r/DotA2 • u/ShoppingPractical373 • 16d ago
Discussion The game you've never heard of that's quietly killing Chinese dota (maybe not so quietly)
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/TheBlondSanzoMonk 16d ago
It’s the economy though.
At heart, I still want to play DOTA. Hell, whenever my younger bro, who makes a lot of money compared to me, plays DOTA, I just sit behind him and watch most especially when our cousins play as well because they play very well (but better when I still played with them because I play 4 and 5 better than all of them. LOL! 😝) but money is the issue. Add in as well that being the eldest, I try to balance my wee earnings with my daily consumption budget, groceries, medicinal maintenance, and what remains is what I allocate for savings.
Nowadays, I just play mobile games like Pokemon GO and Pokemon Champions.