League of Legends boasts 15 million registered players

@Fabius Bile

I disagree. What they didn't show is how much money they're actually making. It doesn't matter for a f2p company to have a billion registered users if only 5 of them are ever spending any money.

I have a registered account and I played for about a week. I never spent a cent. I know other people who play it a lot, but they've never spent any money. They use the earned points from matches to buy anything they want and they actually complain that there isn't enough stuff to buy so they have 40,000+ points sitting in their account.

I actually don't personally know anyone who has actually given these guys money.

@SnarlingWolf
Everytime you see someone with a new skin, they spend money and I have seen a lot of people with new skin.

@SnarlingWolf

You're actually...not very accurate here. Numbers do matter in this case because 15 million is a very large number. If it were something like 100k or even 500k I would agree with you but the sheer number here makes it statistically impossible for them not to be making a ton of money.

@Yog

It doesn't matter. This is because if it isn't making enough profits to make it worth it than it is a broken model.

If you have a million people online in a day using your servers and bandwidth but are only averaging 1 cent per person per day. That only works out to $120,000 a year. Subtract all of the server/bandwidth costs from that and you can't have a lot of workers/invest in a lot of new tech for the game.

That is why in the end the only number that actually matters is profits.

@SnarlingWolf

That's why they provided other meaningful metrics besides the number of registrations!
Why the hell should they provide more metrics on how much people spend money. That is completely irrelevant. What is relevant is the revenue and profits that the company generates every quarter. If you are so bored go try and dig it up.

If there's 1,4million people playing DAILY then there's bound to be a lot of people paying for skins.

And sorry but your friends are cheapstakes if they don't support a game where they are spending hours having fun. Great way to show your appreciation for the hard work of a dev team.

@SnarlingWolf

Then you are the only one. Everyone of my friends that have tried this has put some money into the game. Either for heroes or skins. Hell this is really the only Fremium game that has sucked me in to spend money, so they must be doing something right.

@SnarlingWolf You don't understand. Who CARES about how much profit they are making? Seriously is that what the average LoL player is gonna care about? How much profit Riot is making? Or how many people play the game daily? Btw Riot is making a ton of money. Their prize for Dreamhack was $100,000 and they are going to hold the same prize next year. They have the most popular free online game. I'm sure that means they are making quite some money.

@SnarlingWolf

Tencent bought a majority stake in the company for close to 400 million earlier this year. So, they are probably making at least a few pennies, or they managed to cook their books extremely well.

@BuyAquafina

Companies buy other companies all the time that aren't profitable. Look how much skype went for and it operates at a loss each year. Often times it is the potential of future monetizing that sells a company for high prices.

@SnarlingWolf

I stongly disagree with you. Those are meaningful metrics. Those numbers means that LoL is thriving, growing, and very popular.

Here's the original announcement on Riot's website.

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/youve-grown-league-legends-massive-game

Read it. All of it. If you still think 'Profit' is the only metric that matters, than perhaps you shouldn't be playing MMOs.

Also, from the post itself:
"Riot Games itself is now more than five times the size it was when we released League of Legends back in October of 2009, weighing in at more than 300 employees in four different cities across three continents. And we're actively hiring more people now than we ever have before!"

Even a monkey can tell they're making a profit, how are they hiring if they're not?

@SnarlingWolf Dont make comments when you dont know what youre talking about. You cant buy anything you want with the points earned through game play.

@Arsinek

You should do your own research. You can buy EVERYTHING except for skins with the points you earn from playing. Nice try though.

@wfseg

There are plenty of companies that hire more people and have over 300 employees and ARE NOT PROFITABLE. People don't tend to understand that. You get investors/funding to try and keep expanding and growing including working on future products. You don't have to be profitable to have that many employees.

Also why would I stop playing MMOs if I say the only number that matters in a NON-MMO game is the profitability? You're all over the place.

@Pingles

A server blowing too =D. I don't mind the occasional hiccups though, I still play it daily. But to think there were that many other people playing too, wow.

@Rowlf aha yeah how else are you suppose to to try AP Ashe :P