Today, I made a short, brief research and got a list of the most popular games as of today. Here's it.

1. League of Legends

http://profilerehab.com/facebook_covers/gaming/league_of_legends_cover_2.jpg It's not a wonder, since it's release League of Legends got really popular and now has the first place of most played games in 2017. League of Legends has dominated the online market since at least 2012. The game has grown to an impressive 100 million players a month (still increasing!) for more than one billion hours! The creators of the game are continuously doing what their players want, working hard to give as many freebies as possible while maintaining the game as fun as possible. The biggest problem in league of legends seems to be 'saltiness' (meaning, players are really upset) but hey, almost any gaming community has this kind of players!

2. Hearthstone

https://img00.deviantart.net/288c/i/2015/108/1/a/hearthstone_alexstrasza_cover_by_naeyda-d75lf84.jpg Hearthstone, originally known as Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, is a free-to-play online collectible card video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. It is created in 2014 but gained most of its' popularity after 2016. Hearthstone competitors get paid the most amount of money to play in eSports tournaments (sometimes millions of dollars).

3. Overwatch

http://mmohuts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Overwatch-Launch-14.jpg Overwatch is one of the newest Blizzard games that hit the charts easily. It's a first-person shooter with unique, creative characters and an artistic aesthetic unlike any other shooter. The only downside of this game unlike the previous ones is that it's not free to play.

4. Dota 2

https://coverfiles.alphacoders.com/266/26631.jpg Dota 2 is a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It's been alive since 2009. Dota 2 has about 15 million unique players, with roughly one million players signing in each day.

5. Counter Strike: Global Offensive

https://image.prntscr.com/image/CzaY0T1xRoiZQykCwBVDXQ.png Once the most popular game now has the fifth spot. CS:GO is the second most played game on Steam, and the fourth most popular MMO. Today, nearly 3 million players join the game every month, though with more than 250 million hours of game play, those players spend quite a lot of time in the game. The reason for the fall of popularity was the insane increase in cheaters. Valve has an anti cheating software portion of the game that detects many of these hacks and also lets players report suspected cheaters but the problem is that when a player is "permanently" VAC banned for life they simply pay another $15 dollars to STEAM and reinstall the game. But VAC is the same as an antivirus, it is protecting us from viruses but not from the newest ones.

*6. PUBG (Player Unknown Battlegrounds)

https://image.prntscr.com/image/lOYkbkauRcCaMH1pxwqMSA.png - I know that the title says 5 most played games in 2017, but since this game is getting HUGE increase in popularity (see Steam stats) I felt like I needed to mention it. This game has enormous potential but they seem not to care really much about their players. As seen in the latest reviews of the game (which most are negative), players are innocently banned just because they did something to a streamer (most of the time just killing is enough). I can imagine if it weren't for that, this game would definitely be among (if not first) the most played PC games in the long run. Time will only tell whether their strategy of banning will prove to be any good or not. Top played games on Steam as of today: https://image.prntscr.com/image/JPhTotorQAC8Co2OtfFguA.png Sources: [Steam](http://store.steampowered.com/stats/), [NowLoading](https://nowloading.co/posts/3916216), [GameIndustry.Biz](http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-10-15-how-counter-strike-global-offensive-is-still-dominating-steam)