As one the biggest games in the world, League of Legends is constantly under the microscope when it comes to player counts, popularity, how strong its global esports scene is, and how “dead” it really is, with League lovers and haters alike always very invested in the answers.
There can never be a totally clear answer on how “dead” any game is, with those who love rival titles eager to proclaim its demise and gamers who play daily defending it to the hilt—but with League, things look pretty set in stone.
Is League dying?
No, League of Legends is absolutely not dying. League continues to go from strength to strength every season and 2023 is no different; the playerbase continues to get bigger and bigger year-on-year and though some fans do walk away, many hundreds of thousands are always joining to take their place.
There are always going to be veteran players saying that we should put the mouse and keyboard away and trade the grassy battlefields on Summoner’s Rift for real grass outside but they are in the minority.
Similarly, many long-term fans take breaks—I recently came back from a League hiatus to grind for Emerald—but many eventually come back.
So, no, League is very much alive and thriving in 2023 right now.
League player counts: How many still play?
Today, more than 200 million players log into League and play casual and ranked matches every month. This is according to data released by Riot at the start of the season. There’s been a 10 percent lift since 2022, where around 180 million were logging in across any given 30-day stretch.
It’s been suggested by ActivePlayer.io, which estimates player counts based on API metrics, that 153,109,020 logged into League and played at least one game in July 2023. The same site estimates around 10,207,268 played daily.
In years past, Riot has said there were between 75 million (2018) and 100 million (2017) logging in and playing each month. When the game first went live in 2011 it quickly climbed to around 11.5 million monthly players before more than doubling to 32 million in 2012. This slumped a little, to 27 million, a year later before hitting nine digits in 2017 for the very first time.
Region-by-region breakdown
Riot doesn’t often share League player stats anymore, but its most recent numbers had regional player shares looking something like this:
- China — 75,000,000
- Europe West — 34,830,000
- North America — 27,889,000
- Korea — 19,822,000
- Europe Nordic & East — 18,428,000
- Brazil — 11,488,00
- Turkey — 7,727,000
- Latin America North — 6,798,000
- Latin America South — 6,052,000
- Russia — 4,888,000
- Oceania — 2,746,000
- Japan — 1,736,000
When the League devs share newer stats, we’ll update this article.
Esports event viewership
League esports is easily one of the most popular competitive gaming circuits on the planet, especially when it comes to the season-splitting Mid-Season Invitational and year-end World Championship.
Last year, Worlds hit yet another high point when it came to viewership; more than five million tuned in at its height. From 2019 to this year, international audiences have piled in in droves. An average of 1.04 million watched every game at Worlds in 2019 before that grew to 1.3 million by 2021. More recently, MSI 2023 averaged 796,000 per game and raked up 61,557,385 hours watched, according to Escharts.
We can quite confidently say League esports is still powering along, especially in Korea, China, and whenever the leagues come together for events.
Things aren’t going well everywhere though. In NA, the premier LCS competition has plummeted in viewership over the last three years, dropping from around 200,000 average viewers across the 2020 season to just over 109,000 across the 2023 Spring Split which wrapped in April.
Related: LEC viewership has been higher than LCS in Summer. Here’s why
This trend holds across the West, with Europe suffering a 53 percent viewership dip, though the LEC still rakes in around 172,000 viewers each match.
August’s “gacha” controversy threatens player counts
Recently, the League fandom has been up in arms about a new feature Riot is bringing to the cosmetics side of the game: Cosmic Capsules.
In essence (yes, I meant that), these new capsules arriving in the 2023 Cosmic event look quite a lot like a “gacha” system. They’re the only way for us to get Dark Cosmic Erasure Jhin—a particularly biting sting for me as I collect every skin he gets—and that venture could cost as much as $200 USD.
Related: League devs make huge surrender vote changes to curb toxicity
It has yet to be seen how heavily this “gacha” backlash will actually affect the huge League player counts, but many are already threatening to quit (or just boycott buying skins) if the changes stay.
For now, the outcry has done little to change daily player counts.
