China's 10 Most Popular PC Games (August 2013)

We like to check in on China’s most popular games from time to time. Using data collected by Tencent Games based on which games are played the most often in China’s internet cafes, we can get a pretty good idea of which games are doing the best right now in the Middle Kingdom. We last checked in back in July to look at the most played games in June, so we thought it’d be interesting to go back again now and look at the most played PC games in China for August to see what (if anything) has changed. Here’s the list:

1. League of Legends. The DOTA-style competitive online game that has been immensely popular worldwide.
2. CrossFire. China’s version of Counter-Strike (a tactical first-person shooter), another oldie-but-goodie that was actually developed by Korean devs SmileGate and released in 2007.
3. DNF (also called Dungeon & Fighter, Dungeon Fighter Online, etc.). A Korean-developed (Neople) beat-’em-up game that’s pretty old (released back in 2005) but still very popular in China.
4. QQ Speed. A 2008 racer developed and released by — no big surprise here — Tencent Games.
5. QQ X5* (QQ炫舞). A casual dance game also first released by Tencent in 2008.
6. AgainstWar (逆战). A Tencent-developed online first-person shooter first released in 2011.
7. Dream of the Three Kingdoms (梦三国). A fantasy battle game developed by Hangzhou-based Electric Soul and released in 2009.
8. DOTA 2. The Valve-developed sequel to the popular Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft 3 that spawned the whole MOBA gaming genre.
9. NBA2KOL. As you can probably guess, this is an online basketball game developed by 2K Sports.
10. Fantasy Journey to the West 2. A fantasy RPG developed by Netease and released this past June; the sequel to the ultra popular original that was first released all the way back in 2003.

DOTA 2, which hit this list for the first time in July, it at its highest-ever position in the number 8 slot, and it’s also worth noting that Asia-developed shooters AgainstWar and CrossFire have succeeded in pushing the Western-developed Counter-Strike: Online out of the top ten. Finally (though unsurprisingly), Fantasy Journey to the West 2 has replaced its predecessor (Fantasy Journey to the West) in the final slot of the top ten list. But the top of the list looks very similar to a few months ago, and League of Legends continues to maintain its longstanding hold on the number one spot.

*This game has an alternate version that also made the top ten list on QQ Games’s site, but since they’re just two different versions of the same game, I’ve left the alternate version out of my own list.

(via Tencent Games)