Tencent to change marketing strategy after Honour of Kings flops abroad under title Arena of Valor
- Sources at Chinese company say the international version of the game performed so badly, its marketing team for Europe and the US was disbanded
- However, in China the game had 55 million daily active users and raked in US$145 million a month
When Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings made its first big foray overseas with an adaptation of its blockbuster mobile game Honour of Kings in the summer of 2017, executives thought they had a sure-fire success on their hands.
The multiplayer role-playing game, in which players hack and slash their way through battle arenas, had 55 million daily active users in China and was raking in roughly US$145 million a month, making it the company’s top-grossing game.
But missteps in development and marketing, exacerbated by a rift with Tencent’s US-based Riot Games subsidiary, has seen the international version, called Arena of Valor, flop in Europe and North America.
Tencent has now all but written off its original plans for Arena of Valor and disbanded the game’s marketing team for Europe and the United States, two company sources with direct knowledge of the matter say.
“In those markets, we are really just letting it live or die on its own course,” one source says, adding the game currently has just 100,000 daily active users in Europe and 150,000 in North America. The sources were not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified.