League of Legends Player Count: These Are The Stats | RiftFeed
Most fans know there are a lot of people playing the game, but just how many are there?

League of Legends Player Count: These Are The Stats

More 17-03-2024 21:36

League of Legends has one of the largest player base, but how many players are there really?

Spirit Blossom Kindred
The Spirit Blossom event was the most successful event in LoL history | © Riot Games

League of Legends has grown from a game made by a small indie studio, to the international phenomenon that exists today. From it, multiple songs, albums, and even a TV show have originated. Not to mention the explosion of esports it spearheaded. Filling stadiums and arenas all around the world is nothing new for the company and their tournaments and leagues.

None of these feats would be possible without the dedicated and in some cases fanatically loyal fanbase, though they would never admit it, that numbers in the millions. How many players does LoL actually have though, is it dying as some say, and how did its popularity progression go?

LoL Player Count: How Many Players Play League?

Fright Night Trundle
Everything you need to know about the player count. | © Riot Games

League of Legends was created by Riot Games, back in the day still a small Indy development studio, which took most of its inspiration from the original DotA. Since then, however, the game has progressed leaps and bounds. And Riot Games has grown into one of the biggest companies in the gaming landscape.

In 2024 League of Legends has had around 130 million playersThe daily number of players fluctuates based on in-game events, esports tournaments, and more.

The biggest increase in player count League of Legends received when the TV series Arcane was released, in 2021, jumping from 115 million to 150 million in a few months, and culminating in the large player numbers in 2022.

Arcane Poster
Even those who don't play games, watched Arcane | © Riot Games

League of Legends Player Count Progression

As we've said previously, League of Legends is the game that spearheaded the modern expansion of the MOBA genre, and as such, did not have the astronomical numbers it has now.

In fact, even League of Legends had to use systems such as refer-a-friend and other incentives, to get people to play the game.

YearPlayer Count
2011
  • 32.5 Million registrations
  • 11.5 Million monthly players
2012
  • 70 Million registrations
  • 32 Million monthly players
2014
  • 65 Million monthly players
  • 27 Million daily players
2017
  • 100 Million monthly players
2018
  • 75 Million monthly players
2022
  • 180 Million monthly players

The year 2011 was the first time Riot Games released the infographics regarding their player base, and since then they've been stingier and stingier with information. However, analytics indicate that 2017 was the year when League of Legends reached 100 Million monthly players.

It was in 2018 that the most significant drop in player numbers was seen. However, Riot Games went all out in 2019 celebrating the 10-year anniversary of League of Legends, and the incredibly successful Spirit Blossom event in 2020 brought back the player numbers, and then some.

Which LoL Region Has the Most Players

Faker Worlds 2022
Which region is the biggest? | © Riot Games

Without a doubt, the region with the most LoL players in it is China. Due to a large number of players, the Chinese server is actually split into 27 servers, spread around the entire country, and one new server, called the super server, where only Diamond-ranked and above players can join.

As it stands now, there are approximately 75 million LoL players in China, more than any other region by a lot. The second best is Korea, with half the numbers:

RegionPlayer Count
Korea19.822.124
Europe West34.830.785
North America27.889.684
Europe Nordic & East18.428.816
Brazil11.488.731
Turkey7.727.140
Latin America North6.798.119
Latin America South6.052.414
Russia4.888.207
Oceania2.746.903
Japan1.736.489

Currently, Japan is the weakest LoL region in both the player numbers and their eSports presence. One of the reasons listed for this is due to the cultural influence on gaming in Japan, where PC gaming is seen as something not for useful members of society, and PCs are meant for work, whereas consoles are meant for relaxation.

League of Legends Ranked Distribution

Victorious orianna
Here is the ranked distribution. | © Riot Games

League of Legends players have influenced the game in such a way, that ranked games are the only thing that truly matters, and normal games are there just to practice new champions or silly builds. So, most LoL players play ranked, and gravitate around certain ranks more than others. 

RankDistribution
Iron5.4% of the player count
Bronze24% of the player count
Silver29% of the player count
Gold24% of the player count
Platinum12% of the player count
Diamond3,0 of the player count
Master0.51% of the player count
Grandmaster0.044% of the player count
Challenger0.019% of the player count

As you can see, most League of Legends players congregate around the Silver and Gold ranks. And, when it comes to tanked itself, our recommendation is not to take it too seriously and just reach Gold for the free skin.

Is League of Legends Dying?

High Noon Eve
League is here to stay. | © Riot Games

The short answer to this question, no matter what anyone says, is a resounding no! As with any game, League of Legends has its ups and downs, and Riot Games are currently working on multiple projects which have drawn them too thin, and some aspects of LoL, such as yearly events suffer a bit because of that.

All it takes tough is comparing League of Legends with its biggest in-genre competitors, and other popular games to see where it stands:

  • League of Legends vs DotA 2 - DotA 2, the second-biggest MOBA in the world currently has around 11 million active monthly users. League of Legends, during its worst months, has 10 times those numbers in 2022
  • League of Legends vs CS: GO - The most famous first-person shooter in the world, with the biggest eSport presence, is CS: GO. It currently has around 26 million active monthly users, with League of Legends surpassing those numbers by more than a 100 million a year ago.
  • League of Legends vs Minecraft - Minecraft is not a game that focuses on multiplayer as much as the rest of these games do. It is however, the game that spearheaded its own genre, and is one of the most popular games in the world for more than a decade. It currently has an estimated 125 million players.  Even with these immense numbers, it still falls short of League of Legends by around 50 million players.

Now, if there is an inkling that any of these games are dying, then perhaps an argument could be made that League of Legends is dying as well. However, League of Legends numbers keep growing, gradually, and though they've slowed in recent times, the growth is nowhere near stagnating, and especially not dying.

Rijad Kamberovic

Graduating from Sarajevo university in 2020, with a Bachelor's Degree in Islamic Theology, I never believed that my fascination with comparative religions and their myths would mesh so well together with the fantasy genre of the video games I play....

Guest

By Players they mean accounts.... monthly players... it means if i log in 5 acc and play 1 game they count it in as 5 players/month. Most of players have 2 or 3 accounts... And this is worldwide

GuestGuest

Plus, Riot is owned by tencent, no wonder half the accounts are in china... Also bots... The numbers aren't rising that much any more because nobody actually cared about arcane, it was just a marketing strat, but okay... Also skin sales going down... Yeeeeah, looks pretty dead to me :D

GuestGuest

and my friends have 3+ mojang accounts, whats your point exactly? its the same for every one of the games on this list so the results more or less the same for these games even disregarding the multiple accounts factor. And since you're a creature thats too dogshit in every game you play so you wouldn't understand it, its people in higher elo that buy multiple accs. Why would you low elo dogs need multiple accs? We have multiple accs becoz we need to dodge qs from target inting apes that reside in high elo, from iron-plat, there is no reason for piss low elos to have smurfs becoz ur elos are literally filled with so many players u don't need to q skip. dia, masters, gm and challenger all together consists of at least the top 2.6% of the player base currently. the % is probably even lower becoz my smurf is still sitting dia 1, and then you have plat which is probably the most populated elo and gold being the 2nd most populated one. you have 0 reason to have smurfs or multiple accs as you'll never face the same individual twice even during degen time qs.

GuestGuest

And thats for most MP Games like league.
And no most players dont have 2 or 3 accounts.
Pretty much no one in gold or under has.

GuestGuest

Im pretty sure they tracked it by unique computer ip

GuestGuest

"unique computer IP", some people shouldn't have right to talk....

GuestGuest

I think he is referencing to Hardware-ID's which riot surely is able to extract and therefore can differentiate between multiple account users cause those ID's are unique

GuestGuest

MAC ID can be spoof'd as well, its a common tactic used by people who cheat to avoid bans.