’s really just getting started. League of Legends currently has as many as 103 million monthly active players, compared to its rival, Dota 2, which only had 13.5 million players a month in the same period. You can even compare these amazing figures with Overwatch, which has a total player pool of 15 million. LoL’s 100 million-plus players are really impressive when they are put into context. Consider that there are 100 million or so monthly users who use the Huber-popular music streaming service Spotify. Also, League of Legends’ numbers is much more than the 83 million worldwide subscribers boosted by streaming video giant Netflix.
League of Legends’ user base continues to increase rapidly and more and more gamers flock to the growing eSports market, which was projected to have approached almost 500 million dollars in global revenue in 2016. Tournaments have continued to move into the mainstream as eSports teams compete around the world in matches with huge followings and millions of dollars at stake in prizes and sponsorships. Major media companies like Walt Disney’s ESPN and Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting have jumped into the eSports territory. League of Legends draws one of the biggest crowds each year and fills stadiums with thousands of fans. In 2015’s World Championship, LoL averaged 4.2 million concurrent viewers on TV and online. It goes without saying that League of Legends is a huge phenomenon which has helped set up the stage for eSports to enter the mainstream platform. LoL can almost single-handedly be credited with kicking off the next generation of competitive gaming.
No doubt that Riot has an awesome formula for success: they provide regular updates, offer exciting new champions, and various competitive gaming tournaments. All of this contributes to making LoL irresistible to gamers. The game itself is awesome. There are currently 132 champions in LoL, each of which features their individual abilities, personalities, backstories, voices, and costumes. The nice thing is that Riot is constantly adding more champions and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Also encouraging is the fact that the company is making a conscientious effort to improve the quality of new champions it releases which also means efforts to update old champions in need of new visuals, new sounds, and new backstories over time so that they are a closer match to the depth of gameplay as the more modern champions.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR LoL?
There are millions of people playing around the world playing this game simultaneously, that’s it’s one of the biggest global games. As we mentioned above, there are gamers online right now across China, South Korea, Brazil, Denmark, Turkey, the United States, Vietnam, South Africa, and scores of other countries around the world.
Developers can appreciate that each of these regions is distinct with its own unique quirks. With the exponential growth that Riot has seen in the past few years, the company struggles to find a balance. And yet, the developer does not complain about its immense popularity. The goal is to create a game that millions, if not billions, of people worldwide, can continue to enjoy for many years to come.
Though, with a massive player base, LoL faces some difficulties that other games don’t. Every region is diverse and its players have vastly different skill levels, from beginners all the way to professional eSports team members. Even more challenging is the fact that each player expects a fair and balanced game regardless of their experience level.
LoL players tend to be extremely diverse and in setting up the game to match the unique skills and tastes of millions of players, the company has to be careful. Riot relies on the employees in its offices around the world to offer insights into the local atmosphere. Also, the developer regularly asks players what they want to see fixed or added to LoL.
One such fix was made later is the new Dynamic Queue, which was a very unpopular change made by developers during the 2016 season. Dynamic Queue was intended to replace the Solo/Duo Queue and team ranking. However, the new system was met with a firestorm of angry critics who argued that the change was a huge and very disruptive mistake. Players claimed that the new system destroyed the meaning behind a player’s rank because you would never know if it was based on skill or if it was based on an unearned boost from someone on his team. Players threatened to leave the game in droves if changes were not reversed. A short eight months after introducing the new system, Riot Games admitted that the Dynamic Queue had fallen short of many goals with an apology.
The company realizes that while changes are needed, there is a very fine line to walk. You don’t want to lose players but you also don’t want to be afraid to improve the game and earn more players. At the same time, players have very high expectations of the games that they love and devote their time to. They expect problems to be addressed quickly and honestly. Changes can be tricky but in order to continue to grow and add more players to its base, Riot plans to keep on improving. It can’t be long before Riot is rolling out the celebration banner for its new high of 300 million players! With an increasing number of amazing champions and the shortest queue times on record, LoL is unstoppable at present and we are hoping it will continue to produce these numbers in the future.
