Tencent's mobile game King of Glory takes the crown

By Guo Rong | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-06-16 15:24

Players take part in King of Glory mobile game competition in Shaoxing, East China's Zhejiang province, April 29, 2017. [Photo/VCG]

Tencent's hit game King of Glory defeated all other mobile games in the world to take the No 1 spot in income generation, according to a report released by APP Annie, a US-based analysis company.

Lu Han. [Photo/VCG]

Although there are some shortcomings in the study, such as not including the Android platform in the report, the game topped the income list thanks to its huge domestic market and its overseas version.

Tencent, NetEase, China Mobile Games and Entertainment and Longtu Game dominated the top 10 list of global iOS publishers, accounting for 40 percent of global revenue.

King of Glory is a multiplayer online battle arena and the game launched in beta version for iOS and Android platforms on Nov 26, 2015.

The first-quarter revenue of the game reached 12 billion yuan ($1.76 billion), and a hero skin of Zhao Yun, a military general who lived in the Three Kingdoms (220-280), sold for 150 million yuan ($22 million) in one day, a Tencent insider said.

The game has 200 million registered users, with 50 million daily active users, according to data released by Tencent.

Popular singer and actor Lu Han was invited as the king ambassador of the game in May. A Sina Weibo about King of Glory forwarded by him was liked by 1.66 million fans.

"King of Glory went wild because it features many similarities to League of Legends, which has a deep fan following, and also due to the powerful promotion carried out by Tencent," said Tang Xin, chief research officer of mobile data provider Jiguang.

"This socially supercharged game is easy to go viral," Tang added.