Analysts suggest that Valve’s Dota 2 may have overtaken League of Legends to become the most-played PC game in the west.

The claim comes from DFC Intelligence and has some caveats; according to GamesIndustry, DFC’s PC Game Meter report covers only “core” PC games in North America and Europe, drawing on services like Xfire – casual and browser-based game are not included.

With that in mind, the report has Dota 2 as the most popular PC game of the first quarter of 2013.

League of Legends came in second, and both titles were well ahead of the rest of the pack, which was led in third place by World of Warcraft.

DFC’s Jeremy Miller said it was ‘surprising’ how little Dota 2’s massive popularity ate into League of Legends’ market share; the Riot Games effort continues to grow its player base.

Both titles are free-to-play MOBAs based on the original Defence of the Ancients Warcraft 3 mod; they will be eventually be challenged by Blizzard All-Stars, and already share an increasingly crowded market with the likes of Heroes of Newerth and more creative spins on the genre such as Awesomenauts.

In the past, League of Legends has laid claim to the title of most-played game in the world.

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Over all, combined usage of the top 20 PC games was up 22% year on year and 8% quarter-on-quarter. DFC credits the increase to games like Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, Battlefield 3, Minecraft, World of Tanks Counter-Strike.