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Xinjiang cotton
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Xinjiang cotton controversy spills into virtual battle, as Tencent removes Burberry outfit from Honour of Kings, China’s top game

  • Tencent’s action comes days after it unveiled a cross-promotion deal with the British luxury fashion house
  • London-based Burberry has said that it did not use any raw materials from the Xinjiang region

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Yao, a character from Tencent’s blockbuster online battle game Honor of Kings, dons a Burberry outfit. Photo: TiMi Studios/Burberry
Josh Ye
Internet giant Tencent Holdings has removed two Burberry-designed “skins”, outfits worn by video game characters, from its popular title Honour of Kings on the grounds that the British fashion house refuses to buy cotton produced in the Xinjiang region – a move that signals China’s wider consumer boycott of foreign brands, from H&M to Nike.
The action, announced on Thursday by Tencent’s Honour of Kings team in a post on microblogging platform Weibo, was taken days after the Shenzhen-based company unveiled a deal with Burberry to promote its outfits in online games. The team did not give a reason for the move.

Tencent’s decision, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter, was related to Burberry’s position on Xinjiang-produced cotton as a member of the Better Cotton Initiative. London-based Burberry said last year that it did not use any raw materials from Xinjiang, where Beijing denies claims of genocide and forced labour in the region.

Honour of Kings, a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, became the world’s first game to average more than 100 million daily users last year. Its users, 95 per cent of whom are in China, spent US$2.6 billion on the game in 2020, making it the most profitable mobile game in the world, according to data-tracking firm Sensor Tower.

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Global brands face backlash in China for rejecting Xinjiang cotton

Global brands face backlash in China for rejecting Xinjiang cotton

In a separate move, China’s biggest esports league, the Tencent-run League of Legends Pro League, has suspended its partnership with Nike by removing Nike’s logo and merchandise from its website. Nike is the official sponsor for the jerseys for the league’s 17 teams. 

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