Popularity chart of gacha games at an anime con in China as of May 2026.

[u/520mile]

Red dots=like, black dots=dislike.

Covered up games in images 3 & 7 are Snowbreak Honor of Kings & Reverse 1999, respectively.

EDIT: Image 3 is actually Honor of Kings, not Snowbreak. “SB” over HoK’s square means 傻逼(sha bi)=stupid/idiot/dumbass/asshole. Although HoK isn’t a gacha, it’s up there with a few other mobile games that are popular in China.

Part 2 thread with Arknights, Endfield, Nikki, and other games cut off in these pics here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/s/yvlpDV499B

Post credits: http://xhslink.com/o/1SW4p5Tf0vY

[u/Xarxyc]

Tencent asked Riot to make LoL Mobile after acquisition of the latter, but Riot refused as they didn't think LoL can be adapted to smartphones. So Honour of Kings was made instead, and in China it's the real LoL Mobile, as well as the most grossing game in the world. Wild Rifts was made in relative haste to salvage situation, but it was too late.

[u/Emotional-Egg-6031 → u/Xarxyc]

I still remember how stupid Tencent to halt all the tournaments in Europe and NA for arena of Valor(honour of kings global before they become global themselves) and basically kill growing game to launch another game with known IP to die again because nobody want to play it.

[u/Macankumbang → u/Emotional-Egg-6031]

Man such a shame, AoV was this close to greatness, it got international presence (SEA+Taiwan, EU, NA, Latam), world cups, it went to Asian games etc.... Now it just barely get life support for VN and TH. Tencent (mis)manage 3 moba games globally and all of them fumbled. Moontoon do nothing, and they win. 

[u/Emotional-Egg-6031 → u/Macankumbang]

Truee, such dumb corporate cannot fathom how people outside China playing games. They want triple gain with three games at once and fumble all of them at once too. Greediness from biggest game corporation in the world btw

[u/EligibleUsername → u/Macankumbang]

They should've just ported the original HoK to global from the beginning. It all stemmed from the irrational fear that "global audiences aren't gonna be receptive to Chinese characters", despite Koei Tecmo's Dynasty Warriors series being wildly popular and Wukong being one of the most recognizable cultural icons worldwide. They lost their initiative to Moonton, quickly stapled together the unbalanced mess that is AoV in response, and when they realized they fucked up and finally ported the actual HoK it's already too late for it to make any kind of big splash.

[u/Feiz-I → u/EligibleUsername]

What's worse is that for some reason, they even decided to launch an older version of HoK using an older engine which made it inferior to the chinese version in terms of just about everything. Not to mention that MLBB had already more or less monopolized the mobile moba market outside of china for nearly a decade at that point with WR also failing to make any big splashes against MLBB when it released 4 years earlier. Most people would just go back to MLBB because all their family and friends are playing it.

[u/Efficient-Ebb78 → u/Feiz-I]

Mlbb players didnt like wildrift because it was slower paced and casual players dont like recalling back to base just to buy items

[u/Feiz-I → u/Efficient-Ebb78]

Well it’s mostly because MLBB could be run on literal potatoes while WR required higher end phones to play, optimization was really bad. By then most people were also playing MLBB for a few years so there was some sunk cost fallacy of not wanting to restart all over again plus the friends and family factor.

WR itself wasn’t really that slower paced in comparison to MLBB back then when most average games lasted 20+ mins in both games unless it’s a stomp from one team.

[u/Efficient-Ebb78 → u/Feiz-I]

Theses are some complaints that i heard from several ppl

[u/Efficient-Ebb78 → u/EligibleUsername]

Its true ive seen so many global players complain about chinese names

[u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka → u/Macankumbang]

Reading the wiki it seems like:

1. We King or whatever before AoV was the most popular
2. The other competiting studio internally remade their game into what we now know as Honor of Kings, which was LoL clone
3. We King was remade to AoV to compete against the massively popular Honor of Kings
4. Honor of Kings was too popular and internal politics hamstrung AoV
5. Today AoV is just there, while Honor of Kings dominates

[u/giogiopiano → u/Xarxyc]

Even though getting hated like that, isn't wild rift still thriving just like HoK? And they got Valorant mobile too, which neat

[u/juniorjaw → u/giogiopiano]

It's not a "Wild Rift died" situation.

It's moreso similar to Blizzard with WoW & DOTA, where they had a cashcow but didn't see the vision and someone else took it and become the king while Blizzard scrambles to make their own IP only to be the second fiddle of the huge MOBA & esports scene.

Riot is simply repeating history.

[u/Sazyar → u/juniorjaw]

Pretty ironic since Guinsoo works at Riot. Dude was the developer of Dota WC3 before IceFrog(and Neichus) 

[u/Extreme-Tactician → u/Sazyar]

Guinsoo left a long time ago, I reckon.

[u/Xarxyc → u/giogiopiano]

Wild Rifts is not going to die, if that what you are wondering about. However, it is completely dwarfed by HoK. Wild Rifts could've been in the place of HoK if Riot wasn't so short-sighted back in 2015.

[u/GearExe → u/Xarxyc]

Its crazy they were completely oblivious with the fact that Asians are heavily leaning towards mobile gaming

[u/ItsKaZing → u/GearExe]

It's hilarious how biased they were on the western market during the early days and now it's the eastern market that is keeping the game afloat.

I remembered the days when the eSports scene on the west were heavily invested and now it can't even touch a single candle on eastern eSports scene

[u/Feiz-I → u/GearExe]

They were also pretty arrogant and thought people would just naturally come flocking to their game since it's the 'OG' that their competition copied and ripped off from so they barely did any advertisements and promotions during the release as well.

[u/junolow → u/Xarxyc]

Left of wildrift , is HoK which is completely blacken LMAO

[u/Thundergod250 → u/junolow]

Yeah but people just like to sht on to something popular.

Like I mean Global Gaming are shitting on League of Legends, Call of Duty, and Fortnite when these 3 are still one of the highest grossing games in the world.

Shitting on Solo Leveling and Demon Slayer. Also one of the most profitable anime in the planet.

HoK is still the highest grossing mobile game in the world

[u/Xarxyc → u/junolow]

Doesn't change the fact that HoK is the most grossing game on the planet.

[u/PlaneParamedic9799 → u/giogiopiano]

Nah sadly, tho not dead, they are too late, both for SEA market where Mobile moba thrived and China, Esport is completely non existance as well

[u/Same_Tune_8990 → u/giogiopiano]

ye but people much perfer mobile legends (its even a pretty big esport at least here in the phillipines) and honor of kings

[u/Efficient-Ebb78 → u/Xarxyc]

Wildrift had a horrible dev team....they took away voicechat and promised to bring it back every update which disappointed many players, they tried to make changes to the matchmaking but instead fucked it up because high rank players were being matched with bronze in rank mode and the devs said "this is normal" then changed it back and blamed the players for it...and yhe rank matchmaking was based off of your performance which means many players were purposely playing bad in order to get easier matches

[u/BlackBlueBlueBlack → u/Xarxyc]

the people yearn for mobile slop