Level Infinite believes that ’Honor of Kings possesses a competitive advantage in the mobile MOBA market’

Tencent is throwing another heavyweight into the ring

TiMi Studios / Level Infinite

MOBAs are no longer a trendy genre on PC with the days in which every publisher and developer under the sun threw their own iteration onto the market to grab a slice of the pie being long gone – battle royales and extraction shooters have replaced them as the genre of the week.

Thoroughly saturated, the market simply doesn’t offer much more space for any new MOBA alongside established favorites like Dota 2, League of Legends, and Smite, which merely need to keep the content and patches flowing to retain their thoroughly indoctrinated player bases.

You’d think that in 2024, the case would be similar on the market for mobile MOBAs, which is dominated by Tencent through titles like Riot Games’ League of Legends: Wild Rift and TiMi Studios’ Arena of Valor. But instead of resting on its laurels, Tencent is making a big play by throwing yet another MOBA onto the mobile market – its heavyweight, Honor of Kings.

After its 2015 release in China, Honor of Kings quickly became the most profitable game on the entire planet – and yet people in the West have barely heard its name. In 2020, the game made $2.45 billion USD. For Tencent, it’s a golden goose, while your average Western gamer may be excused for hearing the title and thinking the game to be yet another Clash of Clans clone.

Well, the times of ignorance are over: On June 20, 2024, Tencent’s publishing label Level Infinite released Honor of Kings worldwide, completing its trifecta of mobile MOBAs. The fact that Arena of Valor – on the Western market since 2017 – was made by the same developer and published by the same publisher seemingly had no effect on this decision. In a Q&A session, the publisher told us that “Honor of Kings and Arena of Valor are two different mobile MOBA titles derived from one IP system. They offer different gameplay experiences, art styles and social interactions to meet the increasing and diversified appetite from global gamers.”

But “derived from one IP system” falls a little short of the truth: Arena of Valor was explicitly made as an international version of Honor of Kings back in the day in order to compete with Vainglory, which was the only noteworthy mobile MOBA at the time. Riot Games refused Tencent’s call for a mobile version of League of Legends in 2015, so TiMi got the opportunity of a lifetime, making Honor of Kings as well as Arena of Valor. Reportedly, Tencent’s demands as well as TiMi’s free use of Riot’s IP led to great tension behind the scenes at the time, so we imagine that Level Infinite calling Honor of Kings “the original mobile MOBA” today comes with some satisfaction – though, naturally, the publisher didn’t comment on these reports when we brought them up.

Tencent mobile MOBA timeline:

• 2015: Tencent acquires Riot Games and asks it to make a mobile version of League of Legends, but is refused.
• 2015: TiMi Studios wins an internal competition to develop a mobile MOBA with League of Kings, but Riot Games intercedes due to the game being too similar to its own IP.
• 2015: League of Kings becomes Honor of Kings after minor changes and comes out in China, though its international launch is canceled.
• 2016 - 2017: TiMi Studios incorporates the necessary changes demanded by Riot Games for the international version of Honor of Kings, dubbed Arena of Valor, and releases it.
• 2019 - 2020: Seeing the success of Tencent’s mobile MOBAs, Riot Games announces and releases League of Legends: Wild Rift worldwide.
• 2021: TiMi Studios releases Pokémon Unite worldwide.
• 2024: TiMi Studios releases Honor of Kings worldwide.

Complicated history aside, Tencent obviously sees no problem with having three slightly different games compete in the same niche, especially after test launches in Brazil and Turkey have been successful. “We feel there is a place for a MOBA that takes the essence of MOBAs on PC and delivers strategic yet fun team-based battles,” the publisher said. “We believe we have a great gaming experience that players, wherever they are from, will enjoy and we want to offer as many people as possible the opportunity to try the game, join the community, make new friends and experience competitive, yet fair, team battles.”

Level Infinite stressed that Honor of Kings was built from the ground up for mobile devices of all power levels: “You can see this in the interface, the short match length and small packet size that allows players with lower end devices to enjoy the game alongside those with the latest handsets.”

The publisher brimmed with confidence, saying that “with unique Hero designs and refined game operations, we believe that Honor of Kings possesses a competitive advantage in the mobile MOBA market.”

Originally intended to be released at the end of 2022 in the West, Honor of Kings bade its time. Level Infinite said that recent technical developments on the mobile market played a role in this regard, but explained that its “extensive localization efforts” were about more than simply doing some translation work. It “entails providing a comprehensive set of solutions based on the languages and customs of different regions.”

Meaning? Heroes and skins based on cultures other than China’s have been (and will continue to be) introduced and the upcoming event schedule will be “tailored to the festivals and cultural practices of different regions, ensuring that players from various areas can experience the sincerity of Honor of Kings.”

We’ll see how big Honor of Kings will end up getting around the globe – if its popularity in China is anything to go by, then its success chances are quite good – but it’ll be similarly interesting if yet another mobile MOBA catering to a slightly different audience will end up simply cannibalizing Tencent’s two other genre entries (not counting Pokémon Unite with its unique IP advantage), or actually result in growing the entire pie without causing any collateral damage.