Chinese moba game Honor of Kings will be released worldwide at the end of this year
Moba game Honor of Kings, a popular Chinese mobile game from publisher Tencent, will be released worldwide at the end of this year. The game is comparable to games like League of Legends and DOTA 2. It was the first mobile game in 2021 to have grossed more than $10 billion.
Developer Level Infinite has the worldwide release announced on Twitter† The company says the game will receive several closed beta tests from TiMi Studios and Tencent and will be announced starting next month. Level Infinite does not yet mention any concrete dates for this and does not yet give an exact release date.
Honor of Kings has already had an unofficial worldwide release. That happened in the form of the release of Arena of Valor in 2017, a version of Honor of Kings aimed at Western countries. The Chinese moba game, which will be released worldwide, will also have to compete against another game from Tencent’s stable: Wild Rift. That title came out in October 2020 and can be considered the mobile version of League of Legends.
In Honor of Kings, players can choose characters from Chinese mythology to build their teams. The game also has extensive social features such as chat integrations with Chinese social apps such as WeChat. It is unknown whether such functionalities will be part of the worldwide version in some form.
Last year wrote Gamesindustry.biz based on a report from Sensor Tower that Honor of Kings is said to have brought in more than $10 billion. It would be the first mobile game to achieve this. This amount consists entirely of expenditure by players. Honor of Kings was released in 2015 and now the total turnover is already at 13 billion dollars.
Tencent is a major Chinese tech company that owns search engines, chat apps and social networks for the Asian market. It is also the largest game company in the world in terms of revenue. Tencent owns Riot Games, known for League of Legends and Valorant. TiMi Studios is also owned by Tencent. This studio is behind smartphone games Call of Duty: Mobile, Honor of Kings and Arena of Valor. Tencent also owns 40 percent of Epic Games.