League of Legends Titles Have Reached 180 Million Monthly Players

Not the dead set of games you think they are

By Matt Hunter November 2, 2021

League of Legends is one of the OG multiplayer games of the 21st century that is now often circulated as being washed out and “dead.” It originated in 2009 with DOTA serving as the developer’s inspiration for this game. Soon after its launch, League of Legends started gathering a hefty player base and throttled itself into the competitive space as well side by side.

Fast forward to 2021, the IP has become one of the most played games in the world with the free-to-play appeal surely paying off. The developer—Riot Games—has since ventured into many other projects, such as Valorant and League of Legends: Wild Rift to keep the flow going and establish itself as a giant in the industry.

Accompanying the latter statement, Riot has taken to Twitter to make an exceedingly mind-blowing announcement. The US-based developer tweeted, “Thank you to our global community for helping Runeterra reach new heights! 180 million players in October and still growing!”

Those figures are nothing to be taken lightly. Don’t believe us? Take a look at Statista and see how Steam falls a lot behind Riot’s success here, amounting to 120 million active monthly players. Next, Backlinko tells us that Epic Games—another humongous gaming platform that’s home to Fortnite— has a total of 52 million active monthly players.

Combine Steam and Epic Games together and you get a rounded-off figure of 170 million players, which is still 10 million short of Riot Games. This is an admirable feat that has plenty of keyboard warriors upset despite their supreme efforts of undermining the LoL series.

To come back on the topic in question, it’s worth noting that Runeterra is recognized as the interactive map of the world of League of Legends. This means that the latter alone isn’t to thank for this spellbinding monthly player base. Instead, the 180-million player count is retrieved from a number of games based in the universe of League of Legends.

For instance, the aforementioned League of Legends: Wild Rift is a multiplayer battle arena game made specifically for mobiles. It has more than 1.5 million downloads on the Google Play Store alone, not to mention the contribution of the App Store. It’s free and sports a big name, so there’s no reason aspiring gamers wouldn’t give it a go.

Other than Wild Rift, you’ve got Legends of Runeterra which is a strategy-based card game, and Teamfight Tactics which is another game present on mobile platforms as well. Riot Games has reached an all-time high of their monthly player figures, even giving big names like Steam and Epic Games the stick to take into consideration.

Moving forward, things seem to be set in motion over at Riot Games’ HQ as they’ve got Valorant bringing in a generous amount of revenue as well. This recently made announcement by the developer has shown how relevant some of its most prominent IPs still are in the industry and how it means serious business in the not-so-distant future.

What do you think about this news? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments section.