Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, commonly referred to simply as Mobile Legends, is a multiplayer online battle arena game developed and published by Moonton, a subsidiary of ByteDance. Since its release in 2016, MLBB has been free-to-play and is monetized through purchasable character and cosmetic customization. The game is primarily played on smartphones and tablets and is available for iOS, Android and HarmonyOS.
In its core modes, Classic and Ranked, the game places two teams of five players against each other in real time, with matchmaking usually taking 20 to 60 seconds and matches lasting between 10 and 30 minutes on average. Following the classic MOBA format, players compete across three lanes, aiming to destroy the opposing base while defending their own and securing objectives to gain an advantage. Outcomes are determined by player skill, strategy, and teamwork rather than paid progression. The game also features a Brawl mode, in which teams compete on a single lane using randomly assigned heroes in shorter, fast-paced matches, typically played casually or to complete in-game tasks.
Following its success, Moonton has tapped into the esports scene with the creation of several regional tournaments dubbed as Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Professional League that serves as a qualifier for the Mobile Legends World Championships from teams worldwide. The game is particularly popular in East and Southeast Asia and was among the six titles selected for the inaugural esports medal event at the 2019 Southeast Asian Games. It has since continued as a featured title at the 2021, 2023 and 2025 editions. The game has also seen some popularity in Europe. In January 2026, the Esports World Cup Foundation announced the game as the first of the 16 "world-class titles" that national teams will compete in at the inaugural Esports Nations Cup 2026. The game will also debut as a medalled event at the 2026 Asian Games.
Originally titled Mobile Legends: 5v5 MOBA, the game was first released in 2016 and became widely popular, as it was the first fully mobile-based MOBA with no direct competition, albeit not the first of its kind due to being released later than other games such as Vainglory. It however faced some criticism for its perceived similarities to League of Legends, which at the time had no official mobile version. As a result, Riot Games filed lawsuits against Moonton for alleged copyright infringement in 2017 and 2022. While they were awarded some damages, they failed to have the game removed. A 2022 lawsuit in the United States was dismissed, with the court ruling that the case should be heard in China. Ultimately, Riot Games and Moonton reached a settlement in 2024, resolving all intellectual property disputes. In 2020, the game was banned in India along with 58 other Chinese applications after the 2020 China–India skirmishes, although it remains widely played through the use of virtual private networks. That same year, the game crossed 1 billion downloads worldwide. In 2025, the game was briefly banned under the United States' Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act due to its association with ByteDance. The de jure ban has since not been enforced and the game is still available in the United States.
Gameplay
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is a multiplayer online battle arena game designed for smartphones and tablets. The game is free-to-play and is only monetized through in-game purchases such as characters and skins. Each player can control a selectable character, called a Hero, with unique abilities and traits. There are six roles that define the main purpose of heroes: Tank, Marksman, Assassin, Fighter, Mage, and Support. These roles determine the responsibilities of players for their respective teams. Players can also set specific builds for heroes which include in-game items and emblems.Classic and Ranked
The two main modes in the game are Classic and Ranked. In Ranked, two teams of five players go against each other in real-time. Players will be matched in correspondence with their current ranking. There are seven ranks in the game with Warrior being the lowest followed by Elite, Master, Grandmaster, Epic, Legend, and the highest rank, Mythic. Mythic itself has sub-ranks which are Mythical Honor, Mythical Glory, and Mythical Immortal. A player can only invite and form a team with other players of similar rank or players that are one rank higher or lower.Taking down the opposing base is the main goal to achieve victory. There are three lanes in the game: The gold lane, exp lane, and the mid lane. Depending on what side of the map a player starts on, the gold and exp lanes will be switching places. Between each lane is the jungle. The jungle can be divided into four parts: two between the enemy's lanes and two between a player's team lanes. The jungle has different creeps and monsters that offer buffs, experience, and gold.
A player cannot attack the enemy base directly without taking down opposing turrets in at least one lane first. Each lane has three turrets that shoot at heroes and deal a ton of damage. To attack them without taking damage, a player needs help from their team's minions. Minions constantly spawn at the teams' bases and travel down along each lane. The team to successfully destroy all the turrets in one or all lanes will increase their chances of destroying the opposite team's base.
In Classic, the gameplay is similar. However, winning or losing a match won't affect a player's ranking. Players can also form a whole team regardless of their rank differences and freely choose any heroes along with weekly free ones and any trial card they possess.
Other modes
Arcade is an additional game mode in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang that can time-to-time be playable during special events, holidays, or occasions. The mode feature various strategy based sub-games.Brawl is a game mode where players are given two random heroes in their inventory at the start of the game. This mode contains only one lane with two turrets defending the base of both teams. Items can only be bought inside the base and players that leave it cannot re-enter unless when respawning. A special variation called Shadow Brawl is released from time to time. The difference is players at the start of the game will choose from the same set of heroes. The hero with the most votes will be used by the entire team.
As an auto battler game, Magic Chess is about strategy. A player, represented by a "commander", faces seven other players over the course of several rounds on a chess-like battlefield. Instead of fighting one's self, a player buys, equips, and lines up units that constitute Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Heroes. Apart from different types of "synergies", a player has to delegate the random items they gained while also taking care of the specific position of each hero on the battlefield. Additionally, a player can increase their gold income by economizing or going on winning/losing streaks. In the end, a player has to eliminate the other competing players by reducing the health points of their commander to zero. Depending on a player's placement, they will gain a certain amount of rank points after the game. Starting at Warrior, players can rank up to Mythic similar to the core game's ranking system. In update patch note 1.4.60, Magic Chess was included as a permanent arcade game mode, after temporarily being added in January 2020. This and Brawl are the only permanent arcade modes so far.
Various arcade games use the same battlefield as rank/classic mode but with twists. These modes include Mayhem, where all heroes' abilities are enhanced and a player starts the game at level four, Death battle, where players will play different heroes in a single match, and Mirror, where players of the same team will be using the same hero throughout the match based on majority voting.
Other game modes include an option to fight against AI heroes, custom 5v5 battles with other players, 1v1, and hero training.
Development
After Moonton's staff of 20 finished developing its first game called Magic Rush: Heroes, released in 2015 to commercial success, they proceeded with developing the company's next project, a mobile multiplayer online battle arena game later titled Mobile Legends. The staff's experience with engineering Magic Rush: Heroes for a global market, such as customizing its features for the differing cultures and state of telecommunications of various countries, became beneficial for them to effectively design Mobile Legends as an appealing game for global players. Mobile Legends was released by Moonton with the subtitle "5v5 MOBA" on 14 July 2016. The game was distributed by Elex Tech in the United States. However, after the lawsuit from Riot Games in 2017, Moonton has removed the game from Google Play and re-released it as Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.On 18 July 2019, Moonton announced Mobile Legends: Bang Bang 2.0 via its Epicon 2019 conference. MLBB 2.0 consists of an engine upgrade to a more recent version of the Unity game engine from version 4 to version 2017. Moonton also promised faster loading times and start-up speed of up to 60%. Other improvements of the update include reduced lag, improved character modelling, and the new in-game map "Imperial Sanctuary". The update helped increase the cross-platform social media views earned by the game from 56 million in September 2019 to 76 million the next month making the game ranked fourth of all channels from all gaming brands in the US.
In a report published in November 2019, Check Point discovered that the Google Play package for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang was affected by the then long-known, which could have potentially allowed arbitrary code execution on the server end. This vulnerability originates in RTMPdump 2.4, the code for which was likely adapted through libraries for the in-game livestreaming functionality. Other apps discovered to contain the vulnerability included Facebook, Messenger and SHAREit.
In early 2020, the game was heavily affected by third-party plugins and scripts that allowed map-hacks prompting Moonton to publicly publish punishments made through its social media accounts revealing the account ID of the banned players. Some accounts were also hacked due to exploits to Device ID that may have been due to the third-party scripts according to an official statement from Moonton. In response, patch 1.4.86 enabled two-factor authentication when logging in to a new device.
Announced on 5 June 2020, Project NEXT was Moonton's next big project slated for Mobile Legends: Bang Bangs 5th anniversary. This included changes in user interface, revamps to several older heroes' 3D models, skill sets, stories, and voice lines. They announced a method called "Smart Targeting" to further improve accuracy. There were multiple changes that were specifically aimed at providing players with a much-improved gameplay experience, including the launch of a revamped version of the Brawl game mode. New login events, exclusive cosmetics, and a new hero was introduced with this update. Project NEXT was divided into three phases: The first phase was released on 22 September 2020, the second phase was released on 15 June 2021, and the third phase was released on 21 September 2021.
The game has since crossed 1 billion downloads, with a peak monthly active users of 100 million.