Many toss a lot of money towards buying video games, with most games costing approximately $60.00), then you have the consoles themselves, which will cost around $400. However, League of Legends is different, and that’s only one of the reasons it stands out from the crowd.
League of Legends is a game that is played on a computer, and chances are, a computer is something you already have, so there are no expenses in that direction. To download League of Legends, all you have to do is go to their website, click on a but, download, and start playing. No wallet is involved; the game is entirely free to play.
Even if you put thousands of gameplay hours into League of Legends, you still won’t have to pay a single cent to continue. This alone is impressive, but it’s not the only free-to-play video game on the market. There’s something more unique than this being a free-to-play game from beginning to end.
What could be more impressive? Oh, the fact that League of Legends brings in a billion dollars a year.
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How Does League of Legends Make Billions of Dollars Per Year?
Microtransactions
Nearly all of the microtransactions that take place in League of Legends are either a shortcut to unlocking champions or cosmetic-related. The real-life currency that is being used in League of Legends is called Riot Points, and these can be spent on champions that are in the game, runs, and skins.
Both champions and runes can be purchased using other currency, like IP. Skins, however, are purchased solely with real-life money and they have a significant influence on League of Legends.
eSport Events
This is another one of the ways League of Legends makes money. With eSport EVenets like LCK in South Korea, LPL tournaments in China, LEC in Europe, and so on. The biggest would be the League of Legends World Championships, where they bring in a good portion of money by selling a lot of tickets and making the event live on many platforms.
Selling Gifts
By selling gift items such as clothes, mousepads, making limited products, and working with companies such as Nike, League of Legends makes even more money.
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To give you an idea of why LoL makes this much money in a year, I’m going to provide you with some examples of skins. We have Teemo and Ezreal (Ezreal is one of the champions who have the most skins). The Pulesfire skin for Ezreal will cost you 3250 RP, which is around $25.
I was reading a Reddit thread where gamers claimed they spend $1000+ on skins. They used an amount spent checker by Riot Games to see how much they’ve spent on the game so far. Most of the skins can be purchased for 750 to 975RP, roughly $6-$8 per skin. Some skins are cheaper, around 490-520 RP, but they’re not as good. You also have the more expensive skins that are between 1350-1820 RP. From time to time, Riot does hold sales on items, which is beneficial.
A Look at Other Free-to-Player Games
Let’s look at some other games and see what they made back in 2020. IN 2020, Riot Game generated around $1.75 billion in revenue, which is the most made by any non-mobile free-to-play game. In fact, for free-to-play games overall, it was number six in revenue generated. So that you can compare them, here’s a look at some of the others:
Peacekeeper Elite (tencent) – $2.32 billion
Free Fire (Garena) – $2.13 billion
Roblow (Robloc Corp.) – $2.29 billion
Pokemon Go (Niantic, Inc.) – $1.92 billion
League brought in the second-highest amount of money among free-to-play pc games, nesting behind Fornite, out of a whopping $20.6 billion generated by a free-to-play game on the pc.
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Final Word
While there may be other free-to-play games for League of Legends to compete with, gamers who play League of Legends are more likely to spend money in LoL than other games, like Fortnite. In 2020, it was recorded that League of Legends had 114 million monthly active players.
The player count is higher by 40 million than it was in 2018. Covid-19 gave people more time to play their favorite games, and there’s nothing wrong with this. The next time you log into League of Legends, take a look at the store, and imagine if half of those 114 million people purchased that attractive skin – do you see how much money that would be?
