League of Legends has remained a juggernaut of online gaming for the past decade, attracting a significant number of players and fostering one of the biggest Esports scenes in the world.
This massive player base has led to League of Legends becoming an integral aspect of certain regions due to the sheer impact it has on mainstream culture.
However, much like any game, League also suffers from popularity fluctuations that impact the monthly user activity and overall engagement with the game.
How many people play League of Legends in 2024?
Monthly users
The most essential and accurate metric for evaluating a game’s popularity and global relevance is analyzing its MAU (monthly active users) among its player base.
This is more accurate than simply checking the number of registered accounts, as plenty of those are inactive or created as smurf accounts.
For that reason, simply counting up the number of registered account numbers doesn’t accurately represent the size of League of Legends.
Currently, League of Legends retains a consistent figure of between 140 - 160 million active monthly users, which is among the biggest player bases in online gaming.
The game initially surpassed the 100 million MAU milestone back in 2016, and the player base consistently kept growing, even though the game experienced a slight decrease in popularity in 2017 and 2018.
Despite this slight decrease in popularity, the game bounced back between 2019 and 2021 as League of Legends had a massive surge in MAU, breaking the 150 million monthly player margin in 2022.
Although League of Legends is experiencing somewhat of a slow start to 2024, it’s expected that it will still hold a monthly average of 140-150 million users by the end of the year.
Daily users
Apart from using monthly users as a measurement of a game’s popularity, daily engagement and activity is also a pivotal factor worth considering.
This is because the daily user count represents how actively players are interacting with the game on a day-to-day basis.
In recent years, the number of daily League of Legends users has maintained a stable figure of 25-35 million players across all regions combined.
Despite the recent downward trajectory in monthly activity, League of Legends has experienced several peaks in daily user activity in 2024 which are a testament to the game’s ever-present relevance.
A notable peak of daily activity was measured in March 2024 when the daily player base reached a staggering 35 million daily players in one day.
Most active League of Legends regions in 2024
China
The Chinese League server, also known as the Super Server is often considered to be the most advanced Lol server in terms of individual player skill and mechanical prowess.
One of the main reasons behind the server’s quality is the fact that the game itself is massively popular in China, which is coincidentally also one of the world’s most populated nations.
This has resulted in China’s server being by far the biggest server when compared to the other ones, attracting an astonishing number of over 70 million monthly players.
Europe West
The Europe West is the biggest Western League of Legends server in terms of size and monthly activity.
It has a fairly competitive solo queue ladder and is often considered to be among the best in terms of individual player quality, only lacking behind China and Korea.
This server encompasses player bases located in some of Europe’s biggest countries including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, which make up a large sum of the entire player base.
The dominance of the Western European server is also felt when it comes to Esports, given that the majority of Europe’s super teams were Western powerhouses
South Korea
The third largest server hosts the historically most successful League of Legends player base, which are the South Koreans, renowned for their historic success on the game’s biggest stages.
Even though South Korea’s population is 30 times smaller than China’s, this server is only 3 times smaller than the Chinese Super Server in terms of active players.
This indicates that League of Legends is an enormous part of South Korean mainstream culture as the largest percentage of the overall population actively plays the game.
North America
The second largest Western server is the fourth one in terms of overall player size, encompassing players from the United States, Canada, and other smaller countries in the region.
Involving over 15 million players every month, League of Legends is an integral aspect of North American culture, especially when it comes to Esports and gaming events.
The NA server has a tight bond and rivalry with the European servers, fostering a competitive spirit that adds a layer of excitement to international tournaments.
League of Legends player distribution by rank
Even though League of Legends attracts hundreds of millions of active players, only a very small percentage of the player count ever reaches the highest ranks on the ladder.
Even player distribution across various elos has proven to be an issue for Riot in previous years in which it was extremely difficult to manage distribution between Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
However, with the introduction of the Emerald rank, Riot finally managed to balance out the League of Legends player count across all ranks.
This resulted in the vast majority of the League’s player base being ranked between Silver and Platinum, totalling an impressive count of over 80 million global players.
Is League of Legends dying in 2024?
A slight dip in monthly user activity during the first quarter of 2024 has sparked discussions regarding League of Legends’ global relevance, suggesting a potential decline in the game’s popularity.
However, a short glance at this year’s average player base statistics compared to the previous few years paints a completely different picture.
The reality is that League of Legends is an ever-present force in multiplayer gaming which is further signified by the game’s ability to consistently attract over 100 million monthly users.
Even though this figure sometimes fluctuates, the yearly average has stayed the same since mid-2019. On the other hand, the daily activity charts have kept continuously growing in the last two years, with a significant spike of daily activity occurring on several occasions in 2024.
On a global scale, League of Legends competes toe-to-toe in terms of MAU with gaming juggernauts such as Fortnite, Counter-Strike, and Minecraft.
Overall, despite what some would say, League of Legends is still going strong and it doesn’t look as if the game’s mainstream popularity will decline in years to come.
Articles you might like:
How many Champions are in League
Choosing a Role to Main
