Honor of Kings

It is the highest-grossing mobile game of all time and one of the most downloaded apps globally. In June 2022, Level Infinite, the publisher of Arena of Valor, announced that Honor of Kings would be released globally through a separate version by the end of 2022. In May 2024, the worldwide launch of the global version was announced for 20 June 2024, following pre-releases in Brazil and Turkey as well as countries in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The highest-grossing mobile game in the world in 2024, with $2.6 billion gross.

Honor of Kings is a quick-match (15–20 minutes) mobile multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game. Either a Tencent QQ account or a WeChat account is required to play the game. Following an update on 24 September 2020, a player can add friends and invite people from different platforms to guilds. Honor of Kings was the second-highest earning mobile game worldwide for February 2021, with $218.5 million in gross revenue, which represented 57.2% year-over-year growth from February 2020. About 95.6% of Honor of Kings ' revenue was from China, followed by 1.6% from Thailand.

Honor of Kings is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game in which the player controls a character with unique abilities and competes to defeat non-player characters and opponents to gain experience points and gold. With experience points, players can unlock their characters' abilities or further augment the power of their existing abilities. The highest level that each hero can reach in the game is level 15. Each level up not only improves the attribute values of the character players control but also gives them a skill point to upgrade their skills. There is a character called "Jiang Ziya" in the game who can use his unique "Fengshen" skill to remove the level limit for himself and another character. However, after level 15, he can only improve the attribute values of the character. Gold can be used to purchase items at the shop that uniquely change specific attributes of the character. To win a game, players need to knock down the enemy's defensive structures, called turrets. Victory is achieved by destroying the opponent's base crystal, located within the enemy team's base. Specific gameplay mechanics vary depending on the game mode chosen. Experience and gold are also earned across matches and applied to player accounts. Accounts start at level 1, with level 30 being the maximum level. In the global release, however, the level cap is removed. Upon leveling up, users receive bonus in-game awards. Leveling up also unlocks certain summoners' abilities that can be applied to every hero the summoner uses. Gold can be used for a variety of purposes, such as purchasing new heroes.

Physical damage is the most common damage in the game and appears with damage numbers in red. Physical damage can be decreased by armor. Magical damage appears with damage numbers in purple. Magical damage can be decreased by magical resistance. True damage is the most powerful damage. This damage cannot be reduced by armor; it can be only decreased by damage-decrease buffs or skills. Damage numbers appear in white. Shields that block true damage are possessed by only a few characters, and show up as a yellow section on the healthbar. Critical damage deals massive damage in crit chance (percentage %); it can be physical, magical or true damage.

Honor of Kings has a variety of game modes, with a majority of them focused on competitive matchmaking. Without a network connection, players can play the stand-alone mode. With a network connection, players can choose a variety of battle modes, in which players can either face off against each other in player versus player matches (including 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 5v5) or participate in various player versus environment adventure modes. In each of the player versus player modes, there are options to battle AI (computer) opponents. The AI can be set on easy, normal, or hard difficulty. Also, players can open 'rooms' where they can invite and battle a friend or recent battle teammate or opponent. There is also an option to open a 'draft room' for a 5v5 in which everybody is invited by someone else in the room.

Rift of Kings (known as Hero's Gorge in the international release) is the most commonly played game mode. This mode is used in KPL competitions, the ranked game mode using the same game map (see Ranked below). Ten players, each controlling a hero, are split into two opposing teams of five. The teams start on opposing ends of the map, with the victory conditions either being to destroy the enemy's defense turrets in order to reach and destroy the enemy nexus base. To destroy the enemy nexus base, teams must destroy defense turrets, which are situated on the three main lanes—the "clash" lane (对抗路), the middle lane (中路), and the "farm" lane (发育路)—used to reach the enemy's nexus base. Nexus bases can restore health points slowly but defense turrets cannot. Heroes are protected by minions, which are periodically sent from the team's base. Without the protection of minions, heroes can be damaged by turrets. Turrets prioritize enemy minions within their vicinity, but will immediately target enemy heroes if they attack allied heroes within the turret's range. Each player can increase their hero's level and gain coins by killing enemy minions, heroes, or wild creatures situated between lanes, a wild area known as the 'jungle' (野区). Some creatures in the wild area also have certain status effects benefits ('buffs') which increase their hero's attributes. There are five kinds of buffs: blue, red, tyrant, overlord, and tempest dragon (the strongest). For example, the blue buff is used to regenerate or improve mana, a resource which many mages and assassins use. The red buff is used to decrease the moving speed of the enemies, and it also deals a few 'real damage' (i.e., it cannot be blocked by shield and defense points), which is useful for warriors and marksmen. Both types of buffs last for 80 seconds.

This mode is full of experts and highly technical players; participation requires a rank above Super King star one. Top Match players are not allowed to group with players of other ranks in the game. The nicknames of players are disabled and replaced by "Top Player" 1 to 10.

The basic rules are similar to other game modes, with a total of 6 players (3 on each team). However, unlike other 5v5 game modes, there is only one lane to the enemy's base, with two wild areas to either side. Each team has two defense turrets, different from three in normal 5v5 mode. The victory conditions are the same as normal 5v5 game modes.

This is a single combat mode with only 2 players facing each other. In this mode, there is only one defense turret, and no wild area except river soul. Players only need to destroy their opponent's single turret to win.

In this section, there are multiple game modes containing different buffs and playing methods.

The basic rules are similar to Valley of Kings; however, this game mode has a faster pace. The defense turret has lower health, and the minions move faster. Every hero starts at level 2 and can gain gold and levels faster. The average game time is ten minutes. Buffs are created randomly every two minutes, such as the cooling down time of abilities shortened by 40%, the damage of abilities increased by 30%, the movement of heroes increased by 150 points, or the attack speed of the turret decreased by 50%. Additional abilities include a hook, which can drag an opponent to the player's side, and invisibility, which is removed when the player fights or goes near an opponent. This game mode requires players to dynamically adjust tactics according to buffs to achieve victory.

In this mode, the game randomizes heroes. Players can spend diamonds to reroll a new random hero, putting the unchosen one into a selection pool from which their teammates can choose. If the player leaves the spawn area, they will not be allowed to buy weapons until respawn. The arena only has one middle lane and a path that can generate healing or buffs. As time goes on, the path will collapse and there will be one main lane to fight on. The minions are slightly different as well. Some minions have a healing sign; if killed by a hero, it drops a healing prop. When a player destroys their opponent's second turret, special minions with more attacking damage are generated.

King's Chess is an auto battler, with eight players each match. Each turn, players are presented with five random cards representing different heroes, for which players can pay gold to purchase the heroes and place them on their own chess board. More powerful heroes cost more gold. Each hero starts with one star, and having three same heroes grants this hero two stars. The maximum star level is three. After each player places their heroes on the board, there are fights of heroes between two players, with the defeated player losing health points. The fights take turns until the last player stands. The ranking system is similar to Ranked Matching (5v5).

• Illustration — Gaming arena of Fiery Mountain Battle This arena is circular and divided into three main lanes (top, middle, and bottom). Each player will spawn in either location A or B randomly. Each player starts with 800 initial gold, level 2, and an additional ability of fireball. Locations 1, 2, and 3 will spawn jungle creatures. Outside each lane is filled with lava which slows and damages players. Each game has a time limit of ten minutes; the first team to reach thirty kills wins immediately. The additional ability of fireball causes no damage, but has a knockback effect. This game mode has three kinds of random buffs, including 30 seconds of control-free effect, increasing movement speed, and increasing cooldown speed by 40%. The respawn time for each player is 15 seconds and the respawned player will be placed randomly within the arena.

The clone fight opens from Friday to Sunday. A few heroes are banned to make the game fair. The basic rules are similar to Rift of Kings; however, the hero selection stage is different. In each game, the five players vote for heroes, with the hero with the most votes being the one that the whole team uses for the entire game. If there is a tie, the system will choose one hero randomly. The two parties could use the same hero as well.

Some are rarely appear in arcade modes, such as awakening brawl or snow racetrack. These modes are only playable on special days, such as 55 Gaming Day or during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Players may choose between a wide variety of heroes, each with special abilities, cosmetic skins and backstories. There are a total of 125 heroes, generally classified as either Tank, Fighter, Assassin, Mage, Marksman, or Support. Some heroes originated from the mythical story of China (such as Pangu), while others are famous people from Chinese history (such as Guan Yu). The game also has its own heroes (such as Luban No.7) based on its original story. When controlling a character, players can listen to famous quotations that express the character's personality. Many of these are excerpted or adapted from classical poetry or popular movies. In Arena of Valor, most Chinese characters are replaced by American and Japanese heroes, including Batman, The Flash, and Jinnar. The more recognizable figures that remain, like Sun Wukong, are visually re-designed for Western audiences. Currently, there are three Arena of Valor heroes (Allain, Ata, Butterfly) which have been transferred to the global server of Honor of Kings, with Allain being transferred to the Chinese server as well. Additionally, Ata replaces Zhu Bajie from the Chinese server to avoid causing offense with the portrayal of pig characters in video games.

After Tencent fully acquired Riot Games in 2015, Tencent asked them to make a mobile version of League of Legends, as multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games were very rare on mobile at the time, with Vainglory by Super Evil Megacorp (formed by ex-employees of Riot Games) being the only notable title. Tencent wanted to seize the opportunity to dominate the underserved mobile market. However, Riot Games declined, as mobile was not commonly seen as a platform for competitive games; it claimed that the gameplay of League of Legends could not be replicated on smartphones. Despite the refusal, the video game development studios Lightspeed & Quantum Studios and TiMi Studios (both owned by Tencent) raced to develop a MOBA game that fit the bill, resulting in an internal competition. Lightspeed & Quantum's We MOBA and TiMi's League of Kings (rough translation from) were launched on the same day, on 18 August 2015. A month later, We MOBA was already the third most-downloaded mobile game on Apple's iOS worldwide, according to app analytics firm App Annie, while League of Kings trailed far behind. League of Kings was taken down for an overhaul, and later relaunched in October 2015. TiMi Studios used League of Legends as a base model to overhaul League of Kings, resulting both games having many similarities. League of Kings also implemented a 5v5 game mode due to the game previously having poor reception with its 3v3 concept. This time, League of Kings overtook We MOBA and won the internal competition; Tencent subsequently invested additional resources into the League of Kings to ensure its success. Nevertheless, Riot Games deemed that the design of characters and abilities in League of Kings was "blatantly ripping off the intellectual property of League of Legends" after they discovered how the game was produced, and reportedly brought these concerns to Tencent. Tencent responded that they would change its own game enough to sell as a standalone product with no relation to League of Legends. Despite this, League of Kings had already gained massive popularity in China at this point due to the game being advertised as a "mobile version of League of Legends" through social media and word-of-mouth marketing. Tencent felt that it was too late to make huge changes to the game. Only necessary changes were made, and the game was renamed from League of Kings to Honor of Kings on 26 November 2015 (marked as the official release date). The international release of Honor of Kings was cancelled; instead, the game was rebranded and featured different content for markets outside mainland China. This led to the creation of Arena of Valor, which also served as a response to Riot Games' complaints of "potential intellectual property infringement". Arena of Valor was reported to have caused a gradually straining business relationship between Riot Games and Tencent. Tensions increased when Tencent used notable League of Legends players to promote Arena of Valor and its esports tournaments. Riot Games' complaints initiated a two-month marketing freeze for Arena of Valor and demands that Riot Games would be given the option to review all marketing plans, including a veto for use of select celebrity gamers. Nonetheless, Riot Games implied that their relationship with Tencent was still strong, and the conflict between them and their games was only "a bump in the road". Riot Games eventually acknowledged the potential of the mobile market for the MOBA genre, and agreed to develop a mobile title for League of Legends. Tencent then temporarily pulled marketing plans for Arena of Valor in Europe and North America in 2019, clearing room for Riot Games' announcement a few months later. Riot Games announced their own mobile MOBA game, League of Legends: Wild Rift on 16 October 2019, the 10th anniversary of League of Legends. By the end of May 2017, 54% of the game's players were female; a significant difference from the general trend of esports. The success of the MOBA genre on mobile inspired the creation of Pokémon Unite, a Pokémon spin-off game developed by TiMi Studio in partnership with The Pokémon Company.

In 2016, the game had more than 50 million daily active users and more than 200 million registered users. The game grossed ¥10.4billion (billion) in the last quarter of 2016. In November 2016, Honor of Kings topped the 2016 China pan entertainment festival "China IP index value list – game list top 10". In May 2017, it became the highest-grossing mobile game in the world. It had 160 million monthly active users. In May 2017, entertainer Lu Han was named ambassador of the game. In the month of February 2019, the game generated $1 billion. In 2020, the game grossed over $2.45 billion becoming the highest earning game of the year. Honor of Kings contributed about 50% of the Tencent's mobile gaming revenues in 2017 and it made about ¥3 billion in gross revenue in April 2017 (435 million). In June 2017, the analysis company APP Annie reported that Honor of Kings was the number 1 mobile game (excluding Android games) in the world in terms of income generated, with first quarter revenue of the game reaching 1.76 billion. A cosmetic hero skin of Zhao Yun also had sold for $22 million in one day. At the time, Tencent reported 200 million registered users with 50 million daily active users. The game grossed 911 million in the second quarter of 2017. Between the last quarter of 2016 and the second quarter of 2017, the game grossed billion. In response to the national day of mourning designated by China on 4 April 2020, for those who had given up their lives or had died from the COVID-19 pandemic, all of Tencent's games announced a 24-hour suspension of service, which included Honor of Kings.

The game's original soundtrack was composed by Hans Zimmer, Jeff Broadbent, Lorne Balfe, and Duncan Watt, and was performed and recorded by The Chamber Orchestra of London at Abbey Road Studios in London. A soundtrack album was released on 28 October 2015. The extended soundtrack released a year later included every special event soundtrack since the game's release. Multiple score composers collaborated on the album, including Howard Shore, Thomas Parisch, and Marcin Przybylowicz. Years 3 and 4 theme music was composed by Neal Acree. Additional music was provided by Matthew Carl Earl, Obadiah Brown-Beach, and Angela Little. On 25 January 2020, Unisonar released the game's score digitally for the first time internationally. The score's executive producers are Sam Yang and Cheney Wu, with coordination by Channel Chen, production by Vivita Zheng and Thomas Parisch, and Hongfei Zhao serving as music director. The album, Honor of Kings Original Game Soundtrack, Vol. 1, consists of 16 original tracks, and was produced by TiMi Audio. On 9 August 2024, Honor of Kings Original Game Soundtrack Collection 2024 was released on streaming platforms in celebration of the global launch, featuring music from composers Laurent Courbier, Dmitrii Miachin, Ting Si Hao, and Jing Zhang.

• Illustration — 2020 Honor of Kings World Champion Cup Honor of Kings is one of the most popular esports in its home country of China. The Champion Cup was introduced in 2016 shortly after the launch of the game and became an annual event, and later renamed to the World Champion Cup. It was considered the game's equivalent to the League of Legends World Championship. A professional league for Honor of Kings, the King Pro League (KPL), was launched later that year in China. While the World Champion Cup brought in teams from other countries, most participants were Chinese, alongside some teams from South Korea, who had their own competition named the Korea King Pro League (KRKPL); this was mainly due to Arena of Valor and their separate esports scene in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas. In August 2021, Honor of Kings and Arena of Valor announced an "esports convergence", with teams from both titles to compete in their own unified world championship event. This would turn into the Honor of Kings International Championship (KIC), which occurred in 2022 and 2023. During both tournaments, the KPL teams from China dominated their international competition, with only one team from outside the KPL making playoffs during the 2023 International Championship, when the KPL sent seven teams as opposed to 8. Brazil would also develop the first professional league for the game outside of China, known as the Campeonato de Honor of Kings Brasil (CHOKBR). As Honor of Kings expanded internationally, the remaining Arena of Valor teams from Taiwan (Chinese Taipei), Thailand and Vietnam removed themselves from the game's ecosystem in 2024. During that year, the game used an "Invitational Series" format outside of China, which also corresponded with the title's first appearance at the Esports World Cup in Saudi Arabia. The KPL teams would instead form their own end-of-season tournament similar to the Champion Cups of old, known as the KPL Grand Finals. In 2025, Honor of Kings would start additional professional leagues outside of China with Tencent investing $15 million for it. These are: the Philippines Kings League (PKL), MY Honor of Kings League (MKL), Indonesia Kings Laga (IKL), Wildcard Kings Series (WKS, for teams in Southeast Asia outside of the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia), Honor of Kings Major West League (KMW, for teams in Europe, North America and Latin America) and Honor of Kings Major East League (KME, for teams in MENA, South Asia, Korea and Japan). The professional leagues revamp revealed in Honor of Kings Invitational Season 4 (KIS4) grand final match with WKS, KME and KMW leagues combined into one singular league called Kings Major League (KML) with the addition of the game was selected as one of the titles for Asian Games 2026 in esports category and Esports Nations Cup (ENC). The league participants increased to 10 teams for all major leagues with best-of-5 (BO5) format applied to group stage and best-of-7 (BO7) format in all the matches for knockout stages. In addition, Arena of Valor teams would be invited to participate in the Honor of Kings World Cup that year, with Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan's league winners qualifying for the event.

Honor of Kings has collaborated with different companies, media, and personalities. As of January 2026, these include Lionel Messi, SNK, Lee Chong Wei, Hello Kitty, Jujutsu Kaisen, Fox Spirit Matchmaker, Disney's Frozen Vegetables Fairy, B.Duck., Sanrio, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, Jurassic World Rebirth, Detective Conan, the Sanxingdui Museum, and Lord of Mysteries. The developer also made some collaborations with phone brand for marketing such as iQOO, Tecno, Infinix and realme.

During Chinese New Year in 2024, five dragon-themed skins were released to celebrate the 2024 Year of the Dragon. To celebrate the 2025 Year of the Snake, Honor of Kings released a new serpent-themed game mode. In November 2025, Honor of Kings released a new series of skins for Donghuang, Milady, and Biron inspired by Latin American, Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern cultures and folklore. To celebrate the 2026 Tiger Spirits. five Tiger-themed skins were released.

Honor of Kings was featured in episode 14 of the anthology series Secret Level.

section In March 2017, Honor of Kings was criticized by Guangming Daily for distorting Chinese history. Guangming Daily wrote that the game characters were inconsistent with historical narratives and traditional mythological narratives, and that it was keeping teenagers from forming authentic historical views. People's Daily republished these criticisms, including on its WeChat account and on Weibo. Criticism by Guangming Daily and People's Daily also prompted contrary responses in Chinese media. China Daily wrote that some ancient Chinese poems appearing in Honor of Kings had become popular. 21st Century Business Reviewer wrote that by re-writing traditional stories in a modern style, Honor of Kings enriched national culture. In April 2017, Tencent responded by adding introductions to the characters adapted from Chinese history and mythology. It sought to distinguish between historical and fictional narratives of the characters. China Youth Daily described the game as "digital opium" and noted several game addiction cases involving Honor of Kings. In Hangzhou, a middle school teacher wrote a widely-disseminated article calling for the game to be banned, attributing to it negative effects on teenagers' mental health. Shortly thereafter, a thirteen year-old in Hangzhou jumped off a building because his father prevented him from playing Honor of Kings and the Qianjiang Evening News called for a ban on the game. Southern Metropolis Daily reported that Honor of Kings had not implemented the national system that aimed to protect adolescents from video game addiction. On 3 and 4 July, People's Daily published a pair of critical articles. On 4 July 2017, it was reported that the game owner's Tencent had suffered a loss of $14 billion, or 4.1%, on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange after the People's Daily criticized Honor of Kings as a "poison" for young people, calling the content "a twist of values and historical views" and addictive. Variety dubbed the two critical articles a "demonstration of the power of China's state-run media and propaganda machine". On 4 July, Honor of Kings implemented measures to reduce teenager's time playing the game. Honor of Kings started limiting children under the age of 12 to one hour of play time per day, with an additional restriction from playing after 9pm. Children aged from 12 to 17 were limited to two hours per day. It is believed that rising concerns over excessive gaming habits in children led Tencent to self-impose these restrictions. Honor of Kings producer Lin Min stated online that the game's design "fully complied with government requirements" and argued that "just like other forms of entertainment, games can be [a non-addictive] part of our normal daily lives". After these changes in Honor of Kings, public and media debate about game addiction shifted towards debate about the role of family, school, education, and other factors. The value of Tencent stock increased shortly thereafter. On 31 October 2021, Honor of Kings updated its juvenile addiction prevention system following the requirement from National Press and Publication Administration. Under the new changes, juveniles only can log in to the game from 20:00 to 21:00 on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and legal holidays. Although the anti-addiction system is a successful feature, it has somewhat reduced the economic revenue of Honor of Kings. In 2022, For All Time, a mobile game launched by NetEase, accused Honor of Kings of plagiarizing artwork, while in 2024, Onmyoji, also a mobile game launched by NetEase, posted a letter from its law firm warning Honor of Kings for the new skins of the characters Li Bai and Dasiming comprised copyright infringement and unfair competition. Tencent vehemently denied both accusations.

• Official website (original domestic version) • Official website (Global version)