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Dota 2 now has more active players than World of Warcraft

Dota 2 World of Warcraft Valve

While World of Warcraft may be on the wain, having long fallen from its peak of 12 million players, it’s still a force to be reckoned with, with around 7.8 million people still paying a subscription fee.

This past month Dota 2 had more.

7,863,799.

That’s what the counter on the Dota 2 blog reads. Since leaving beta, Dota 2 has been growing its playerbase month on month. In the past 18 months the number of active players has more than doubled.

Dota 2 is far and away the most popular game on Steam. Just today more than 700,000 people were playing at the same time. The next most popular game on Steam right now is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and that’s peak is only 174,000.

Still, when compared to League of Legends, that number is pales. Almost two years ago Riot’s MOBA was celebrating reaching 32 million active players.

The stat that will be interesting to compare is the number of people who tune in to watch Dota 2’s The International compared to League of Legends’ Championship finals this year. While playerbase is obviously important so, too, is presence these games enjoy.

I also wonder whether the release of Warlords of Draenor, the next World of Warcraft expansion, will bump the player numbers up higher than Dota 2’s.