Marvel: Avengers Alliance counts 70 million players since launch on its 3-year anniversary

One of Disney’s longest-running games is still going strong thanks to some superheroes.

Disney is making a killing with its smartphone and tablet efforts. It says it’s the No. 8 most-downloaded publisher in the world on mobile, with about a million downloads a day and about 70 million users in its network. One of the main jewels in its crown is Marvel Avengers Alliance, at first just a Facebook game and now a mobile juggernaut. It’s a top 10-grossing role-playing game in 10 countries, according to App Annie, making it a hit in a mobile gaming market that could hit $30 billion this year, according to App Annie. Its secret is the massive intellectual property tied to it, enabling its producers to pull from Marvel’s comic and cinematic universes to craft new storylines for players.

The current storyline for Avengers Alliance is on the track of the Fear Itself event from the comics in 2011, but some branches tie in with the blockbuster Marvel movies. It’s no wonder these games are a delight for fans.

“Our main story is focused on Fear Itself and the plotlines from the current run of New Avengers with Incursions, but our limited-time events we call Special Operations (or Spec Ops) have branched across multiple events,” game producer Tony Sherrill explained to GamesBeat.

“Some of our most popular ones have been those tied to the movies like the Avengers, Iron Man, Thor, and Guardians of the Galaxy, but we also have pulled in stories from the comics that were very popular like Avengers vs X-Men, Game On, an adaptation of Avengers Arena, Infinity, and Apocalypse, which pulled in references from several battles with Apocalypse but in particular tie-ins with Uncanny X-Force and slightly from Apocalypse: The Twelve.”

The game celebrates its three-year anniversary today with some GamesBeat-exclusive statistics.

• Total number of players since launch: 70 million.

• Number of film tie-ins: Five (Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Captain America 2, and Guardians of the Galaxy).

• Total number of PvP tournaments: 19 (The 20th PvP tournament is slated to run very soon).

• Number of different combats in the last three months: 1,598

• Most popular hero: Deadpool.

• Most popular female heroes: Psylocke, Angela, and Gamora.

• Rarest character: Magneto, with only 6 percent of players owning him. The next down on the list is Havoc.

• Most popular hero teams: The Marvel family, The Fantastic Four (Human Torch, Invisible Woman, Mr. Fantastic, and The Thing), followed by the Netflix Family of characters (Daredevil, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage) and the Movie Avengers (Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye, Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor).

• Most popular hero costumes: the Four Horsemen set, with 50 percent of Beasts, 47% of Icemans, 43 percent of X-23s, and 39 percent of Rogues sporting their apocalyptic outfits.