Reveling in their success, Riot, the developer behind the insanely popular MOBA League of Legends, has announced that more than 100 million players were playing the game each month. The incredible number comes after two years since their last announced estimated figure of 67 million monthly players, back in 2014. This new number came from an interview between Riot and Polygon, in which Riot reflects on 10 years of League of Legends, their successes and their future with the company.
Co-founders Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck mentioned they do not generally offer numbers to the public often. Stating, they “claim to hate discussing numbers”, which is the reason behind the lack of any regular update on the amount of active players for the past two years.
To put the number in perspective, the major competitor in the market, Dota 2, has a very clear count on the Dota 2 blog where it has been stated that for the month of August, the unique player count amounts to just over 13.4 million.
While the interview doesn’t provide any specifics on numbers or statistics; even with the inclusion of spam accounts or smurfs, 100 million is an incredibly high number. It’s nothing to scoff at as the team continues to try and generate even more success through new content and updates.
As for the future, Riot Games has spoken candidly about their desire to also work on games that do not use the League of Legends IP.