Garena publishes its first English-language mobile game, and rips off Blizzard

House of Heroes, Garena’s first English language mobile card battle RPG game, hit app stores yesterday. It marks the regional publisher’s first move into English language mobile games.

House of Heroes is described as a “mid-core fast-paced strategy card game” that fills a gap between hardcore card RPGs and casual puzzle and running games. It was initially released as a Chinese game under the highly suspect 刀塔英雄 title, which, when translated literally, reads Dota Hero. The game features heroes and cards based off the popular Dota game. Interestingly enough, it was never originally dubbed Dota Hero. In its first iteration for the China market, developer China Mob Arts Entertainment Corp. titled it 全民英雄. It was Garena that changed its name to Dota Hero upon publishing it in Southeast Asia.

In spite of the game’s blatant misuse of IP—a trend among Southeast Asia publishers—House of Heroes is pretty fun, and great to look at. Its visuals are polished and the gameplay top-notch, albeit more passive than the popular Dota Legend. Players of House of Heroes will be able to indulge in both PvP, PvE, and tower challenge modes, as well as collect cards to build up their teams of heroes, and play with the gank feature. Garena has also optimized the game to better suit English-speaking users.

While this is the publisher’s first English language mobile game, we’ve no doubt others are on their way. Garena established its mobile business division early this year, and has already launched several games for non-English speaking territories, notable Bee123 under its Beetalk platform. The press release it sent regarding House of Heroes promises more games to come.

Today’s market may know Garena simply as a huge, Tencent-backed publisher of PC online games in Southeast Asia. However Garena’s original platform served as a way for players without legal access to Blizzard’s Battle.net servers to get together and enjoy a game of Warcraft III Dota. This game is not the first time it has infringed upon Blizzard’s property.

Nonetheless, it can’t be denied that Garena is a giant in online PC game publishing now, especially with its stranglehold on League of Legends in the region. While it’s unethical for Garena and fellow publisher Asiasoft to blatantly infringe on Blizzard’s intellectual property, this is obviously an attempt to cash in on Dota’s instant recognizability to gain traction with gamers.

We reached out to both Blizzard and Garena for comment. We will update if/when Blizzard replies, though the California-based company rarely does. Garena declined to comment. Looks like those of you spoiling for a big legal battle just have to suck it up and enjoy the game. Misuse of IP or not, it’s pretty fun.

House of Heroes is available for Android and iOS.

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