Honor of Kings
Honor of Kings will finally arrive in Italy and the rest of the world by the end of the year: what has long been considered the most profitable mobile game on the planet, given the huge amount of money spent by players with in-game purchases, is ready to crossing the borders of China, where it has remained so far, inaccessible to international markets. Honor of Kings is certainly one of the most curious cases of global rankings domains albeit with the availability in a single nation, certainly the most populous. The latest estimates of Sensor Tower tell of over 10 billion dollars raised in about six years since its launch and for two years now it has exceeded 100 million active players.Honor of Kings è a mobile game of moba type or multiplayer online battle arena type (such as the well-known League of Legends) and involves the clash between two teams each with five heroes within a specular type environment with their respective bases to be conquered at the corners opposites and with the ability to increase their skills and improve equipment during duels. In China it has also become very popular thanks to the various streamers and is also the protagonist of rich eSports tournaments such as the Honor of Kings World Champion Cup 2022 which is giving away almost 10 million euros. The game is published by the Tencent conglomerate that owns, among other things, the WeChat app. Currently only available on Chinese territory in versions for Android and iPhone, this game debuted with a bang in 2015 and a year later it was decided to offer the global market a revised and slightly modified version called Arena of Valor. But unlike the Douyin - TikTok duo, this Chinese-international duo never really took off: even with the same game engines and graphics, Arena of Valor lost many details and that's why Tencent decided to open the gates.
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It is possible to imagine that Tencent's move does not aspire to assault the so-called western markets but above all the rest of the Asian nations where Honor of Kings is it could increase revenues exponentially. However, your availability here too will be a great opportunity to try a game so famous and so far so inaccessible
Tencent once more seeks to expand its mobile hit Honor of Kings globally
Honor of Kings, the world’s largest mobile game made by China’s internet behemoth Tencent, is rolling out a global version by the end of this year.
That’s according to a tweet by Level Infinite, which will be publishing the overseas version of the battle royale game for TiMi Studio, the storied games development studio inside Tencent that introduced Honor of Kings back in 2015.
Based in Singapore and Amsterdam, Level Infinite is a publishing arm that Tencent created in 2021 to help it deliver gaming titles across the world.
This is Tencent’s second overseas attempt at replicating the success Honor of Kings has garnered in China, where users from early teens to white-collar workers battle their friends through short sessions in their busy life and spend generously on weapons and costumes. The gameplay has been described by many as a mobile adaptation of League of Legends developed by Riot Games, which is now majority-owned by Tencent.
By 2021, Honor of Kings had accumulated $10 billion in revenue worldwide since its launch, making it the highest-grossing mobile game on Google Play and App Store, according to market analytics provider Sensor Tower.
From January to August last year alone, the title racked up $2 billion, in part thanks to continued COVID-19 lockdowns that limited people to home entertainment. Its size dwarfed runner-up Brawl Stars, which made $320 million in user spending. The game hit 100 million daily active users in November 2020, according to Level Infinite.
Tencent has fostered a vibrant esports ecosystem around Honor of Kings in China, attracting players with attractive prizes. The overseas version attempts to do the same. A global Honor of Kings tournament will be held later this year with a $10 million prize pool, said Level Infinite.
A game’s achievement at home doesn’t automatically translate into success overseas. In 2017, Arena of Valor was launched basically as a Westernized version of Honor of Kings, but it stumbled outside Asia. In 2019, the US accounted for just 3.5% or $7 million of the game’s total user spending outside China, or 0.2% of what China’s iOS players alone have spent on the game, according to Sensor Tower.
Missteps in “development and marketing,” coupled with a strained relationship between Tencent and Riot Games, were reasons behind Arena of Valor’s failures in Europe and the US, Reuters reported in 2019.
Internal management issues aside, critics argued Arena of Valor had failed to fully understand user behavior and culture in the West. For example, while Honor of Kings benefits tremendously from its integration with Tencent’s ubiquitous messenger WeChat in China, Western markets don’t have the exact networking equivalent.
This new edition of Honor of Kings thus appears to be Tencent’s gathering steam for a second try. It won’t be surprising the title is built upon Arena of Valor using similar intellectual property rather than a new development from scratch, given they both fall under TiMi. The launch also comes at a delicate time for Tencent, which just recorded its slowest quarter ever as China’s ongoing crackdown on video games and internet monopolies hobbled its revenue growth.
But the challenge of overseas expansion remains the same for Tencent: this time, will the game find a way to overcome international management and cultural barriers?