Gameloft beefs up its mobile MOBA to be more like a PC game

Gameloft is launching a major update of its Heroes of Order & Chaos mobile game so that the game is more like a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game on the PC.

Making mobile MOBAs more like PC titles like League of Legends is a holy grail ambition of mobile game makers such as Gameloft, Super Evil Megacorp, and Fates Forever. But there’s usually some kind of trade-off the mobile developers have to make in order to get their games to work well on smartphones and tablets.

But Gameloft’s update is adding some features that you wouldn’t ordinarily see in mobile. One of these features is Spectator Mode, which allows you to watch your friends battle live with a dynamic camera that you can control. You can move the camera freely around the map to follow the battle, or you can tap a player’s hero icon to jump directly to them. You can use Spectator Mode to watch tournaments, comment on the action, or create commentary videos. You can stream live from inside a match, display character builds and other data on screen, and watch in a variety of modes.

Spectators can follow Gameloft-sponsored tournaments. The update is also adding two new heroes: Lu Yunfei, the Living Weapon fighter, and T’saad D’Velay, the Headless Horror guardian.

Players on iOS, where Twitch streaming is built into the game, can stream directly from within the mode. The game already has features such as hero banning in ranked, 3-vs.-3, and 5-vs.-5 matches. It has three maps, guilds, and seasons.

The MOBA category is one of the hottest for developers who are trying to succeed in free-to-play games.

Spectator mode in Heroes of Order & Chaos.
Spectator mode in Heroes of Order & Chaos.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.