China’s biggest mobile game crashes during Labor Day holiday

Honor of Kings, the Chinese version of Arena of Valor, faced another outage as people turn to mobile games instead of traveling because of the coronavirus pandemic

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Honor of Kings was the second highest-grossing game worldwide in March, according to Sensor Tower. (Picture: Reuters)

Xinmei Shen

Published: 7:27pm, 1 May 2020Updated: 7:27pm, 1 May 2020

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Chinese gamers found themselves unable to play the country’s biggest game during the Labor Day holiday on Friday, and Tencent blames AI. A new mode in Honor of Kings, the Chinese version of Arena of Valor, lets players challenge the game’s AI. It proved popular enough to result in an outage for some players.

When trying to load the game, some players said they got stuck at pairing while trying to join the mobile online battle arena game with other players. Complaints about the game crashing eventually got the topic trending on Weibo. In a Weibo post from the official Honor of Kings account, Tencent said the problems are being fixed.

Honor of Kings was a hit before the coronavirus outbreak, but the pandemic has sent the game’s popularity soaring. As a result, the game also faced an outage in February. Compared with last Labor Day holiday, 40% fewer people expressed interest in travelling this year, according to a CCTV report that cites a survey conducted by the state-run China Tourism Academy. Other mobile games have also seen a boost in users during the pandemic, including Tencent’s other hit game, PUBG Mobile.