Riot announces 180 million monthly players across Runeterra games
Via a post from the official Twitter account, 180 million players are jumping into one of Riot's Runeterra games every month.
Riot games, the developer behind the astronomically popular MOBA League of Legends, recently announced that they had 180 million unique monthly players across their Runeterra-based games. This includes League of Legends, alongside the online card game Legends of Runeterra, its auto battler Teamfight Tactics, and its mobile MOBA Wild Rift.
This figure notably does not include their FPS Valorant, which launched all the way back in June 2020 and has continued to grow since thanks to constant updates and a sizable competitive scene. While not included, communications director at Riot Game Joe Hixson replied to queries about Valorant’s player count with “Well.... The last number we gave for VAL [was] 14 million MAU. Do with that what you will.” referring to official figures released in June.
To help put this number into perspective, Valve announced that they had 120 million monthly active users in their 2020 year in review blog post. The announcement made by Riot Games is a reminder of just how popular these games are across the globe. However, measuring growth is difficult with Riot Games. The company generally has a policy not to reveal its player counts across its titles, leading to much speculation about how this 180 million is split between the games. Small crumbs of information - like the 10+ million install figure on Wild Rift’s Google Play Store Page - only hint towards the split between the titles.
Riot Games is set to use this momentum to introduce new games set within the League of Legends setting to their giant player base. At the tail-end of last year, we saw official word from VP of IP and Entertainment Greg Street that they were working on a new MMO. Alongside this, Riot Games is also creating a fighting game that is teased to be shown off sometime later this month.