Riot Games’ League of Legends: Wild Rift has just surpassed the prestigious milestone every mobile game hopes to achieve: $1 billion in lifetime player spending.
This has been accomplished in just three years since the open beta, and in under two years since the game’s full global release on October 8 2021.
The major milestone comes courtesy of data.ai’s newest report, finding that spend in Wild Rift has hit this impressive high when accumulating App Store and Google Play earnings.
As a result, Wild Rift now finds itself among the elites; from Minecraft to Hearthstone, King of Avalon to Pokémon Go, the Unicorn Club is ever growing, and ever impressive.
data.ai has also noted that League of Legends: Wild Rift is the fourth highest-grossing action MOBA game, ahead of rivals Onmyoji Arena and West Arena 2. Furthermore, compared to other MOBAs that released around the same time as Wild Rift, the game has taken a lead over big brands like Marvel’s Super War and even Pokémon and TiMi Studio’s Unite, despite Unite having more active users in the first half of this year.
A wild ride
Wild Rift’s $1 billion is a figure reached in no small part because of China; the market, inclusive only of iOS, has represented the highest number of Wild Rift downloads from September 2022 to August 2023. Vietnam and Brazil followed in downloads, boosting Riot’s game to more than 111 million worldwide.
The title also achieved third place for money grossed by an action MOBA in the first half of 2023, generating more than $188 million within six months. Naturally, China also contributed the most in consumer spending, representing a massive $141 million during the period. By comparison, the US only accounted for $8.2 million.
data.ai suggests the secret sauce to Wild Rift’s mobile success has been its platform optimisation, with the adaptation maintaining its core PC mechanics while taking on touch-based controls and quicker matches better suited to the portable medium.
Mobile gaming is set to reach $108 billion in consumer spend in 2023, which is 2.7 times more than PC and Mac.
