Chinese internet giant Tencent is set to launch its popular game Honour of Kings in the US and Western Europe from as early as September to diversify its sources of revenue, Bloomberg reported.
Honour of Kings has been slowly making its way to markets outside of China, such as Thailand, South Korea and Turkey (where it was ranked in the top ten highest grossing apps in recent weeks, according to App Annie), and will now roll out in the US, France, Italy, Spain and Germany.
In some international markets the game is called Strike of Kings, and new versions are expected to include features which will give them a local appeal.
Bloomberg said Tencent may be trying to create a “truly global title” which can be on par with games made by companies Tencent has acquired, including Riot Games’ League of Legends (on which Honour of Kings is supposedly based) and Supercell’s Clash of Clans.
The need to find more revenue bases was highlighted recently when the game came under scrutiny for being addictive.
This led Tencent to decide to limit the number of hours children can play the game, a move that caused its market value to fall by around $12 billion, Reuters reported.
It was not just parents and teachers who worried about the game. The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, said Honour of Kings was poison and called for stricter regulation of online games in general.
Thomas Chong, an analyst at BOC International, said Honour of Kings will make up more than half of Tencent’s smartphone game revenue this year, noting it made monthly gross revenue of as much as CNY3 billion ($441 million) in April, Bloomberg said.
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