As we recently reported, Riot Games and Tencent are working together to develop a mobile version of League of Legends. Well, Reteurs has once again reported on a development in the story surrounding this mobile port. Tencent is dropping support for their other mobile MOBA, Arena of Valor, in European and North American markets. The Chinese giant reportedly disbanded both their European and US marketing teams.
The intent of this move was to put more focus on League of Legends Mobile and drift away from a failed project. One source confirmed they are letting the game live or die on its own course now. This means Tencent won’t update the game anymore and will no longer offer any support to its current player base.
This comes after Arena of Valor, a western version of its highly popular Chinese version Honour of Kings, failed to truly reach the western audience. Subsequently, the 250,000 current active players in Europe and North America will be left without support for the game. While those numbers may sound large, they don’t compare to the 55 million daily active users Honour of Kings has in China.
While it isn’t clear yet, this will most likely lead to Arena‘s downfall and the eventual shutdown of its servers.
Losing in the Arena
Sources also reported on the alleged mistake that Tencent made leading to the failure of Arena of Valor. Tencent reportedly spent a lot of money attempting to promote the game. A big problem came when Riot, whom Tencent owns, deemed Honour of Kings as a knock-off of League of Legends. Everything escalated with the release of Arena of Valor, as many saw it as a direct competitor. Using famous former League of Legends players like Bora “YellOwStaR” Kim and Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño MartÃnez didn’t help Tencent’s case either. This resulted in all sorts of trouble for Tencent and even went as far as getting their marketing frozen for two months. Riot Games was even granted rights to review everything Tencent put out relating to PR.
Another big reason for the game’s failure was the character designs compared to Honour of Kings. Arena of Valor used characters relating to European folklore and Western comic-book heroes. Analysts suggest they should have stuck with the Chinese mythology inspired character that Honour of Kings uses. The characters simply weren’t as iconic, and fans didn’t feel a personal connection with them.
Lastly, the relationship with Riot seems to be improving as both parties cooperate on League of Legends Mobile. The game has reportedly been in development for more than a year now. Even so, they have not yet set a release date.
We’ll keep a close eye on future developments to the story. Make sure you don’t miss it by staying in touch with Daily Esports!
