League of Legends dev challenges Dota 2 popularity claims

Riot Games has added its voice to a number of critics of yesterday's report claiming Dota 2 had overtaken League of Legends to become the most popular PC game in the west.

Global concurrent figures for Dota 2 peak at 625,897, which is certainly a significant number, but Riot told us that it has recorded concurrent League of Legend users of over 500,000 on just one shard in Europe, let alone in the US.

DFC Intelligence, the analyst firm behind the report, did not reveal the methods it used in coming to the conclusion published yesterday, but it did mention that one of the data sources it tracks is Xfire; a quick look at that service shows League of Legends attracting literally well over ten times as many players.

When challenged by GamesIndustry on the matter, DFC said the discrepancy is caused by Asian markets, which it doesn't track - but the report is no longer listed on the analyst firm's press release page.

Riot's player number reports regularly claim that League of Legends is the most popular PC game in the world.