League of Legends makes 20% less in China than the US, all because of a third-party plugin?

League of Legends is undoubtedly the most popular PC game in China, and it’s almost certainly one of the most profitable. But in terms of pure revenue, Tencent’s servers bring in about 20% less than what the game generates in the US, according to an involved source in this 17173 story about changes to Duowan’s third-party League of Legends plugin.

(See: Why can’t China beat Korea at League of Legends?)

The message announcing the skin-switcher has been taken offline.

LoL plugins are popular in China, and Duowan’s is one of the most widely used. It includes features like baron, dragon, buff, and ult timers, and those remain active, but last week it rather suddenly deactivated a more controversial feature: its local skin-switcher. This feature allowed players to play the game using champion skins they hadn’t purchased, with the caveat that the skins were only visible to them—their teammates and opponents would see them as playing with the default skins. When the feature was deactivated, users got a simple message by way of explanation:

We hope that in the future you will buy official skins, and support the game you love.

According to the 17173 story, the reason for the feature’s deactivation was increased pressure from the Tencent team. The dispute apparently never got to the point of any legal action, although it may have come close, and ultimately Duowan backed down and removed the feature from its plugin. Interestingly, though, a member of the Duowan team told 17173 that Chinese League of Legends is earning 20% less revenue than the game in the US, and that was the reason for the increased pressure on the plugin developer.

We have contacted Tencent for comment on this matter, and will update this story if we hear back.

Many Chinese commenters have scoffed at the number, or pointed out that it’s relatively meaningless as the average income of Chinese LoL players is also much lower than American players’, even if China does have a much larger player pool. But it’s worth pointing out that Tencent does face more competition from third-party plugins and sketchy online skin salesmen than Riot probably does in the US.

(via 17173)

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