China wins 1st esports gold in huge game that looks incredibly familiar even though you’ve never played it

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The 2022 Asian Games are currently taking place in Hangzhou and, for the first time, gaming is also popular there: the first e-sports competition has taken place and China has won the “Honor of Kings” (mobile) tournament. The game, a kind of Mobile League of Legends with superheroes, is huge in Asia, but was unable to establish itself in the West as “Arena of Valor”.

What kind of tournament is this?

  • The “Asia Games” take place every 4 years. The 2022 Asian Games have been postponed to 2023 due to Covid and are currently underway in Hangzhou, China.
  • In addition to classic sports, Asians compete in intellectual sports such as chess or Go. E-sports will also be included for the first time in 2023.
  • The Chinese have now won the first e-sports gold in the history of the Asian Games in the game “Honor of Kings”.

    • In Europe, Honor of Kings was released in August 2017 under the name Arena of Valor:

    Arena of Valor shows its gameplay in the trailer

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    Honor of Kings is a LoL clone that is huge in China

    What kind of game is this? Chinese gaming giant Tencent bought studio Riot Games in 2011 and, according to reports, asked the LoL team to develop a “mobile LoL” for the Chinese market because League of Legends is popular there, but the Chinese are I would rather play on my cell phone than on my PC.

    However, Riot Games refused and explained that LoL did not work on mobile devices. The Chinese then built a rather bold LoL clone for mobile devices, called it “Heroes of Kings” and distributed it via their super app WeChat.

    In the years that followed, Honor of Kings became a huge game in China, played by millions of people there, including 163 million women.

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    Why don’t we know this? Tencent’s attempt to bring the game to the West in 2017 as Arena of Valor failed. In 2017 we even published a tier list for the game on MeinMMO and we see strange heroes like Batman.

    There is now an official mobile version of LoL anyway. It was probably possible to bring LoL to mobile devices after all.

    It’s like the grandson is competing against the grandfather

    This is how China won: China, the home country of “Honor of Kings”, won the tournament with a clear score of 2-0 against Malaysia. Thailand came third.

    The final was played in an e-sports center for 4,500 spectators in Hangzhou.

    The Malaysia coach said after the defeat that China was a giant in this game. Competing against them is like a grandson challenging his grandfather. They were disappointed that they couldn’t give Malaysia their first gold, but they did their best.

    League of Legends is also played at the Asian Games. For South Korean professionals like Faker, it’s not just about gold and fame, but also about avoiding compulsory military service:

    BTS fans think it’s totally unfair that LoL stars like Faker are treated better than their favorites

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