On June 7th, Level Infinite, the international game publishing company founded by Tencent, announced that it would bring the popular MOBA game Honor of Kings to global players. The company announced the news via Twitter and stated that they would gradually open up beta tests starting next month. Honor of Kings is the top-grossing mobile game in the world, bringing Tencent 1.3 billion USD in revenue in the first half of 2022, and as of July 13th, it has officially opened its first overseas test in Mexico.
Although Honor of Kings has already celebrated its 28th season in the Chinese market, the test still attracted a large number of overseas players to try it out, judging from the numerous instructional videos on Youtube of transferring game accounts to the Mexican servers. Compared to the earlier mobile MOBA game Arena of Valor developed by TiMi Studio for overseas players, the world-building and stories of Honor of Kings have a very strong Chinese culture and history background, and the English localization is consistent with the Chinese version. Most of the names of playable characters in the game adapted from the Chinese historical background are directly translated into Pinyin, while a few foreigners are represented by English transliterated names or code names. In terms of UI and character modeling, the overseas version of Honor of Kings did not make many adjustments. According to the feedback from players who have experienced the overseas version, Tencent's co-branded characters, in cooperation with other game companies, will also appear in the overseas version.
This overseas launch of Honor of Kings is undoubtedly another important milestone in Tencent’s gradual internationalization of its game business since 2021. Honor of Kings: World, another Honor of Kings IP, released its trailer at the beginning of 2022. This shows Tencent intends to completely internationalize Honor of Kings, even going so far as to replace Arena of Valor, which was originally developed and has been operating for years.
It is worth mentioning that Honor of Kings' overseas release has used the Chinese character YunYing as the app's icon instead of the King Arthur icon that has remained unchanged since Honor of Kings' release in China. Coupled with Tencent's recent cooperation with a number of international entertainment brands, including Disney, it is clear to see that a major future goal of Tencent is to promote Chinese culture around the world.
According to certain sources, Honor of Kings will soon launch tests in Brazil, Turkey, and Egypt. If you’re interested, feel free to download the game at the App Store and Google Play.