Tencent’s League of Legends spin-off wins Apple’s App Store award in bright spot for China’s gloomy games sector

The video game was awarded China Game of the Year, the first time the US tech giant has created a separate category for a game from an individual country. Apex Legends Mobile, co-developed by Electronics Arts and Tencent, won iPhone Game of Year, while Moncage, a puzzle adventure game developed by Chinese indie studio Optillusion and published by XD in March 2020, was named iPad Game of the Year.

In total, Apple selected 16 winners, including BeReal, the hit photo sharing app originally developed in France. As well as the League of Legends spin-off and Moncage, the other Chinese app named in the awards was GoodNotes 5, a note-taking app by Hong Kong-based Time Base Technology, which won the iPad App of the Year award.

In China, the App Store has come under increasing pressure to comply with Beijing’s strict data and internet licensing requirements. For example, on December 31, 2020 more than 40,000 game apps disappeared from the App Store in China to comply with a new requirement that only licensed games be made available to Chinese players.

China’s new data security and personal information protection laws have also increased the cost and difficulty of delivering overseas apps to Chinese users – on top of the challenges presented by Beijing’s strict content censorship.

According to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China had 1.35 million apps in the App Store as of the end of 2021, down from 1.4 million at the end of 2020.

League of Legends Esports Manager was released in July this year, and quickly became a hit, ranking No 4 among mobile game sales in mainland China in the first week. During that time, it generated more than two million downloads and over US$5 million of revenue, according to app tracker Qimai.