Honor of Kings
Tencent's five versus five MOBA for phones, with matches of 15 to 20 minutes
First principle
People have always wanted to win a fair contest. Honor of Kings put the MOBA on the phone with no heroes to level up, so rank depends on how you and your team play.
The needs it meets
- ProgressCore
- Seeing yourself get better: a level cleared, a rank gained, a skill learnt.
- Staying in touch
- Keeping up with family, friends and colleagues; belonging to a circle.
- Being seen
- Making things and showing yourself; being seen and approved of.
Why it wins
- Controls were rebuilt for touch and a match fits a lunch break or a commute, so many who had never played a MOBA on a PC took it up.
- Signing in with WeChat or QQ makes your friend list a ready team; with everyone around still playing, it tops the free chart eleven years on.
- Ranks climb from Bronze to King, and the best players of each hero earn district, city, province and national titles, shown next to their names.
- Passes, limited and collaboration skins arrive season after season, and years of collected skins and heroes keep veterans from leaving.
What keeps it ahead
- Network effects
- The more people use it, the more useful it is; everyone is already there.
- Ecosystem
- Preinstalled, or tied to an account or a bigger platform.
- Switching cost
- Your data, contacts or progress live here; leaving is costly.
How it makes money
In app purchases
Free to play; the money comes mainly from skins, sold outright, through prize draws and in season passes. Heroes can be bought with gold earned in matches.
What a small team can take from it
Tencent's friend network and pro league can't be copied. Two things can: size a match to the spare moments of a phone user's day, and in a competitive game sell looks, not power, so free players stay and paying players have opponents.
This week
- China: top grossing games, number 1
- China: top free games, number 1
updated 29 October 2026
- Developer
- Shenzhen Tencent Tianyou Technology Ltd
- Category
- Game
- Stores
- App Store
- First in a list
- 29 October 2026
Sources
This is our analysis and judgement, drafted by an AI agent from the store pages and public sources and read by a person before it went up. Every figure has a source; where there is none, we give no figure. Found a mistake? Write to [email protected].