Arena Of Valor has been out for a few months in the United States, bringing the extremely popular Chinese MOBA to these Trump-infested shores. Tencent Games has slowly rolled in features and heroes onto the server before it unleashed a massive marketing wave across the internet. I consider myself an expert on the MOBA genre and when the game first released, I had the highest hopes. I even told NPR that AOV could be the first of its kind—a mobile MOBA that could get through to American audiences. After seeing how AOV ran its last few events, I’m not so sure.
To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Tencent had a special event where you could get a never-before-released skin for the game’s newest hero, Tel’Annas. In order to get the skin you need 120 “Vows Of Love”, so you have to buy Arthur’s Love Sworn skin, spend $20 to $50 on special Valentine’s day boxes and share all your new purchases on social media. A skin that can be bought on other servers for around $10 now costs more as an “event exclusive.” To me, that seems grossly abusive to the game’s fan base and is the action of a company that wants to suck every last penny out of our wallets.
Fans feel the same way, flooding the comment section of Arena Of Valor’s subreddit. “That's not an event that's a robbery,” wrote user 00Kikai. Other shared the same sentiment, confused as to why this was even allowed.
When the Spring Festival Chinese New Year event was announced, I thought this would be a great opportunity for the game’s community team to redeem itself. Arena Of Valor has a huge backlog of Chinese-inspired skins from the Chinese-version, Honour Of Kings. This could have been an amazing way to treat the fans right, but it looks like they’d rather make money instead. Two skins were released: Lu Bu Crimson and Fiery Violet, both can be obtained through loot boxes that cost 50 cents a piece. The marketing in the game makes Lu Bu Crimson look temporary, but it’s actually only on sale for $7 right now and will go back to $10 by the end of the week. So, if you want these skins, you either have to be a lucky dog or just wait for another update.
I understand Tencent Games is new to the North American market, but all these marketing tricks will alienate players. The Wonder Woman event ran in mid January and you could just earn the hero by playing the game. I guess that didn’t make them enough money, so they’re trying something greedier for the rest of the game’s slow launch. I still love playing the game, but there’s no way I’m giving these greedy devs any of my money, I’ll save it for the next Hearthstone expansion instead.
