Tencent game studio eyes global growth with Honour of Kings spin-off after user milestone

TiMi Studio Group – developer of Honour of Kings, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Delta Force – has reached 100 million monthly active users outside mainland China, a milestone that took the 17-year-old studio by surprise, according to Huang Shuo, TiMi’s global publishing director, in a recent interview with the South China Morning Post.

This marks the first time TiMi has disclosed its overseas user numbers. As a key revenue driver for Tencent’s extensive gaming operations, the studio is doubling down on global expansion with the coming multiplayer adventure action role-playing game (RPG), Honour of Kings: World.

Video gaming is a key revenue source for China’s most valuable tech conglomerate, which is aiming to boost overseas gaming sales as the domestic market begins to plateau.

Tencent’s latest financial results showed that its international game revenue surged 35 per cent in the second quarter from a year earlier, while domestic game revenue rose 17 per cent during the same period.

In recent years, Beijing has softened its regulatory stance on video games. While China enforces strict licensing and limits game time for players under 18 to three hours per week, authorities increasingly view local games as symbols of the country’s soft power, especially following the success of Black Myth: Wukong.