WITH as many active players as the population of Germany, the Honor of Kings mobile game will likely help boost Shenzhen-based Tencent’s quarterly revenue by about 50 percent, shrugging off play-time curbs imposed by the firm to address addiction woes.

The fantasy role-playing game based on Chinese historical characters has became so popular that Tencent had to introduce curbs on play time last month amid reports of serious addiction among children. But the restrictions have spawned grey online markets in game accounts, snapped up by younger players trying to find a way to get around the limits.

“Asian markets have better outlook. The United States and European Union would still be a longer-term endeavour. I think culture is a major reason,” said Bocom International analyst Connie Gu.

Tencent is expected to launch Honor of Kings, which boasts of some 80 million active daily players, in the United States as early as this year, having released variants of the game under different names in markets including Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam and Europe.

“We are conservative for the time being on U.S. revenue in our model. Overseas expansion for Chinese gaming publishers is still difficult, there are few successful examples,” Gu said.

Tencent, the world’s largest gaming company, is expected to report a second-quarter revenue of 52.98 billion yuan (US$7.9 billion), up 48 percent from a year ago, according to an average forecast from 10 analysts.

(SD-Agencies)