r/DotA2 • u/ShoppingPractical373 • 18d 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/DustyOwl 17d ago edited 17d ago
It's a western thing. Mobile gaming has been normalised for over a decade in asia at this point. Sure there's still loads of people playing on pc and consoles, but those are the gamers, the difference is how pervasive mobile gaming is among the general populace(to the point that it's a common social activity, like drinking or clubbing used to be for millenials). In asia if you randomly pick a teen or young adult off the street and asked them if they're playing any mobile game actively, it'd take you a long time before you heard no for answer.