Tencent blocked a competitor from streaming China's biggest game
Honor of Kings, known as Arena of Valor in the West, is huge in China
Right now, gamers in China can watch people play Honor of Kings (known as Arena of Valor outside the country) on a lot of game streaming platforms. But a court ruling suggests that may change soon.
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But the court did not say that Xigua couldn’t host any Honor of Kings streams. In fact, it specifically says that there’s nothing wrong with individual users doing so.
Instead, the ruling targets Xigua’s strategy of recruiting Honor of Kings streamers. The court says that the company has been bringing streamers to its platform and taking a cut of their income -- an act which the court says hurt Tencent’s rights.
Still, Xigua is playing it safe: It’s removed Honor of Kings from its list of games, and the only three live streaming rooms we could find when searching for it were for the international version, Arena of Valor.
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It’ll be interesting to see where this goes from here, and whether Tencent uses the court’s ruling to go for other games. One of the other big games we saw on Xigua? PUBG Mobile, developed and published by Tencent.
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