217 million people worldwide play online games, according to new figures released by comScore.

The study took into account all sites that provide online or downloadable games but excluded gambling sites. The 217million users account for 28 percent of all people online.

Yahoo! Games led the pack, attracting 53 million unique visitors. The fastest-growing Top 10 gaming property was the WildTangent Network.

The report appears to count visits to the actual gaming sites as opposed to actual user numbers. Under this methodology, online worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft attract a smaller share of the market as many users would not regularly visit a central page (such as with Yahoo Games) but play directly via a desktop client. Notably though, traffic to secondlife.com is surprisingly close to the visitor numbers for worldofwarcraft.com.

Full TechCrunch Second Life coverage here.