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Tencent’s Westernised Arena of Valor takes $15m a year after launch

The US proved to be its most popular region

Tencent’s Westernised Arena of Valor takes $15m a year after launch

Tencent’s MOBA Arena of Valor has made $15 million in revenue since launching over a year ago in Europe and 10 months ago in North America.

According to Sensor Tower, the US has proven to be the game's most popular place across the App Store and Google Play, with 30 per cent of player spending hailing from the country.

Germany is the second largest market for the game and accounts for 14 per cent of revenue.

During September alone, the MOBA bagged $1.7 million, which proved to be its best return yet.

The figure represented a 49 per cent increase month-on-month from August and a 143 per cent growth year-on-year compared to September 2017. It should be noted, however, that this title wasn’t available in the US at that time, where it launched in December.

September also saw a boost to downloads, with 1.1 million players installing Arena of Valor. The haul of downloads represents a 170 per cent increase year-on-year.

The September’s performance pushed Arena of Valor’s total downloads past 16 million.

Conflicting fortunes

While the boost in performance is promising, Arena of Valor still finds itself in the shadow of its Eastern relative Honor of Kings.

Sensor Tower estimates Honor of Kings has made more than $3.5 billion in revenue since launching in November 2015, with 96 per cent of that coming from China.

In a previous interview with PocketGamer.Biz, Tencent America director of esports Ramon Hermann explained that the differing performances of the game come down to player perception.

“The phone is often one of the first gaming experiences that they have had, so playing games and playing them competitively seems like a natural suggestion there, and I don’t think anybody has asked themselves, is this potentially an inferior experience?" said Hermann.

“Whereas in the West, I think there is a bit of a stigma where early mobile games weren’t quite as powerful and quite as compelling as what we have today.”


Staff Writer

Iain is a freelance writer based in Scotland with a penchant for indies and all things Nintendo. Alongside PocketGamer.Biz, he has also appeared in Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun, PCGamesN and VG24/7.