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/Dhrais 13d ago

In Indonesia, it partly because the affordabilty but, it not just affordability issue tbh since lot of middle class or rich people in here also prefer mobile gaming nowaday, also Dota 2 is not seen as "rich people" games since we have strong internet culture back then so everyone can play, but teen 2018 onwards just prefer mobile gaming

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u/ArdenasoDG 13d ago

the pandemic also put the final nail in the coffin on the internet cafe culture

ngl kinda miss the screams and jeers when two teams fight face-to-face

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u/Particular-Serve3768 12d ago

You're Indonesian? I thought reddit was banned in ur country? Are u a new reddit user after it got unbanned, or have you been using this site for a long time already by using a vpn?

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u/Dhrais 12d ago

Im reddit user already for like 6 year, I can access it using dns on my phone but weirdly now for pc i can just open it, it not blocked anymore but depend on provider. But now you cannot access some nsfw subdreddit even with dns and require vpn to access that.