Leagues playerbase has been decreasing but Riot won't admit it
If you google it up you will only find statistics of 2014 when the game was at his peak and Riot would openly boast about it. Lol had the biggest marketshare for PC games with 67 million unique gamers. In 2012 they had 34 million so they double in 2 years and with the expected growth the numbers of players in 2015 should be around 75 million. However, beginning of 2015 the count was 64 million so they lost 3 million players. This is an estimated number taken from Raptor since Riot won't enclose any actual numbers since 2014.
For 2016 we don't know how many players there are. I recall Riot said something that this was the most played preseason ever. So why wouldn't they openly tell us how many active acounts there are? Why not boast about your increasing numbers and increasing marketshare? I will tell you why. It is probably a lie.
I joined League during S3 in 2013 because friends recommended me this game. I tried it out and like it a lot and recommended it to other friends of mine. I remember how 1 year later we were all playing together and having fun. I also met a lot of online players who I added to my friendlist and I would talk with them about the champs we had in common, duo with them, having fun in normals etc. During S5 a bunch of my friends quit League mostly due to balance issues and general changes about the game they disliked. This season made all except 2 of them quit. Myself I uninstalled this game 2 days ago. Almost everyone I know who played League at one point has quit the game. Everyone I talk with about League says the same thing. Balance issues, powercreep due to new champs being overloaded with stats and utility compared to older champs making half the field obsolete aka the champs they loved to play, constant changes of the game. If you quit for 2 months and you start playing again you have to read 30 pages of patches to make sense about what is going on again. They didn't like the direction of the game and decided to do others things in their free time. They see League as garbage and a waste of time nowadays.
From personal experience I can therefor say it is IMPOSSIBLE for League to have grown the past year. When I check the forum I mostly read about older players who feel alienated from the game and are saying goodbye. Hardcore players from the first hour are turning their back on this game because they feel they have been left out in the cold for too long. Just the story of me and my friends all over again. Eveyone I talk to says the same thing. This season has been the worst ever in terms of balance and changes. And the fact Riot won't disclose numers of their current playerbase says enough. The game is declining. It is actually in free fall I would be suprised if next season half of you who are reading this will still be around.
