I am personally more of a Dota 2 player, but that doesn’t eliminate the fact that League of Legends is now at the top of the PC gaming world. It’s free to play, so you can join the other 100 million players without dropping a dime. The last time we got an update on it, LoL was sat at 67 million monthly players, and that was a couple of years back. The reason for not reporting player numbers on a more active basis is that co-founders Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck dislike talking figures such as this.
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Through the founder’s travels, they described the feeling of achieving such numbers as unreal.
We definitely knew “League of Legends” is ridiculously popular – you just need to see the crowds both online and in person at any of its major eSports events to see that – but it wasn’t clear it was this much of a colossus. What Beck said is cool about meeting their fans in person is that “only then does it start to feel real. Otherwise, they’re just numbers on a screen all over the world”. As we discovered earlier this year, it takes an incredible studio to make the biggest game in the world.
One of the unique aspects in Riot Games’ approach to League of Legends, which could contribute to its continued success, is the level of the developers’ commitment.
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With such a strong player base, Riot is able to earn more than $1.4 billion a year from League of Legends alone, which is an fantastic achievement for a free to play game.
