Tencent, the world's largest video game company, is trying to merge the esports scene of two of its top MOBA games, Arena of Valor and Honor of Kings, to create a global super esports network.
Honor of Kings, a game that many European and American players have never heard of, is one of Tencent's biggest powerhouse. Since its launch, it has dominated the China domestic and South East Asia market, being the top-grossing mobile game for six years, boasting 100 million daily active players.
A character's poster from Honor of Kings
On the other hand, Arena of Valor is a heavily localized version for Western audiences. Despite sharing the same engine and most of the source codes with Honor of Kings, Arena of Valor has very different aesthetic styles and has a different champion pool in terms of character and skill design, more closely resembles its main competitor on the global market back in the days, Vainglory.
Both AoV and HoK had their own esports leagues and player base. In the past, the two games are like existing in two parallel universes without interfering with each other. But now, things are changing. According to LatePost, a leading tech and capital media in China, Tencent upgraded the Arena of Valor project to "A Strategic Key Project" last September, doubling its marketing budget. The move to merge AoV and HoK into one big unified brand, first on the esports aspect, is also on, with AoV launching "Esports Version" that shares a lot more similarities with HoK.
If the two games successfully merged into one, it will presumably have a fan base of more than 120 million, unprecedented for mobile gaming or all gaming ever.
Three Sides of the Coin
To understand why Tencent is trying to merge the two games at this point, one important thing to understand is why there were two versions of the same game in the first place.
In November 2015, Tencent's Timi Studio launched the beta version of Honor of Kings in China. Players soon found the similarity between the game and League of Legends, the most influential multiplayer game in the past decade. Both games were 5V5 MOBA, and it's not hard to find HoK heroes "tribute" the character and mechanic design of LOL. Honor of Kings often (indirectly) hint at itself as a "mobile LOL" in promotions, and the strategy attracted many initial players.
Of course, voices are questioning the game being a cheap copy of the real thing. Because Riot Games was already entirely a subsidiary of Tencent at that time, things are more complicated than that. There's very like an unspoken mutual understanding between Timi Studio and Riot Games. The solid gameplay and constant updates of HoK certainly helped it stand the ground facing criticism.
ADCs sharing the same abilities in Honor of Kings and League of Legends
In just two years, Honor of Kings became the absolute dominating mobile game globally, helping Tencent's gaming department grow some 50% in 2017.
However, Tencent didn't believe HoK could have similar success on the global market. Its presumed main competitor, Vainglory, had a much darker art style, emphasizing mature content, contrary to HoK's more cartoonish, colorful theme.
These aesthetic concerns and the fundamental problems of lacking overseas polishing capability lead to Tencent launching a very different game to the global market, sharing HoK's engine and source code.
The global version was called Arena of Valor, jointly developed with Sea's game division Garena and Timi Studio.
However, the launch of AoV soon caused conflicts within Tencent Games. According to Jiemian News, one of China's most influential news outlets, League of Legends' developer Riot Games, which Tencent previously acquired, complained to Tencent executives about AoV's conflict with its own product under development, League of Legends: Wild Rift. The marketing plans of AoV in Europe, including cooperation with KOLs on YouTube and Twitch, were all canceled because of Riot's opposition.
In addition, even the development and operation team of HoK in Timi Studio was not found of AoV. AoV wanted to carry the Honor of King's name but soon got opposition from the operation team of HoK. Besides, AoV was also unable to use the heroes and stories of HoK.
Despite the struggles with other subdivisions of Tencent, Arena of Valor still enjoyed some success, launched in 149 countries and regions, and is quite popular in the Asia Pacific region, with 15 million daily active users. The game also has its own esports events, including International Championship, World Cup, and Garena Challenger Series. In the 2018 Asian Games, AoV was featured in the esports demonstration event and became the official competition item in the Southeast Asian Games in 2019.
The Unsuccessful Globalization of Honor of Kings Esports
From 2017 to 2021, the esports match schedule of Honor of Kings developed to consist of King Pro League (KPL) Spring Season, Champion Cup, KPL Autumn Season, and Champion Cup Winter Season. KPL is currently the e-sports league second only to LPL in China and the most popular mobile game match.
Grand Final of KPL Autumn Season 2021
With the success of Honor of Kings in China, Tencent tried to expand the game to overseas markets.
In 2018, Tencent Games tried to imitate the success of the League of Legends World Championship by promoting Honor of Kings esports matches outside of China. In the summer of 2018, Honor of Kings Champion Cup launched the international invitational tournament. Teams from the United States, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Macau participated in this event. In October of the same year, Korea King Pro League kicked off in South Korea and was upgraded to an international event in the following year.
Interestingly, Honor of Kings has never been in operation outside mainland China, which means the game was relatively unfamiliar to East and Southeast Asian players. Therefore, international teams participating in the Champion Cup 2018 and KRKPL have many Chinese players or foreign aid sent by KPL teams. The Grand Final of Honor of Kings World Champion Cup 2019 only had a few thousand views on YouTube.
At the same time, new competitors are emerging. Mobile Legends, a MOBA game developed by Chinese game studio Moonton Technology, is slaying the Southeast Asia Market, topped the App Store bestseller list in 13 countries, and reached the top 10 bestsellers in 53 countries.
The search trend comparison between Arena of Valor (Red) and Mobile Legends (Blue) from 2017 to now
One of Mobile Legends' key strengths is a universal server that allows players worldwide to join the same matchmaking system. This may not seem like a big deal, but Arena of Valor chose to have more than ten versions in different markets, severely fragmented its player base, and limited its capability of creating successful esports events.
The multiple game versions on App Store and Google Play in different regions
The clock is ticking. China is tightly enforcing it's mandate to limit the game time for underaged players, including esports athletes, meaning the KPL league will lose its fresh blood and momentum very quickly in 3-5 years. League of Legends: Wild Rift launched in late 2020, bringing the absolute No.1 esports brand to the mobile scene.
If Tencent still wants Honor of Kings to stay competitive on a global scale in the future, merging the massive domestic playerbase of HoK with the worldwide influence of AoV is probably their best chance left.
The Grand Come-Together
In August 2021, Tencent announced that it would introduce a new Arena of Valor version only for esports in 2022, which will feature overlapping heroes and abilities in both games. Since Arena of Valor has become one of the official esports matches in the 2022 Asian Games, the first fusion version, the Arena of Valor Asian Games version, will be implemented in this year's Asian Games.
Tencent also announced the integration plan of the Honor of Kings World Champion Cup and Arena of Valor World Cup, revamping the schedule and tournament structure for both games. Sixteen teams from Asia, North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and other regions will use the new game version to compete for the global championship honor in October 2022.
As a warm-up for the new esports version, in November 2021, Honor of Kings and Arena of Valor jointly released a collaboration skin. In addition, according to LatePost, Tencent Games has upgraded Arena of Valor to a critical strategic project in September 2021, while the game's promotion budget has also doubled.
If this merge succeeds, it would be an excellent achievement for Tencent Games, since many of its globally successful games like