League of Legends draws more daily players than Zynga's biggest hits

How popular is Riot Games free-to-play PC game League of Legends? It has 12 million daily active players -- that's more than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, World of Warcraft, or any social game on Facebook. The most popular game on Facebook, Zynga's FarmVille 2, draws only 8 million daily users, according to AppData. World of Warcraft currently has a little over 10 million subscribers, while Modern Warfare 3, one of the biggest console releases ever, at its peak hit 3.3 million daily players. And thanks to microtransactions for purchasing playable characters and items, League of Legends is also likely generating a lot of revenue from those players -- Ngmoco GM and free-to-play expert Ben Cousins estimates that the core-targeted game grosses $5-10 million every day. Unlike most free-to-play social or casual games, League of Legends is still growing rapidly three years after its launch, too. The game's daily user count was just 4.2 million last November, and its monthly active player numbers also increased from 11.5 million back then to now 32 million. That's nearing the number of paid subscribers to Xbox Live, which is about 40 million. Riot, a U.S.-based subsidiary of China's Tencent Holdings, also claims that when looking at total hours played per month (1 billion per month on average) by all users, League of Legends is "the most played video game in the world." The developer shared more stats about League of Legends and its community in an infographic published Thursday night.