Tencent’s hit video game Honour of Kings spurs black market for virtual mercenaries, ghost players

With many players in China using Honour of Kings as a form of ice-breaker, some are paying experts thousands of yuan to play as their avatar and increase their game ranking and social standing, funnelling money to a black market

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Published: 1:29pm, 29 Aug 2017Updated: 7:04pm, 29 Aug 2017

Last week, Huang Zhibin was a 30-year-old Shenzhen business owner slaying foes into the wee hours. Then he became a bloodthirsty university student from Hong Kong, and later a 25-year-old office lady turned online warrior in Beijing.

Welcome to a less visible world within Tencent’s mobile smash Honour of Kings, where professional doppelgangers get paid to help newbies climb both social and gaming ladders.

The hack-and-slash blockbuster that’s fuelled Tencent’s US$400 billion market valuation is spurring a thriving underground market for battle-tested coaches who help acolytes rise up the rankings. Ready-made accounts go for as much as US$1,000 apiece. Alternatively, they can take over a social media profile to sow carnage in someone else’s name and save them the hours of work needed to increase an avatar’s ranking.

Honour of Kings is the world’s top grossing iOS mobile game.

Honour of Kings has rekindled a black market for player aids – some say cheats – that’s been around since before World of Warcraft popularised the possibility of trading money for character prowess. With more than 200 million players, the world’s top-grossing iOS mobile game in July has gone mainstream, and in turn fostered something of a class system. Mothers, students and office workers suss out their colleagues’ and friends’ ratings by linking their accounts to WeChat, Tencent’s messaging behemoth that permeates life in China. On Honour of Kings, it’s become a race to impress – and many will pay for status.

“These people have daytime jobs, and not all of them have the skills, but no one wants to be laughed at,” says 26-year-old Huang, who has helped almost 200 people boost their rankings in less than a year. By day, Huang works as a high-speed rail mechanic in the coastal province of Fujian. By night, he charges a one-time fee of about 2,000 yuan (US$300) to help newbies gain a coveted “Supreme King” label within a week.