Honor of Kings Caught Stealing AGAIN — This Time It's a Patented CD Player Design from a Former Collaborator

Honor of Kings (王者荣耀), Tencent's cash-cow MOBA, has been caught plagiarizing yet again — and this time the irony is absolutely off the charts. The victim isn't some no-name indie artist; it's a well-known audio equipment brand with an actual registered design patent. And oh yeah — this brand was literally a former business partner of Honor of Kings. They collaborated, and then Honor of Kings just... yoinked their design. You can't make this stuff up.

The original NGA poster (OP) shared side-by-side comparison images showing that promotional materials for an Honor of Kings event bear a striking resemblance to a specific CD player design from the brand in question. The kicker? This was for a promotional campaign that was literally celebrating 'original content' — yes, the poster promoting originality was itself plagiarized. The levels of irony here are truly next-level.

The comment section went absolutely feral. One player wrote, "With my admittedly limited experience, I really can't see any way to defend this — it's straight-up copied." Another roasted them: "The promotional material for an 'original' activity is itself plagiarized, lol — these guys make billions off players and still serve up stolen content." The consensus is that Honor of Kings relies so heavily on gameplay that they think they can get away with being lazy on visuals.

Sharp-eyed netizens noticed that the victim brand's Weibo post calling out the plagiarism was "eloquently written, every word hitting hard" — a David-vs-Goliath underdog energy that resonated with the community. One commenter quipped that the small brand's righteous indignation put Tencent's usual corporate non-answers to shame. Another added: "TiMi Studios (天美) makes enough money to hire an entire battalion of designers, but they're still stuck on copy-paste mode."

As for how this happened, the community has already written the script: "Calling it now — they'll blame it all on the outsourcing company" became the top prediction in the thread. Design outsourcing (外包) is a notorious practice in the Chinese gaming industry where publishers hire third-party studios for asset creation, then throw them under the bus when plagiarism surfaces. One frustrated commenter wrote: "The outsourcing team didn't even bother to change it properly — just swapped the color and added two vents. Would it kill them to make it round or triangular?"

Veteran players were notably unfazed. "It's not news unless Tencent DOESN'T plagiarize," one wrote. "They've been doing this for nearly 30 years — at this point a year without a plagiarism scandal would be the real headline." Others predicted the inevitable outcome: "My bet: the outsourcing design company issues an apology to Tencent, and Tencent walks away clean. Hasn't this exact scenario played out before?"

As of now, there's been no official response from Tencent or TiMi Studios. But given Honor of Kings' track record of handling these controversies — usually a quiet settlement and maybe a half-hearted apology — most players aren't holding their breath for accountability. The difference this time is that the stolen design comes with a registered appearance patent (外观专利), which could make legal pushback harder to sweep under the rug.