Report: Dota 2 Surpasses League of Legends as Most Played PC Game in West

Post by Eorl @ 02:42pm 10/04/13 | 55 Comments

GamesIndustry International are reporting that Valve's recent MOBA title Dota 2 has surpassed Riot Games League of Legends title in the first quarter of 2013, according to a recent report from DFC Intelligence naming it the most played "core" PC title. The report draws in data from various sources around North America and Europe regions, including real-time stats from programs like Xfire's users. The recent findings also indicate that the two MOBA titles have surpassed Blizzard's World of Warcraft title, further pushing the popularity wave that the genre is riding.

"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.

For the quarter, combined usage of the top 20 PC games was up 22 percent compared to the first quarter of 2012, and up 8 percent compared to the fourth quarter 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.

With the rise in free-to-play titles dominating even the most high-rated subscription-based titles, its definetly showing a shift in the gaming industry, one which I'm quite interested to see evolve.

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Latest Comments

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ctd
Posted 04:00pm 10/4/13

Cool to see, even though I only played about 100 hours and gave up. Dota2 dominates the steam stats.
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

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infi
Posted 04:15pm 10/4/13

football manager 57,000 players wow

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trog
Posted 04:40pm 10/4/13

Goddamn, 273000 players. With that many I sure would have thought there were more people in this game that I COULD BEAT

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fryzeegunner
Posted 05:07pm 10/4/13

winning

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carson
Posted 06:27pm 10/4/13

Take that lol.

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DeadlyDav0
Posted 07:48pm 10/4/13

F*** yeah. 800 hours for me. Gotta say though, its a strange addiction DOTA2 cause its my #1 cause of game rage but when s*** goes well its f*****g awesome.

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csirac
Posted 02:07am 11/4/13

Goddamn, 273000 players. With that many I sure would have thought there were more people in this game that I COULD BEAT

You are the 1%...of bad players!

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carson
Posted 08:26am 11/4/13

1151hours for me.

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DeadlyDav0
Posted 05:15pm 12/4/13

Just played a game. Totally dominating with carry Jugga on my team and 2x rax gone. F***wit Jugga gets 2x divine rapiers and dies. They get both rapiers then push mid n pwn us. FML.

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csirac
Posted 05:33pm 12/4/13

And for the other team, that's what dota is all about!

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trog
Posted 10:13am 13/4/13

Just played a game. Totally dominating with carry Jugga on my team and 2x rax gone. F***wit Jugga gets 2x divine rapiers and dies. They get both rapiers then push mid n pwn us. FML.

haha that is hilarious. I haven't yet played a game where someone has lost a Divine Rapier (or at least not that I've noticed) ; it's always a bit of a joke about buying them because we just assume whoever does will die basically immediately.

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Eorl
Posted 10:32am 13/4/13

I'm finally getting back into this, LoL just isn't doing it for me anymore. Guess I'll have to take pointers from you trog!

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Hogfather
Posted 02:16pm 14/4/13

haha that is hilarious. I haven't yet played a game where someone has lost a Divine Rapier (or at least not that I've noticed) ; it's always a bit of a joke about buying them because we just assume whoever does will die basically immediately.

Played one yesterday where we were slowly losing - not by a lot, but enough that we could only win if we held on to late game and somehow won a big teamfight because they were stupid. They bought a Rapier and died in a stupid push into our base and its just sitting there near our ancient.

We were all OO MAYBE WE HAVE A CHANCE ... then the f*****g porkchop Sniper destroyed the Rapier while we were working out who should pick it up.

GG.

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DeadlyDav0
Posted 04:48pm 14/4/13

Report that f***wit - true dota style.

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skythra
Posted 06:24pm 14/4/13

Team games :)

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Tollaz0r!
Posted 06:27pm 14/4/13

Bahhahah

My all time favourite victory was when out team was being pushed hard and we were down to our final barracks on left (as radiant). I was playing Lycanthrope. I did reasonably well throughout the game and could hold my own when alone.

Then I had a moment of clarity, it just hit me. I sold my boots and bought a pair of Travel Boots. Then rushed off by myself (with my team going WTF noob) and hit their right barracks at their base and backdoor'd it like a Boss. TP'd over to our creeps on left and Back-Door'd that. Meanwhile their team was so intent on smashing our last barracks they didn't realise what I was doing. Then I hit their right again and pushed it down. Then I TP'd back to base and we drove them back as they started to realise what had happened.
By then it was too late, the damage I did turned the tide of battle and they started to screw up badly. Whilst my team mates bought up from all the extra gold they just got from the pushes.

Instead of playing as a team they started b****ing about Backdoor noobs and hit us 1 to 2 at a time and we demolished them.

Backdoors are win!

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konstie
Posted 08:04pm 14/4/13

add me peeps - konstie

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csirac
Posted 08:07pm 14/4/13

Dagon = iPhone

Think about it

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Hogfather
Posted 08:55pm 14/4/13

Because you keep having to buy a new bloody version?

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csirac
Posted 10:37pm 14/4/13

and the new version really isn't worth the bucks! also it has not much utility!

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trog
Posted 01:00pm 15/4/13

We were all OO MAYBE WE HAVE A CHANCE ... then the f*****g porkchop Sniper destroyed the Rapier while we were working out who should pick it up.

In one game I managed to accidentally destroy the Aegis TWICE before someone could pick it up. Hit 'a' and click on Rosh and I managed to do it the split second that he died and both times I happened to click on the Aegis and attack it. WAS NOT A POPULAR MOVE.

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Hogfather
Posted 01:03pm 15/4/13

Oh s*** lol no, right click on rosh hahaha

I thought everyone right clicked the s*** out of him at 5% to try and steal aegis?!

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trog
Posted 01:03pm 15/4/13

yeh I sort of reflexively attack move everywhere, I need to stop doing it for that reason :(

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Hogfather
Posted 01:05pm 15/4/13

too much SC will do that

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Eorl
Posted 01:07pm 15/4/13

See Toll, that seems to be the only problem I have with LoL, in that most games I play you can't really have moments where you turn the tide of battle. Instead the entire match is decided when someone either kills Barron or even earlier if done right. Once it gets to the 20 minute marker its either surrender or an ultimate fail/win.

At least with Dota 2 there is a chance to turn things around and even the losing side can have a chance, albeit a small one.

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DeadlyDav0
Posted 01:21pm 15/4/13

Speaking of rosh, was in a game getting our asses kicked mid game. We needed to delay the game so that void could pwn end game as their team was weak end game. The enemy was roshing while 2 of our players were dead and i managed to sneak my Beast Master's boar into the rosh pit. Rubrick spotted the boar, hovered him, then tried to put him up on an inaccessible ledge but failed. I then managed to deny the aegis with the boar a moment before the boar was killed. Win. Ended up winning the game cause of void as well.

And as for a fail. Was playing a game as radiant where we had a PA on top lane get fat cause of the retard enemies @ top. Got first blood and a f***load of kills and farm but the f***wit decided to go a special build. Got an urn of shadows instead of building battlefury, then went an abyssal blade and deso. By about mid game we are telling him to build a f*****g BKB but no, he decides to get a f*****g maelstrom. I was CK and despite a s*** lane game i managed to build satanic, BKB, armlet and was working on AC but no matter what we said, PA did not build a BKB or any lifesteal for end game. End game comes and sure enough, we got f*****g pwned as PA would die near instantaneously once she engaged the enemy in any team battle. From memory they had slark, jaikiro, shadow shaman, lion and ??? but no, PA did not think he needed a BKB.

And finally, saw a steam friend post screen shot of some massive nub stomp. He played sven and went like 20-0 with a f*** tonne of items but when i looked at creep denies - zero. He was the only one with zero and sure enough, he plays LoL.

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eski
Posted 01:34pm 15/4/13

All this talk sounds intriguing, but I'm a complete newb and I've heard the game is incredibly unfriendly to new players. True/False? What's a good entry point for new players?

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Hogfather
Posted 01:40pm 15/4/13

All this talk sounds intriguing, but I'm a complete newb and I've heard the game is incredibly unfriendly to new players. True/False?

Better than it was IMO, especially on AU server.

The best thing to do is read the guides and play support characters with big AE spells for a while. Announce that you're new too and listen to any advice in the game. Even if you don't have a great K/D/A at the end of the game if you try not to die, get your stuns / disables / nukes / whatever off and ward properly you'll be an asset in most pub games. As a support character follow your team around and just try to help and deny rather than farm.

People get the s**** when newbs don't listen or ask for help. There's always people who are just a*******s (straight up ignore them, there's a tool for it in the top left drop down list thingy) but by far players seem to be cool if you listen and try to help.

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DeadlyDav0
Posted 01:39pm 15/4/13

True.

Watch / read basic tips to learn the difference between hero types - INT, STR, AGI as well as carry, support etc. Then you need to learn gameplay elements like last hits, denies, pulling, warding so best to watch beginner gameplay vids. Then id suggest playing against bots cause u will get abused online. The bots are decent and you can easily start a new game if you f*** up bad. You can also play against bots with friends so you can both lane together and get used to how to play but in a more forgiving atmosphere. Then when you wanna go online, i highly suggest playing with a friend to lane with, pick support and just deny/ward/support.

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Hogfather
Posted 01:41pm 15/4/13

Oh yeh forgot bots. You can learn the lane flow well and last hit / deny timing well enough in bot matches.

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trog
Posted 01:42pm 15/4/13

All this talk sounds intriguing, but I'm a complete newb and I've heard the game is incredibly unfriendly to new players. True/False? What's a good entry point for new players?

true, sort of. I don't know if I'd say unfriendly, though if you end up with a team of f***wit progamer wannabe douchebags they'll certainly make the game suck.

My advice would be:

1) read this: http://www.purgegamers.com/welcome-to-dota-you-suck . Then read it again.

2) Pick one of the easy-to-play characters and play a few games solo against bots.

3) repeat step 1) now that you have some idea what the hell it is talking about

4) repeat step 2) until you can beat bots on 'hard' with your chosen character.

5) you're still not really ready to play against or with humans, but this is I reckon the bare minimum you should do before trying to play online.

If you have friends that are super patient they might be nice enough to play bots with you and explain stuff as you're playing. Generally though you can't really play online with experiences players because one noob player can basically ruin the game for a whole team - you really really need to have some base level of skill and idea about what is going on if you want to play online without getting abused heavily (and thus getting frustrated and quitting).

I was lucky enough to have a mate that liked playing bots enough to walk me through a lot of the basics until together we could reliably beat the bots on Hard with my chosen character (Lina).

I'm now pretty good at Lina and a handful of others, but still learning most of the other characters.

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eski
Posted 01:49pm 15/4/13

Sold! Thanks everyone.

Let the denewbification begin :D

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DeadlyDav0
Posted 01:53pm 15/4/13

Ive been playing against bots lately. GF hates when i cant leave a DOTA game mid game but at least i can when against bots. Ive also been practicing heroes that require more skill with regards to their abilities such as pudge's hook, invoker, even tusk cause id never played him before. The bots are far from perfect but i enjoy working on my lane game. Also been playing against the bots with a mate and purposefully picking heroes im not very good with such as sand king.

One of my fave things to do back in HoN days was play 2v2 or 3v3 with mates on the standard 5v5 map. This made the game more about individual skill rather than team organisation. At least we could make the game a no-stats game and f*** about. All mid pudge wars were also good. As was 5v5 all mid.

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reload!
Posted 02:30pm 15/4/13

also here is a list of useful console commands that aren't enabed by default. I find right clicking to deny and having a permanent ring at 1200 for xp/pudge range really helpful. Also you can turn on a range line that changes colour if the spell is in range. Oh and increasing the size of player icons on the minimap + increasing the time pings stay on the map. I'm forever looking 2 seconds late because i was halfway through doing something when they pinged and then miss whatever they were on about.

weaver ftw. snick snack.

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Hogfather
Posted 02:55pm 15/4/13

RELOAD I WILL HAVE YOUR BABIES

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trog
Posted 03:30pm 15/4/13

f*** me those commands are awesome, thanks reload

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DeadlyDav0
Posted 03:38pm 15/4/13

The spells one is essential. Ive used that and something else for a long time. Thinking about it, it must be right click deny.

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Tollaz0r!
Posted 03:35pm 15/4/13

Right click deny should be enabled by default ffs.

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qmass
Posted 03:43pm 15/4/13

speaking of dotes, don't dive lion:

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DeadlyDav0
Posted 04:01pm 15/4/13

Was hoping for some epic jukes around the trees near the tower. 20HP though, if only NS had some more auto attack damage for those 3 hits.

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TiT
Posted 04:14pm 15/4/13

I'm still HON fan, maybe i should give DoTA another chance

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Hogfather
Posted 04:25pm 15/4/13

speaking of dotes, don't dive lion:

LOL, silly lion

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carson
Posted 04:32pm 15/4/13

If anyone new to the game wants to hit me up my friends and I generally play together and are newb friendly. My steam is carsonpants.

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trog
Posted 04:09pm 16/4/13

Tried that XP UI ring thing last night and it's great; really made it clear about how far away I can be in combat.

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Eorl
Posted 04:26pm 16/4/13

Tried that XP UI ring thing last night and it's great; really made it clear about how far away I can be in combat.

Wait what? Is that a UI toggle or an add-on? Played a quick bot game this morning as I slowly push my way back into Dota 2, forgot how awesome Crystal Maiden is. Just love being able to slow and stun then rain ice on foes. I really, really like the guide system in the top left, especially the levelling suggestion.

That is one thing I've found I enjoy the most out of Dota 2, the amount of community feedback through UI in regards to guides and video help is just outstanding and puts it leagues ahead of LoL.

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qmass
Posted 06:41pm 16/4/13

Wait what? Is that a UI toggle or an add-on?

When you mouse over an ability it displays a range ring for effect around your hero. With a console command you can make a permanent one at a custom range.

I often use 1200 if I want to get the most out of a blink dagger (since trying to blink past 1200 penalizes the distance)

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JakeG
Posted 07:07pm 16/4/13

What is the best site to find all these UI commands?

I've sunk about 15hrs into DOTA 2 in a week thanks to my boy D-Sub and his hookups <3

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reload!
Posted 11:33am 18/4/13

anyone noticed an influx of f***wit euros playing on the aussie servers of late? more than the usual russians and thais I mean.

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eski
Posted 05:33pm 22/4/13

Yeah so that game destroyed my weekend.

Started playing Luna and it wasn't until I got a little better that I realised that I shouldn't start out trying to play carries.

Went online for a game and probably lost it for our team. The only time I got abused was when I ordered my radiant character into the dire area and then stopped paying attention, I walked straight past the other team and then got owned in the face. One guy on my team was justifiably upset but he just said wtf and got on with the game. I didn't feed too badly at the beginning, but by the end I was dying, a lot :(

Pretty f*****g goddamned awesome game, especially with all the guide stuff. Its incredibly complicated, but they've gone a long way to making it noob friendly. Watching games is slick as hell.

Now I gotta find a new character that makes more sense for a newb. So much to learn!

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DeadlyDav0
Posted 05:30pm 22/4/13

Yeah, noob picking carry is my #1 hate. If u cant farm well n avoid dieing then you're gunna be useless end game.

Imo get some long range hero with 500-600 range n support the lane. Lina, lion, dazzle etc.

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Eorl
Posted 05:31pm 22/4/13

Try Crystal Maiden. She is nice and easy with slow/stunning abilities only and goes bottom so not as much to worry about.

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eski
Posted 05:35pm 22/4/13

Nice, I'll give those a try. Probably Lina because it sounds like Luna :P I'm gonna miss that brogue accent :(

I was watching some pro guy play Bounty Hunter and it blew my mind.

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Tollaz0r!
Posted 06:04pm 22/4/13

Use Keeper of the Light as support. Max Chakera then whatever 'q' is (the one where you charge up a big gust of wind, does heaps of damage and is great). Then you lane with a mana dependent carry and keep feeding him mana so he can spam his skills and between the both of you, you should be able to keep good control of your lane.
Plus if you kill anyone you look like Gandalf and you can drop the 'None Shall Pass' line heheh

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csirac
Posted 06:37pm 22/4/13

re: the OP. LoL fought back and debunked the statistic.

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reload!
Posted 06:58pm 22/4/13

everyone has their own idea of what a noob friendly hero is but the best thing you could really do is play as many different heroes as possible against bots. it's not much use knowing what one hero can do really well if you have no idea what the enemy is going to do to you. lots of people try a squishy support that was recommended to them and don't understand why they are still dying so much.

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