Honor of Kings, a role-playing game for smartphones, has attracted 50m active daily users, after adding 5m a month since it was launched by internet company Tencent last year — making it more popluar than Nintendo’s global sensation Pokémon Go.
Although the game is almost unknown outside of China, Honor of Kings, which sees players battle mythical beasts in a fantasy landscape, now has an army of players roughly equal to the total population of South Korea.
The rise of the dragon-battling game underlines the transition in Chinese gaming away from PCs towards mobile, and the continued reliance of top Chinese titles on imported designs. Honor of Kings is essentially a mobile version of the world’s most played game, League of Legends, which was created by US developer Riot Games.