I'm thinking candy crush was pre-league of legends. It brought in $1B revenue for 2018, which is the highest ever and still growing.

Wow I had to look this up. Didn't know it was so big still.

https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/candy-crush-saga-1-bill...

League of Legends has been around since 2009, versus Candy Crush Saga in 2012.

Dota2, CS:GO, team fortress 2

Don't you need to pay for "champs" in LoL? That sounds very P2W to me.

All champions, including the free ones on rotation, are balanced with each other (in theory); there is no real-money-only-champion with blatantly-boosted stats as is often in more P2W variants.

See Jarwain's comment in a sister thread.

Champions buy you playstyle, not straight advantage. At best, they give you options - but by the time you have played enough that a reasonably varied roster improves your chances to win, you have earned plenty to afford a varied roster. If you pay for hero it's because you want that hero, not because you need it.

You do, but the points needed to buy a new champ (I believe it's 6,300 IP) doesn't take too long to get.

Getting down-voted by LoL fanboys is pretty funny.

Riot is notorious for releasing new heroes that are behind a paywall and that are overpowered.

Huh? LoL is blatantly P2W, they sell two kinds of in-game advantages.

What are those?

Heroes. A good hero selection is p2w because you may not have a reasonable counter to xyz enemy. They used to sell Runes too (I believe an update made this invalid). Of course, you can get all this stuff for free just by playing 100s of hours, if you have the time/will.

Champion advantages can be mitigated with playstyle and itemization. You can do well in League without having too many characters; Champs aren't hard counters to each other in the same way Dota heroes can be. Buying a certain champion is no guarantee of victory, especially if you don't play them well. Skill plays a much larger role than the champ you play.

As for runes, IIRC you couldn't buy them with the paid currency, Only with the currency earned from playing. It's a moot point since they merged runes and masteries anyways.

It's true that this disadvantage can be mitigated but we should be clear. Riot does limit your play style if you choose not to pay (or grind to get certain champions).

You don't have the same pool of characters as other players who've chosen to pay for their favorite champions and this is clearly a disadvantage.

This is different from games like, say, Overwatch, where the entire hero pool is available to everyone (different game, sure but the point stands).