Iconic MOBA League of Legends and its various spin-off games are currently outstripping Steam in total monthly active users, according to a new statistic shared by developer Riot Games. Ever since the initial MOBA landed on the market over a decade ago, it has ballooned into a franchise that now includes other video games, comics, music videos, and a soon-to-be-released animated series on Netflix. League of Legends itself has largely maintained its popularity over the years and remains one of the world's most well-known esports games despite the many criticisms and controversies surrounding the title and its developer.

Related: League of Legends: Caitlyn Gets Visual Update 10 Years After Release

In a tweet, Riot Games announced that its games' global community reached 180 million active players in size during October 2021. The studio specifically mentioned the growing playerbase of card game Legends of  Runeterra as a contributor to that figure, but the full active player count encompasses League of Legends' and the rest of the games in the series. In addition to Legends of Runeterra, that includes League of Legends: Wild Rift, Teamfight Tactics, and Fight for the Golden Spatula. By comparison, Valve's digital storefront Steam currently has an estimated 120 million active monthly users.

Steam's store offers tens of thousands of games with countless different player bases to draw from, but Riot's much smaller stable of League of Legends games is holding down more users overall. However, Riot defines "monthly active users" as the number of players who accessed any of those games during the month. This means that a single player is counted twice if they access two different games, three times for three games, and so on. Even with that caveat, Riot's total number is still exceeding PC gaming's foremost digital storefront for the time being.

Next: Valorant Arcane Pass & Skins Celebrate New LoL Series Release

Source: Riot Games