Not sure how many of you play League of Legends, but I found an article that said that League of Legends earned close to $1 billion in microtransactions this year.

I don't know, but that seems a LOT for a free-to-play game.

The odd thing is that Dota 2 only earned $136 million.

Frankly, I thought Dota 2 earned better than LoL.

Source

Are these statistics for real?

10 years ago*

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Apparently LoL has more active players and has been around longer. Earnings seem as expected. Lol seems to have a more aggressive money making campaign too where dota is a piss in the wind when it comes to buying shit, many players will only start buying 0.5€ items when they are 200 hours in.

10 years ago
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Yeah, but at the International this year, they raised a pretty good amount IMHO.

10 years ago
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And most of it went to the competitors. DOTA will reach its final potential and valve knows that. They'll just keep slowly building on their formula and good things will come.

10 years ago
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Most? If I remember right, from every International related sale, it was 30% that went to prize pool, while Valve took rest.

10 years ago
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Well 10mill was obtained from compendium related sales. 1st prize was 5 mill ... that's 50% right there. The rest was divided among the other competitors.

10 years ago
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More than 10 million were obtained for the International 4 prize pool, that means Compendiums worth more than 40 million! were sold. Remember for every sold Compendium (10$) the prize pool was raised 2.5$.

10 years ago
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Which means Valve got 30 millions, so most of money went to them.

10 years ago
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If Valve's accountant knows a thing or two about their jobs, I'm pretty sure they show all of the money went to competitors as expenditures. So all of the money raised are in revenue/income part so in this 136 million in the OP's chart

10 years ago
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LoL hasn't been around longer..

10 years ago
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It has been longer than Dota 2. League basically came right after HoN which is way before Dota 2 ever came around. Sure it was after Dota 1, but all MOBA arenas basically came after that.

10 years ago
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LoL: released on October 27th, 2009
Dota2: released on July 9th, 2013 (beta access was available since 2011)

Care to explain how LoL hasn't been around longer?

10 years ago
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he just want to start typical lol/dota2 war.. which one was first ;d

10 years ago
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he may be meaning that as a gameplay style dota2 came directly from dota1 so had some hardcore fanbase that didn't move into lol or hon(even though more hon players moved to dota2)

10 years ago
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If you wanna get technical his reply is to Xenolair, who only said "dota", not Dota 2. I think everyone knew what he meant, but maybe not.

10 years ago
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Check any app store for highest grossing titles. 90% of the titles listed will be free to play. The big thing with LoL is that, afaik, all of the purchases are cosmetic and dont change gameplay at all.

10 years ago
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Well, Dota 2 items don't change the stats of the game, they are purely cosmetic too. I just found it weird that it is such a large gap between the two.

10 years ago
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LOL has heroes for sale. DOta offers all heroes for free. I think thats where a lot of the money comes. +Valve lets users contribute cosmetics and gives a chunk of the money back to their creators too so there's that.

10 years ago
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"+Valve lets users contribute cosmetics and gives a chunk of the money back to their creators too so there's that."

Do you know what revenue means? Protip: it's not the same thing as profit.

10 years ago
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Bad protip there. I know the difference. I also know them putting money back into the community directly influences their revenue. Item sells for 5$, give 2$ back, their revenue is 3$ instead of the 5$ profit they made selling it. The phrasing profit/revenue is irrelevant as they are connected - one influences the other.

10 years ago
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Nope, their revenue would be 5 again. you obviously don't know the meanings. And this is about why LoL has more input than Dota 2. Saying there is such input difference because one has more/less output is ridiculous

10 years ago
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So he mixed them up who hasn't at some point? No need to go in with an acidic attitude

10 years ago
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That depends on whether they take it all in or split it right away.

10 years ago
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You really think they have a mechanism for splitting right away.

10 years ago
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You don't have any more info than I do.

10 years ago
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as a guy who plays LoL with high level friends, this cant be more wrong. you cant even play certain roles until you buy some things (or you know, grinds as fuck)

10 years ago
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I think you must have gotten the game mistaken. LoL sure does require a lot of grind to unlock everything however it is easily playable the moment you download the game. Free rotation of 10 champions is more than enough for a new player and since he is being matched against new players as well, the lack of runes won't make any difference, considering that runes are not buyable for real money.

10 years ago
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"as a guy who plays LoL with high level friends" ....... runes and masteries make such a huuuge difference, i basically can not play other role that support, and jungling is almost impossible

10 years ago
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Yes, runes and masteries make a huge difference... but since runes can only be bought with IP (in-game points earned through playing the game) I don't know how it's relevant to the discussion since the discussion is about transactions concerning real life money.

10 years ago
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Also most of the people end up buying Dota 2 items from the community market rather than the in-game store, which will probably not be counted towards the total.

And also free drops.

10 years ago
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Well, true. I did not think of that. That might be a valid point of view.

10 years ago
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15% would be counted towards the total, Valve's tax on market transaction (5% valve cut + 10% developer cut which in this case also happens to be Valve)

10 years ago
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While it counts as Valve revenue, it might not be added to the Dota 2 revenue that's being reported.

10 years ago
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I should have qualified my remark to say "if you wanted to compute all of Valve's earning from Dota 2"

10 years ago
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I think Dota 2 is earning much more per player if that is true . The playerbases are diffrent after all .

10 years ago
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not only the playerbases but availability of content and marketing in stuff. would buy a skin that you know exactly you are buying the specific one, or would you gamble and maybe get a rarer skin?

10 years ago
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dota2 > lol

10 years ago
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Well, it depends. I like them both. Each has its own unique thing :D

10 years ago
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lol is more easy to play, funny and attractive for mosto of the gamers. You can see why in just 30 mins of gameplay of each. I can easily see why lol earns more.

10 years ago
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idont see precise logic in this, but also i dont mean t ostart a flame war

10 years ago
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No problem, my englsih is just bad :x

10 years ago
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I would have to agree with him. LoL is just an easier game. It is literally a dumbed down dota. I am not saying that makes it bad, I play them both after all, but dota is blatantly harder and not quite as shiny to a new player.

10 years ago
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This. I touched Dota maybe twice, and it was my first experience with a MOBA a while ago. I played it once and it was too complicated for what my friend said would be a "fun casual game" and I never got into it. League on the other hand, was really simple and pretty easy for a new player to get into, and I stuck with it and still play it.

10 years ago
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This. I touched Dota maybe twice, and it was my first experience with a MOBA a while ago. I played it once and it was too complicated for what my friend said would be a "fun casual game" and I never got into it. League on the other hand, was really simple and pretty easy for a new player to get into, and I stuck with it and still play it.

10 years ago
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more little kids play lol and they tend to use any money for it on the spot. I have a 13 year old cousin who has spent about $600 on lol, $100 on the spot after receiving his Christmas money. idiots

10 years ago
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Lol. I did not know that people spend like that. I play LoL too, but I only have about 3 skins at most.. :))

10 years ago
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Most of mine came from my friends gifting me mystery skins. I bought 2 for myself and I don't plan on getting anymore for myself.

10 years ago
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I've actually seen people frequent F2P shops in downtimes because they're such pathetic addicts.

10 years ago
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I believe HERESY is afoot!

10 years ago
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Dota can't earn more if they give you more content for free. Also, super ridiculous 10€ per skin for crappy repaints. The audience is simply gullible enough to buy any crap, just like most F2P games.

10 years ago
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nice avatar! grumpy cat 4ever

10 years ago
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Someone is a little biased huh.

10 years ago
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That much is obvious. Granted, some of the skins are repaints, but most are not.

10 years ago
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Yeah, the repaint skins are pretty much all of the oldest skins. Skins these days are just keep getting fancier and fancier.

10 years ago
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most

Yeah, right... Your definition of most is rather wrong.

10 years ago
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(checks the dictionary)

Nope. It is possible, however, that we have different understandings of what constitutes a "repaint."

10 years ago
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That's why I like Smite. It's a new kind of MOBA and you can get all the gods for $30 which is a fantastic deal. They also tend to put their skins and voice packs on sale a lot so you can get some cheap skins for a couple bucks.

10 years ago
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I've spent about $100-$120 on LoL over the last three years. I generally buy only on sale or limited availability skins.

10 years ago
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I think I have spend 10 dollars in total since season 1.

10 years ago
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that still 10 $ too much for a skin T.T

10 years ago
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When I first started playing LoL I thought "Jeez, these skins are so overpriced it's just stupid" but after playing the game for hundreds of hours, far far more than most games I've actually paid for, it's easy to justify buying some skins, even if only to support Rito.

10 years ago
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I actually got 2 skins for that price. It was a "Mystery skin" event so I got a skin worth around 15 bucks for around 5. Still more than I would like to spend for a single skin but they aren't the worst offenders in the f2p world.

10 years ago
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lineage 1 is still a thing? wow.

10 years ago
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LoL has definitely more aggresive f2p model, and also DOTA shares its income with creators and some of it goes to esports.

10 years ago
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LoL and most of the F2P on this list has either grind way too hard or pay this small amount of money thingie whereas Dota 2 has purely cosmetic things. So contrary to your initial thought logical conclusion should be LoL winning more than Dota 2

But looking at playerbases you can clearly see Dota 2 is actually winning more than LoL per player.
I attributed this anomaly to

  1. Dota 2 keys as a trading currency
  2. You can earn steam wallet without spending actual money
10 years ago
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Valve's pricing on charging for content even if it's cosmetic or not is more aggressive by far than Riot's or any other company's that I know of. It is based in the virus of gambling which is in human's nature. Take a look at csgo's knives: they are extremely rare so rarity and owners through availability and demand decide the price on it in the market. So you have a knife being sold for over $100. Just a small bunch of pixels that offer nothing more than some cool animations(e.g butterfly knife) which happen to be only in your side - no other player is able to see you inspecting your knife and know how cool it looks. Same goes for some other rare items in dota2, and they are just parts from a set,not the complete set. On the other hand Riot sells the full character skin and no skin is priced over 3250 RP which is less than $20. In my opinion when I want to get a skin I want it at a fixed price, not to gamble to get it(spend over $300 on cases and keys, to get an item worth $100).

10 years ago
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So you are saying that Valve selling skins that have absolutely no impact on gameplay is somehow worse than Riot's method which keeps entire gameplay changing characters behind a paywall? You cant be serious.

10 years ago
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What paywall?

10 years ago
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I think he means the paywall in which you don't have every champion. Not really a huge paywall. More of a pay fence. You can still open it but it takes longer than if it wasn't there.

10 years ago
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10 years ago
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In order to play ranked games in LoL you need to climb your account to level 30. this takes quite a few time so you get to know some champions better than other because you played with them and you also pick a role in the game(top,mid,jungle,adc or support). you realize that when champions are already free you will join a game and see the following: "first time trying -insert champion here-", so you know from the beginning that this guy has no experience with that particular champion and your game is gonna suck balls. and you can always have bought cheap champions with IP (free currency earned by playing games) that are better than newer champions(more expensive to get). Afterall it's all about the team composition and the synergy, not about how op is a champion no matter the skill of the player. And you only buy cosmetic stuff with real life money, anything else is purchasable by playing the game which also makes you more skilled and experienced in longterm so you make up your mind and pick the right champions that suit you.

10 years ago
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Gamers have terrible double standards. They complain about DLC and then we see stuff like this happen. You only have yourself to blame!

10 years ago
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Yeah, the DLC stuff bothers me too, but on the other hand, I am not spending on free-to-play games either.

10 years ago
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But money is money and you have to spend it, it's in our human nature, lol! I kept buying more games that made my backlog huge and I am not gonna play most of them, instead I could have bought some awesome skins in LoL or CSGO and make me look awesome! lel yolo swag! :P

10 years ago
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La diferencia es muy grande por lo que se en dota2 los items u objetos cambian el juego hacen la diferencia mientras que en el LOL no, nada hace la diferencia solo el nivel y las partidas es lo que hace la diferencia, yo juego lol hace 4 años y bueno lol lleva desde el 2007 osea ya llega a los 7 años en juego

10 years ago
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The difference is very large so that in dota2 items or objects change the game while making a difference in the LOL no, nothing makes a difference only the level and items is what makes the difference, I play lol for 4 lol good takes years and since 2007 bone and reaches 7 years in game

10 years ago
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I remember the times when I preordered League of Legends Deluxe Edition, IN STEAM. LOL.

10 years ago
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Is it a turnover or a profit of $1billion? because that's not exactly the same.

10 years ago
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It says revenue. I guess they mean Income. They also have expenses.

10 years ago
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F2P earn much more than games that has subscription.

10 years ago
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No wonder that League of Legends has earned more, you have to buy/unlock the champions :/

10 years ago
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i have +- 40-60 champ and i didnt use any money, same with tower defence no ??

10 years ago
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Well, unlocking the champions is free, you just use In-game points, that you earn from playing matches (something like the XP in Dota 2).

10 years ago
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it's a sad life

10 years ago
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10 years ago
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I wonder how much is Heroes of Newerth earning, which is a better game than Dota and LoL combined though.

10 years ago
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They are true, LoL is the most played game in the world right now. Dota 2 in may had 7.86 million players, LoL in january 67 million (7.5 million concurrent at the daily peak)

10 years ago
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