What is it?
It’s an F2P version of Counter-Strike created by SmileGate out of South Korea. It’s been around since 2007. You can check it out on Twitch at just about any time of day.
Why?
It’s a humongous hit in China and a lot other territories. In fact, it boasts that largest active playerbase in the world for an FPS. It made about $1.3 billion dollars last year.
No, I mean why should I care?
Remedy Entertainment, the folks behind Max Payne, Alan Wake, and Quantum Break, are co-developing the sequel. They’re working on the story mode for Crossfire 2.
K… looks super dumb. Does not speak well of Chinese and Korean consumers. Isn’t there still a gender imbalance in China with many young Chinese men doomed to a life of involuntary abstinence?
And yeah, I don’t care. Reminds me of vdieogame concepts in the US in the early 90s. Purile, shallow and dumb.
TL;DR Counterstrike 1.5 clone that mastered the cosmetic monetization stuff CS introduced much later. Optimized for a place where consoles never took root for a variety of reasons, but cheap PCs did.
I don’t have hard numbers, but League of Legends and PUBG certainly made a ton of money off doing exactly that. Valorant looks like it may succeed as well.
It’s clear that we have inadvertently disappointed many of our players and fans that have stuck with us for a long time. You mean everything to us and I felt that you deserved more than just a simple patch note, which is why I wanted to take this opportunity to personally apologize for the current state of the game, take you through exactly how we plan to address the issues and ultimately ask for a chance to make it all up to you.
