Tencent taking global Honor of Kings as China continues to block its new releases
James Batchelor
Editor-in-Chief
Wednesday 8th June 2022
Tencent
Chinese giant Tencent is bringing its flagship title to global markets as it attempts to offset the increasing restrictions and limited growth of its home market.
The company announced Honor of Kings will be "rolling out... to global gamers by the end of the year" via Level Infinite, the publishing label Tencent established back in December.
There will be closed beta tests in the coming months, starting in July.
The news comes as the South China Morning Post reports that Tencent has once again been left out of the latest wave of regulator approvals for publishing licences.
The Chinese government mandates that all titles released in the market require a publishing licence, although regulators froze the approvals process for nine months -- the second time this has occurred.
A first batch of 45 games were approved for release in April, with another 60 granted a licence on Tuesday. The latter included Keqier Frontier, a new title from Genshin Impact developer MiHoYo, and Perfect World Games' Black Cat Anecdote Society.
The approval of just 105 games so far this year is a marked decline when compared to 2017, where regulators approved more than 9,000 games for release in China over the course of the year.
None of the approval games were submitted by Tencent or its rival NetEase. Both companies have been waiting 11 months for any of their upcoming games to be given the green light.
In its most recent financial results, Tencent reported revenues from domestic games, led by Honor of Kings, dipped 1% to $4.9 billion. These account for 24% of the internet firm's total quarterly revenues.
However, the company saw 4% growth in revenues from games outside China at $1.6 billion -- 8%
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