League of Legends Passes 32.5M Registrations, 11.5M Monthly Players

Riot Games' popular free-to-play online strategy game League of Legends now boasts over 32.5 million registered players, according to developer Riot Games, with 11.5 million of those playing each month. Those numbers are up significantly from July, when Riot reported 15 million player registrations and 4 million monthly players. For context, earlier this month Blizzard reported 10.3 million subscribers for its long-lived World of Warcraft MMO. Roughly 4.2 million players log in to League of Legends every day, Riot said, putting over 10.5 million man-hours -- or nearly 1,200 man-years -- into the game each day. About 1.3 million players are battling concurrently at any one time, Riot added. The popular DotA-inspired title, made by notable Blizzard veterans and devs from the Warcraft modding scene, attracted its first million downloads in just three months following its late 2009 launch. The game has become particularly popular in the e-sports community, with nearly 1.7 million viewers streaming footage from the championship match of the game's first competitive season. Top competitive players have played upwards of 2,500 ranked games, Riot said, logging over 20,000 individual in-game kills.