Rocket League reached another milestone this week as the game officially surpassed the 40 million player mark.

The game has a massive following and last year was its most successful yet, but where does it stand in the greater esport community? How does it match up to the likes of League of Legends, Dota 2 and Overwatch?

We’ll start with the one thing that can’t really be quantified, perception. There’s a noticeable stigma around Rocket League. Many hardcore League and Dota players view Rocket League as somewhat childish. A game that can be fun, but that isn’t in the same echelon of other esports. While this sentiment may be eroding, perceptions don’t change over night and it may be awhile before Rocket League finds itself as respected as other games.

Now, onto the numbers. Rocket League’s 40 million users is no doubt impressive, but it’s tough to compare apples to apples here. The problem is, developers announce all different types of numbers, a lot of the time with relatively little context. For example, we can assume that Psyonix’s 40 million player announcement is a lifetime number, but they don’t explicitly state that. They also don’t provide a monthly user number, which many other esports do.

On the other hand, there’s League of Legends, which at last check clocks over 100 million monthly users, but that number hasn’t been updated by Riot since 2016. 

The esport with user numbers most similar to Rocket League appears to be Blizzard’s Overwatch. At last count in October 2017, the game had approximately 35 million users, but that number is likely to be closer to 40 million by now.

There are some nearly apples to apples numbers available, but they’re few and far between. Esports earnings is a good example of the popularity of Dota 2, LoL and CS:GO. Those three games had total tournament prize pools in 2017 of roughly 39 million, 19 million and 12 million respectively. Meanwhile Rocket League sat at 1.3 million.

Though money isn’t everything, it sure helps to garner interest in a game. Unfortunately for Rocket League, it sits at a distant 14th on the list of esports earnings for 2014. While the game is growing more and more popular, it’s low tournament prize pools are no doubt hindering it from garnering more attention. 

There’s good news for Rocket League though. While games like Dota 2 appear to be on the (slight) decline, Rocket League is among those who are seeing a growing player base. Most major esports have been around a lot longer than Rocket League, Dota 2 and LoL in particular. These games have bigger numbers all around, but they also have the years more market time under their belt.   

From all this, two things are drastically apparent. First of all, numbers can be deceiving and should be considered carefully. Second, Rocket League might not be the top esport, but it’s working its way up the ladder and doesn’t appear to be losing any momentum. Expect 2018 to be a big year for the soccar game.