League of Legends: Wild Rift launches its mobile beta in Asia while the Americas and India are left waiting until 2021
- League of Legends: Wild Rift, an adaptation of the biggest e-sports title in the world, has an open beta in seven Asian countries
- After Arena of Valor failed to catch on, the new game could finally give Tencent a globally popular mobile MOBA
League of Legends: Wild Rift, the long-awaited mobile adaptation of the hit PC game League of Legends, finally got a regional beta in seven countries across Asia on Wednesday. The title from Tencent Holdings subsidiary Riot Games has been highly anticipated since it was announced in 2019, 10 years after the launch of the original.
The game is now available to download on Google Play in Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand. Riot Games said on Weibo that five other countries – Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, Myanmar and East Timor – would also be part of the open beta test.
Gamers elsewhere in the world will have to wait a little longer. Riot Games said the release in North America, South America and India has been delayed until 2021 because of challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company did not specify a release date for other regions, including China.
“It has turned out to be an incredibly tough year for all of us. And it’s presented some unique challenges for launching any new game, let alone a global competitive mobile game, with some very unprecedented server and infrastructure needs,” said Michael Chow, executive producer at Riot Games, in a video posted to Twitter.
He added, “It has become a much more complex and multifaceted problem to bring service to your regions in particular.”
This is why the mobile adaptation has been garnering so much attention. The game has already served as inspiration for other hit MOBA titles on mobile, most notably Honour of Kings.
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Now Tencent has proven that gamers are willing to play MOBA games on their smartphones and, in some cases, spend lavishly on them. However, an attempt to bring Honour of Kings to the world under the title Arena of Valor has not seen the same level of success.
This is why some experts see League of Legends: Wild Rift as Tencent’s new global push for mobile MOBAs.
If interest on social media is any indication, Tencent could have more success this time around. Just two hours after the game launched, the trailer was viewed more than 120,000 times on YouTube and retweeted more than 3,000 times on Twitter.
The game was only available to download from Google Play on Wednesday, but Riot Games said iPhone owners will be able to get it on Apple’s App Store very soon.
Early impressions also appear to be mostly positive among those who have tried the game.
“There’s definitely a little bit of a learning curve if you’ve never played a mobile MOBA or any MOBA in general,” said Warren Lee, a 29-year-old from Dallas who works in the e-sports industry. “But I do think that by far it’s certainly the most polished mobile MOBA that’s been released so far.”
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The controls are straightforward, according to Lee.
“Standard floating joystick, tap, hold drag controls for skills with some aim assist,” he said. “I was playing as Ziggs, and after I cast his ultimate [moves], it gave me a little picture-in-picture pop-up so I could see if it hit properly or not.”
These controls adapted for touchscreens are key to success for mobile games, which can have a difficult time replicating the gaming experience of playing on PC or consoles.
Global success is not guaranteed for League of Legends: Wild Rift, though. The popularity of mobile MOBAs in China does not mean the rest of the world will necessarily share that interest.
Honour of Kings was the world’s most profitable mobile game for many months over the last two years, according to app tracking firm Sensor Tower. The game raked in US$240 million in September, but 96 per cent of its revenue came from China.
Success for the new mobile MOBA could hinge on the continued popularity of the game it is based on. In 2016, Riot Games said League of Legends on PC had more than 100 million monthly active users. The company has not disclosed the number of players since then, but the popularity of e-sports in general has grown tremendously over the last few years.
