With over 200 million registered users and an active player base of 55 million on the Chinese mainland alone, Tencent’s "Honor of Kings" – also known as "King of Glory" – became the world’s top grossing mobile game this year. 

Following this success, the company is launching the game on mobile platforms in America and Europe, further consolidating its position in the online video games market.

But even though "Honor of Kings" will be ported in its original form, it’s still getting a major overhaul for new markets.

From a gameplay perspective, "Honor of Kings" will remain the same. Functioning as a mobile equivalent to the incredibly popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game "League of Legends" - which was developed by Riot Games but ultimately bought by Tencent - the game takes two teams of five players and places them head-to-head in an arena, with the aim of the game being to fight to the opponent’s base and destroy it. 

The linear nature of the game world and the competitive, team-based structure allows "Honor of Kings" to play out like a sport, and the 60-plus roster of playable characters creates a vast amount of potential for in-game combinations.

In a move to satisfy Western sensibilities, the game is getting a new title, "Arena of Valor", and a significant aesthetic revamp with many of the characters getting modified to reflect Western rather than Eastern fantasy tropes, taking cues from Norse, Greek and Roman mythology. 

Besides this, Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment have made a deal with Tencent, allowing them to put their characters into the game. 

So far only Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman have been added but more are planned. The only character to appear in both versions of the game is Lu Bu, a notorious warlord from the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. 

However, this is likely due to his repeated appearances in Koei Tecmo’s popular "Dynasty Warriors" video games rather than him being particularly well-known as a historical figure in the West.

While the expansion can be considered a simple case of good business sense, the game has received significant criticisms in China, suggesting that there may be a preemptive, defensive aspect behind the creation of the English language version.

One of the largest has been how the game uses Chinese history and, while it’s a fairly innocuous change on the surface, the removal of the word “Kings” from the English title reflects Tencent’s removal of the game’s historical elements, thus avoiding any further controversy. 

In March this year, an article in the Guanming Daily newspaper accused Tencent of rewriting history with their inconsistent use of iconography, which could cause younger players to confuse fact with fiction.

Speaking to Sixth Tone, Teng Li said her son, who is in the third grade, is a fan of the game and she hopes that it can help him learn about Chinese history, however “he must know Li Bai is a great poet and not an assassin,” suggesting that the Guanming Daily may have a point. 

This isn’t the only historical figure who has been radically altered. Jing Ke, for example, is known for his assassination attempt on the first emperor of China in 227 BC, but in the game, he is now a cutesy female action hero with a massive heart-emblazoned sword.

However, Lu Yifu, who started playing the game two months ago, said that the differences are so big that it’s easy to tell the difference. “It’s just a game. Why do we have to be burdened with so many concerns while playing a game?”

The more pressing concerns though came from adults, such as parents and teachers, who believe that children are becoming addicted to the game. 

This kind of concern is nothing new but it became pressing enough that it got reported by Zhang Yang of the People’s Daily newspaper, who described the game as “poison” and a “drug” in an article titled “Do not let online games become your whole life”. 

“The game is a way of socialization,” he said, “but if playing time is too long, it can no longer be called ‘addicted’ or ‘social,’ it must be called miserable.” 

He went on to cite cases such as a 13-year-old gamer who committed suicide after arguing with his father about the game and a 17-year-old who suffered from a cerebral inflammation after playing the game for 40 hours non-stop.

This article was enough to wipe 17.5 billion US dollars from Tencent’s share price and prompt them to introduce an age verification system that limits players under 18 to only one or two hours per day. 

The company says these are “the strongest anti-addiction measures ever” in Chinese video games. As "Honor of Kings" is free to play but funded by in-game purchases, this severely limits how much income the company can make, which according to Thomas Chong, an analyst for BOC International, will be over half of their mobile revenue, a figure predicted after the game made 441 million US dollars in April this year alone.

Arena of Valor is currently available in Europe and is open for North American registration, with their official release date listed as November 2017.