You needn't look far for examples of the overwhelming popularity of the MOBA genre (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena). League of Legends has seen millions of new players join its ranks every year since release, closely followed by Valve's Dota 2. The latter of which has now surpassed an astonishing 40 million players worldwide.
The news stems from analysis firm EEDAR, who have been monitoring sample Steam account daily for some time. Their findings indicates that Dota 2 has been a great benefactor to the continued growth of the Steam platform, where the number of users with Dota 2 installed has increased with 85 per cent over the past year.
At the moment 42,9 million Steam users have Dota 2 installed, meaning that over 34 per cent of all Steam users own the game. This does not mean that they all actually play it, but the number of monthly active users have increased as well, with 54 per cent over the past year.
This proves that the already popular game is still on the rise, and as much as 8 million players have allegedly logged over 140 hours of Dota 2 gameplay since the game's release.
Source: Games Industry.