All hail Honor of Kings, the highest-grossing mobile game worldwide, according to data released by app intelligence platform Sensor Tower in July.
The brainchild of Chinese tech giant Tencent, the multiplayer online mobile game has held the prestigious post since February, and has held on to the top spot for six consecutive months.
Honor of Kings’ earnings, which totaled 225.8 million USD in July, mostly came from the Chinese mainland (94.6%). Taiwan and Thailand respectively contributed 2% and 1.6% to total revenue.
Following the publication of the report, a hashtag related to the game’s astronomical revenue went viral on Weibo, and has been viewed over 200 million times.
Chinese netizens have expressed their feelings of pride over the success of a made-in-China video game.
“Wow it ranks the top in the world? Made-in-China games still got it,” commented a netizen.
“Chinese games are the best!” enthused another.
Born as a mobile sibling to Riot Games’ legendary League of Legends, Honor of Kings has enjoyed huge popularity in China since its launch in 2015.
The latter has also piqued the curiosity of international players, and attracted the attention of industry insiders. After all, it is hard to ignore a game that earned a record figure of 10 billion USD in 2021.
A global release date for the mobile game has yet to be announced, but according to Tencent’s subsidiary Level Infinite, it will be available worldwide before the end of 2022. Developers have rolled out closed beta testing sessions in various countries including Brazil, Egypt and Mexico.
The world’s second and third-highest grossing games are also of Chinese make: PUBG Mobile is a battle royal game developed by Tencent, while Genshin Impact is an action role-playing game developed by Shanghai-based developer miHoYo.
China’s hyper-developed mobile payment systems make in-app payments highly convenient, hence mobile gaming’s popularity and profitability in the country compared to elsewhere.
Even so, the domestic gaming industry experiences has had to jump through different sets of hurdles, such as government-ordered freezes, in the past year.
Cover image via Twitter
