That’s not the Wild West but most of the Western world. In the first quarter of 2013, Dota 2 overtook League of Legends as the most played “core” Western PC game, according to a report from industry research firm DFC Intelligence.
Update: DFC cite Xfire as one of their key sources, but Xfire’s very own public stats paint a rather different picture. Their top ten credits League of Legends with a whopping 83,009 hours per day at time of writing, while Dota 2 sits at the lower end of the chart with 6,685. Original story follows.
The report tracks PC game player numbers across Europe and the US by combining data from several sources, including Xfire’s 23 million-strong player base, but excludes casual or browser-based titles. Both Dota and LoL far outstripped their nearest competitor on DFC’s PC Gamer Meter – World of Warcraft.
“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,” said DFC analyst Jeremy Miller.
Combined usage of the top 20 PC games was up 22 percent on the same period last year, and up eight percent from the fourth arbitrary time-slice of 2012.
“The past year has seen numerous blockbuster PC games that have really helped drive usage. This includes among others Diablo III, Guild Wars 2, Battlefield 3, Minecraft, World of Tanks and Valve’s Counter-Strike series,” added DFC analyst David Cole, who’s obviously sneaked a look at our list of N games.
How’s about we conduct our own, rather more intimate survey right here. Which game has swallowed the highest number of hours on your Steam account this year?
Thanks, GamesIndustry.