League of Legends (LoL) is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games for Microsoft Windows[1] and Mac OS X, inspired by the mod Defense of the Ancients[2] for the video game Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. It is a free-to-play game, supported by micro-transactions. The game was first announced on October 7, 2008, and released on October 27, 2009.[3] League of Legends was generally well received at release, and has grown in popularity in the years since. According to a 2012 Forbes article, League of Legends was the most played PC game in North America and Europe in terms of the number of hours played.[4] As of January 2014, over 67 million people play League of Legends per month, 27 million per day, and over 7.5 million concurrently during peak hours.