After Reaching 450 Million Users: This Tencent Shooter, Celebrating Its 10th Anniversary, Is Set to Go Global

77 version updates, 450 million registered users, and 1 billion esports views—these are the 10th-anniversary achievements that *CrossFire: Gun War* has just announced.

When Xu Guang, General Manager of the K1 Partnership Department at Tencent Interactive Entertainment, announced this set of statistics to the full house at the Zhengzhou Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium during the 10th Anniversary Celebration of CrossFire Mobile, I was sitting in the audience and could feel the excitement roaring and echoing throughout the 10,000-seat arena.

It’s actually quite thought-provoking. In 2025—a long-awaited “big year for shooters”—people are discussing the rise of the “search-and-destroy” genre, new content trends in FPS PVE, and the release of major international titles like *Battlefield 6* and the full version of *Escape from Tarkov*…But when it comes to changes in CFM, quite a few people look completely bewildered.

But this is largely a blind spot caused by a collective mindset that “seeks novelty and the unusual.” Judging by its actual performance—whether it’s consistently ranking in the Top 3,its brief stint at the top of the iOS best-seller chart this past March, the 12 million DAU figure announced in August, or the repeated recognition in Tencent’s financial reports—all of these indicate that, after a decade, CFM is clearly still a “pivotal product” capable of reshaping the mobile FPS market. The story behind it deserves far greater attention.

Right now, this product—which is in its prime—is writing the story of its second golden decade—and the starting point of this new chapter is a breakthrough that transcends national borders.

01

From a Nationally Popular IP Mobile Game to “CFM for the World”

During the product and IP launch segment of the 10th-anniversary celebration, CFM producer Da Fei took the stage to unveil a major upcoming initiative for CFM—the globalization plan. As the first official announcement of the event, the significance of this plan goes without saying.

They have divided the entire plan into two levels. First, at the product level, according to Da Fei, CFM will launch “CrossFire: Legends” internationally, building on the success it has achieved in the domestic market over the past decade. On December 16, “CrossFire: Legends” will debut in the Southeast Asian market, followed by a global rollout.

Second, on the esports front, in 2026, the CFL will take its first step toward international expansion in Southeast Asia by launching the CFLC league.The inaugural CFLC season will begin next January, featuring teams from five countries: Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia. Several top esports clubs from Southeast Asia have already passed the open tryouts.

For an evergreen game to evolve from a “national” phenomenon to an “international” one undoubtedly opens up vast new possibilities for its future. Moreover, the strategy of using esports to foster the game’s ecosystem and leveraging that ecosystem to break into new markets has been repeatedly validated by the CF IP over the years.Although global game launches are no longer a novelty, this columnist believes that for CFM, choosing Southeast Asia as the first landing point to kick off its global expansion is an excellent move at this juncture.

On the one hand, the CF PC game—which took the lead in embracing globalization—has already amply demonstrated the global influence of the CrossFire IP.Take the CFS World Finals currently underway, for example: since the inaugural tournament in 2013, it has grown to bring together 16 teams from six major global regions. Aside from the four CFPL teams, the remaining 13 are international teams from the Philippines, Vietnam, North America, and other regions.

CF has a particularly strong presence in the Southeast Asian market. For example, in 2022 and 2023, CrossFire was selected as an official event at the Southeast Asian Games, and the Indonesian team—which won the bronze medal in 2023—even traveled to Hangzhou as a full squad for a training camp prior to the competition.Da Fei, a CFM producer, also revealed at the 10th-anniversary event that the CFM test events they held in various regions across Southeast Asia this year were well-received by players and garnered positive reviews. These developments foreshadow CFM’s outstanding global performance in the future.

Indonesian CF Players Win Medals at the Southeast Asian Games

In addition, the Southeast Asian gaming market—particularly the mobile gaming market—is currently experiencing rapid growth. A report by Niko Partners released in September of this year predicts that the Southeast Asian gaming market will maintain an annual growth rate of 3.8% over the next five years, reaching a market size of $6.48 billion.A report by Sensor Tower indicates that mobile game downloads in Southeast Asia surged to second place globally in the first quarter of this year, making it one of the few markets worldwide to maintain rapid growth amid the “saturation era.”

Entering the Southeast Asian market at this juncture is not just about “capitalizing on the market’s potential at rock-bottom prices”; it is also an opportunity to grow alongside a new generation of local players.Just as CrossFire once became the “shooter dream of 300 million mouse users,” CFM also has the potential to become a “collective memory” of the FPS genre for a generation of Southeast Asian mobile gamers. Over the coming years, it will gradually expand and flourish, serving as a wide-open window for the export of our products.

We’ll still have to wait a while before we can actually see the results of CFM’s global expansion, but the very fact that we “dare to take action” speaks volumes: we’re not content to stay in the comfort of our comfort zone; we never stop exploring new directions; and we take the initiative to drive our products’ growth.

As Xu Guang repeatedly mentioned in his on-stage speech, CFM hopes to continually push the boundaries of mobile FPS games. The secret to this game’s enduring popularity actually lies in the fact that it has repeatedly broken those boundaries over the years.

02

Evergreen's Blueprint Knows No Bounds

Our deep familiarity with the CF IP can easily lead us to overlook the many contributions this mobile game has made to the entire genre. For example, it was Tencent’s first major DAU product to take on the “PC-to-mobile” transition, and it is currently the only long-standing title in the mobile FPS market to have reached the milestone of its tenth anniversary.

This also means that, compared to other products, CFM got off to an earlier start, laid its foundations sooner, and became a model for others to emulate at an earlier stage. For example, while mobile FPS esports strategies are now commonplace, the world’s first professional mobile FPS league was actually the “CFM Super League”—the predecessor to today’s CFML.

As one of the pioneers of dual-stick shooters, CFM was the first to elevate the mobile shooting experience to professional-grade standards through optimizations such as increasing frame rates and improving gyroscope sampling accuracy. Many of the design principles they established have long since become part of the foundational logic of similar products.

Even beyond the shooting gameplay, they continued to launch modes such as “Desert Island Training” and “Biohazard Battlefield,” propelling the entire *CrossFire Mobile* into a platform for innovation across various gameplay types.Some of these seemingly “impossible” combinations of innovations have actually become massive hits—such as the card game “Youyou Cards,” which players turn to when they’re “tired or sleepy.” Originally launched as a limited-time mode, it has now made a comeback in Season 3.

While these things may seem commonplace in hindsight, they were all built on bold “boundary-pushing” innovations when they were first launched. On the occasion of its tenth anniversary, let’s give this product a fair assessment: it is an innovation leader in the mobile FPS genre. And this decisiveness—the ability to turn ideas into reality—will also be the defining theme of CFM’s next decade.

In addition to the globalization plan, Planner Da Fei announced a series of updates scheduled for CFM in 2026, which feature quite a few highlights.

For example, in the Spring Festival update, following past cross-brand collaborations with IPs like “The Seven Little Gourd Brothers”—which have repeatedly sparked widespread popularity beyond their original fan bases—CFM has chosen *The Wandering Earth 2* as the next stop for its IP collaborations.Centered around the iconic space elevator concept from *The Wandering Earth*, the game will launch all-new collaboration gameplay during the Spring Festival to evoke a “Chinese New Year atmosphere” through “Chinese-style sci-fi.” The highly acclaimed *Armor Hero* collaboration is also set to return, and new maps such as “Bio-New Year Square” will be available in the Spring Festival update.

In the major update coming this March, they’ll also launch an interactive cinematic gameplay feature—when Da Fei announced this plan, players throughout the venue and their fellow gamers couldn’t help but break into smiles.This shift in genre came as a bit of a “surprise,” but upon closer reflection, when combined with the CrossFire universe, it certainly opens up plenty of room for “creative fun.” In an era that emphasizes “emotional value,” exploring different ways for games to accompany players and build emotional connections might just spark some unexpected magic.

Finally, Da Fei also revealed that they are planning a comprehensive quality upgrade for players—from graphics quality to UI control logic, map structure, and scene layout—involving in-depth optimizations at the engine level. When the before-and-after comparison appeared on the big screen, many audience members gasped in amazement and pulled out their phones to take photos.

As the industry’s expectations for game lifecycles have shifted from short to long, the question “How can a game remain evergreen?” has come up more and more frequently in my conversations with peers in recent years.Teahouse has covered many long-lasting titles. In a sense, whether it’s *Honor of Kings* or *CrossFire*, they essentially share a single goal: taking good care of their players; and ultimately, they both exhibit the same behavior: constantly surpassing themselves.

The same goes for CFM on its 10th anniversary: it maintains a sense of freshness for players through endless gameplay innovation; it builds mutual trust with players through continuous product refinement and the incorporation of feedback;and by exploring diverse channels of communication with players through charitable initiatives and collaborations with celebrity IPs—as seen at this press conference, where they showcased charitable programs such as “Frontline Dreams” and “Glacier Defenders,” and invited celebrities like Da Zhangwei and Song Yuqi to appear in person—all of these initiatives require a significant investment of resources to bring to fruition.

Through long-term version updates and operations, a game gradually pushes its own boundaries, establishes a firm foothold at the forefront of the industry, and even sets its sights on ambitious goals such as “going global” and “globalization,” thereby taking on greater social responsibility.

A while back, a meme among CFM players trended on social media: “What’s the deal with registering for CFM in 2016?” And when Xu Guang asked the entire crowd at the Zhengzhou Olympic Sports Center, “How many of you have been playing CF for ten years?”, I was immediately surrounded by a sea of raised arms all around me.It’s extremely rare to see a scene like this at other anniversary events.

So, back to the question: “How to stay relevant?” The answer to this question lies entirely in CFM—an entity that has been “overlooked” by analysts.