Tencent Games mobile gaming development subsidiary TiMi Studios announced Saturday that the company will invest ￥1B RMB ($154M USD) in the Honor of Kings esports ecosystem, aiming to build the esports title for “All People,” according to the announcement.
The new investment will also increase the total prize pool for the new year. Grassroots competition, the Honor of Kings National League will see a 353% prize money increase, from ￥1.5M ($231K) to reach ￥6.5M ($1M). The top Honor of Kings global competition, the Honor of Kings World Champion Cup (KCC), will feature ￥50M ($7.7M), which marks a 56% increase from the previous year’s prize pool, ￥32M ($4.9M). In addition, China’s top Honor of Kings competition, the King Pro League (KPL) will also see a 135% prize pool increase, reaching ￥37.6M ($5.8M) from the previous ￥16M ($2.5M). The secondary league, King Pro League G-League (KGL), will feature ￥6M ($925K), 89% increase from the previous year ￥3.18M ($500K).
TiMi made the announcement at its “2021 Esports Strategy Press Conference” on Saturday in Shenzhen, which included details on esports plans for Honor of Kings, CrossFire, Call of Duty Mobile, and QQ Speed. Min Li, general manager of TiMi Studios L2, Honor of Kings game producer; Yuan Yao, general manager of TiMi Studios J3; and Yijia Zhang, president of King Pro League (KPL) attended the conference.
The Esports Observer has reached out to TiMi Studios for more information about this conference.
Honor of Kings is one of the most profitable mobile games in the world. During 2020, game publishers such as Tencent saw a huge user increase in mobile games consumption, thanks mostly to the COVID-19 pandemic. In November, TiMi Studios announced that Honor of Kings surpassed 100M average daily active users. In addition (according to global analytics outlet Statista), Honor of Kings generated $2.5B total revenue worldwide in 2020, extremely close to the top mobile game revenue generator of 2020, PUBG Mobile ($2.6B total revenue).
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