‘League of Legends' Latest Player Stats Report From Riot Games

League of Legends, the hugely popular free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena video game, has at latest count 67 million playing every month, 27 million playing every day, and over 7.5 million playing at the same time during each day's peak play time, according to game publisher and developer Riot Games.

Much of the game's success can be explained by the company's business model. Riot Games doesn't charge customers to play. Customers can opt to play the game entirely for free, but they can also choose to pay for cosmetic items such as a different look for their character. The company also offers a rotation of various characters with different specific abilities that customers can play for free when available, or pay for when not. The company's main revenue comes from customers who purchase "Riot Points" for real money in order to buy new champion characters and new outfits and gears for them. Citing from Super Data Research, the Wall Street Journal says these "payments by players have helped League of Legends become the second-largest game of its kind in 2013, raking in $624 million in revenue for the year."

The Wall Street Journal also says that "Riot's success stems in part from its many tournaments, which pit top players from around the world against one another." The company organizes the League of Legends Championship Series, which consists of 10 competing professional teams in each continent. Similar regional competitions are also hosted in China, Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia which culminate with the annual League of Legends Championship, which had a grand prize of $1 million in 2013 and $2.3 million in 2014. Forbes describes the last League of Legends championship tournament as "the single greatest finals event in eSports history, bar none [with] 8,000 fans packed into a venue with a million more watching concurrently online."