Here’s a fun bit of statistical data for you on this Tuesday: Honour of Kings is literally the most successful mobile game in the entire world according to Superdata. That requires a whole lot of money flowing in. And yet it appears that Tencent is literally just giving up on the game’s Western port, Arena of Valor, which has reportedly had its marketing staff completely dissolved. That’s a big turnaround for a game whose mobile port was released back in 2017, and some of it likely has to do with the rift between Tencent and Riot Games.
Yes, Riot Games is owned by Tencent. Yes, Riot Games also runs some other game you’ve probably heard of. And they’re quite insistent on the point that Honour of Valor is a direct ripoff of League of Legends (which itself is a ripoff of a Warcraft III multiplayer mod, but let’s not quibble), down to recruiting well-known LoL personalities to push Honourarena of Valorkings. It doesn’t appear to have taken, and so it may be that the title has had its last hurrah in the West; feel free to speculate about why down in the comments.
