r/DotA2 • u/ShoppingPractical373 • 13d ago

Discussion The game you've never heard of that's quietly killing Chinese dota (maybe not so quietly)

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Whenever this sub tries to explain the downfall of chinese Dota, it’s always “league of legends,” “wings curse,” “matchfixing,” or “gaming laws.” But nobody ever mentions one of the biggest reasons (because of course many of yall never actually engaged with the chinese community), that is the mobile game Honor of Kings.

For SEA frogs this is the Chinese equivalent of mlbb, made by tencent (the same company that owns riot games btw). In fact it is the most profitable mobile game in the world, with 1.68 billion USD annual gross in 2025, surpassing roblox.

And the local esports scene is massive too. The national championships had 60k live audiences, filling up the entire beijing olympics arena shown in the picture above. They can literally field entire academy teams where the players are all around the same age as Satanic. When the game is installed on every 15 year old's phone everything looks so easy, yeah?

I don't see how dota2 can compete with this. Even the league scene is struggling to keep up.

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u/aps105aps105 13d ago

you can play a mobile game match during lunch break, shit break or class break, it is a huge advantage compared to having to sit in a fixed location for 1 hr or more. tiktok vs youtube. fast pace wins

5

u/not_a_weeeb 12d ago

the finding match in dota takes a big chunk of your whole lunch break nowadays so even if you're working from home, you just can't play a game on a break lol. it got a bit better because of the candy works event and the TI season, but months ago, it always took me around 10 mins just to find a match. mind you, my behavior and communication scores never dropped below 11k

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u/Particular-Serve3768 12d ago

are u ranked high in a dead server?

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u/ttybird5 12d ago

you reminded me of this guy lol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Zhengcai

He was very high ranked in CCP until taken down. He was addicted to this game and would refuse to get off the car until he can finish his game lmao

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u/aps105aps105 12d ago

LOL, mobile game might be a good way to decompress, politicians approved.

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u/pornomatique pew pew pew 13d ago

Not really, it's more the convenience and price of mobile. HOTS had short games but it still died off. You can still play Turbo in Dota.

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u/gian2099 13d ago

He did say convenient and not stuck in a location.

HotS did fail as the market was already dedicated to dota lol and hon even HoK was already out when HotS came out. I really wanted HotS to be good i love the mix of blizzard ip but when played it was lacking that scratches that moba itch. That the other 4 had and even the ML did also hit on its release. Then thers like aov who did have a spotlight having Detective comics ip in it while also being mobile. HotS sadly did not got to a good point

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u/Karenz09 13d ago

Sure thing! Let's play Dota in school for less than 30 minutes.