Valve’s DOTA 2 is still officially in beta. It’s not hard to get a key for the free-to-play MOBA title, as evidenced by the growing community of players. While Riot Games’ League of Legends has had a stranglehold on this market for some time, 2013 is showing a shift in popularity in North America and Europe that sees Valve’s DOTA 2 being played more.
DFC Intelligence reports that DOTA 2 has passed League of Legends in the West, and the popularity of both games have surpassed MMO’s like Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. It’s a clear sign that this genre isn’t going away any time soon, and users are clamoring to get into these high-quality free-to-play offerings.
DFC Analyst Jeremy Miller had this to say on the most recent usage statistics: “Usage of League of Legends has been steady the past year and surprisingly the huge success of Dota 2 did not seem to cut into its popularity as much as would be expected.”
These numbers don’t tell the whole story entirely for Valve and DOTA 2. There are currently hoops that need to be jumped through to access DOTA 2 on Steam. It’s not quite as easy to access as League of Legends at the moment, but when Valve finally does launch the title officially, you can expect these numbers to continue to grow for the company.
- This article was updated on March 8th, 2018
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