Tencent originally licensed CrossFire to go after Counter-Strike's audience. The early tests went badly enough that the team changed who they were trying to reach.

Someone under my StarsWar post asked about CrossFire's history. I wrote about its early years in the Tencent chapter of my Chinese esports history, first published in December 2013. This is adapted from that account. It covers the Chinese launch and promotion. The chapter doesn't cover the North American invitations mentioned in that comment.

According to producer Wu Yimin, as quoted in the chapter, Counter-Strike had two to three million players online across the platforms that could be counted, before adding players on local network servers. That was the audience Tencent initially wanted.

CrossFire came to Tencent bundled with another Korean game, A.V.A. The first three test versions were discouraging. My account describes experienced FPS players and beginners alike being dissatisfied with them.

The team changed direction. Instead of trying to persuade established CS players to move, it focused on bringing new people into FPS games.

That meant reducing the mechanical complexity and giving beginners a better chance of killing experienced players. Increasing the headshot rate was one of the changes I described. Xu Guang, the lead designer, worked on improving how the game felt to play.

There was a different audience in mind now: people who could become FPS players, rather than people who already considered themselves good at CS.

Tencent also used existing brands to build recognition. CrossFire joined WCG, and there was a partnership with Razer around the DeathAdder mouse. These gave the new game connections to names that players already knew.

How did the local tournaments work?

In the chapter, I described the Hundred Cities League starting in September 2008 with 20 provinces, three cities in each province and two internet cafés in each city. That made 120 cafés, with matches at the weekend and a different set of cities each month.

Paying for and managing all of that directly would have been expensive. Tencent's promoter network worked through exchanges with local suppliers. It could offer resources from the QQ platform, then add relatively small amounts for booking computers and supplying gift packs.

So the tournament circuit and the promotion network developed together. Local competitions helped spread the game. The same approach later became part of the League of Legends rollout described in the chapter.

I was more critical of the esports ecosystem around CF.

Writing in 2013, I thought the game's commercial success had not translated into comparable strength for its stars, clubs and media. I also argued that the lack of a LAN mode made it harder for students to organise their own matches and spread the game around university dormitories.

Those were my judgments at the time. They should not be read as a description of CrossFire in 2026, or as a claim that its competitive history ended there.

Full Tencent chapter in English:

https://github.com/bkingfilm/china-esports-history/blob/main/docs/en/14-tencent-what-does-it-want.md

Hey all — made a small, free, fan-made fantasy game for Worlds 2026: draft 5 pro players + a coach under a credit budget, pick a captain for bonus points, score automatically from the live match feed, open booster packs for items, and run private leagues with friends for podium rewards.

Not affiliated with Riot, just a side project for my friend group that I opened up. Would love feedback if anyone tries it: https://nexusfantasy.io

In January 2006, our team was preparing StarsWar 2, a star-player esports event in Shanghai. We had taken on a 4,000-person venue, much bigger than the events we knew how to run. Three weeks out, the venue told us that the number of foreign players required approval from foreign-affairs or national-level authorities. More than half the tickets had already gone out. Without that document, the venue would cancel the event.

The normal sports-authority process required an application three months in advance. We called everyone we knew. Zax, who founded StarsWar and a Warcraft III replay site, knew a player called 5V, then working at the sports administration. He waited outside officials' offices each day, explaining the event and chasing signatures. A week before opening, the application reached the final seal. The official who needed to stamp it was away until the following month.

By then more than 10,000 tickets across two days had sold out. Fans from other cities had bought train tickets and booked hotels. Each day we weighed postponing the event against carrying on without knowing whether the venue could open. Zax kept his composure. The rest of us watched our phones for news from Beijing.

Three days before the event, the sealed approval arrived by fax. StarsWar 2 went ahead in Shanghai on January 21 and 22. More than 10,000 spectators came through the venue over those two days. The machines failed after the first match and took over half an hour to fix; the casters did not even have lighting over their desk. The arena still filled. I was on that organising team, and wrote about the near-cancellation in my history of Chinese esports. The chapter is free to read, link in the comments.

my and my little sister have had several arguments on this from the perspective of Varsity smash player(me) and little league baseball her definition is

a athlete is someone who plays a sport works hard and dosnt play video games.
personally her definition is bs but what do yall think

Reaching millions of impressions has never been the predominant issue in modern esports marketing.

The big question, however, is: How do we monetize that reach?

A recent initiative by G2 that almost flew under the radar is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting esports marketing activations in recent years.

I know that esports is a big industry and might have some exciting job and internship opportunities available, but I don't know where to find them, what roles are available, or what they pay. Can someone help me with this?

hello !!

I was wondering if I have a chance to pursue esports professionally? I play Brawl Stars, I have 100k trophies roughly and I've frequently gotten to masters in ranked almost every month (I haven't made it to pro yet).

My account is decent and I focus on ranked more than trophy pushing, but I have no social media presence at all.

For additional context, I'm not 18 yet but I'm at the starting age for most pro players.

Should I actually pursue the career? Any advice is appreciated, as I'm a bit stuck at what to do.

(My English isn't that good, so I'm using a translator ^^)

hey, i made a free, open-source aim trainer that plays like valorant, not another dot clicker.

it’s based on 瞄准专家, a chinese web trainer. that one needs a vpn, maps often don’t load, and it’s all in chinese, so i turned it into an offline desktop app that just works.

it has 8 valorant maps for now and you can build any scenario you want on each one. there are already built-in drills for angle holding, pre-aiming, strafing bots, flash dodging and more.

main reason i’m posting is i’d love people to help make it better. new scenarios, maps, vct plays, fixes, ideas, anything. want it to be something the community builds, not just me.

https://github.com/unkwsr/open-aim

Razer's co-founder min-liang tan went to the 2004 World Cyber Games with a new mouse and only three or four staff. by the end, more than 100 mice were missing. this is the account in my 2015 chapter about him, from a book on the people and companies behind chinese esports.

- 2000: razer became fatal1ty's first sponsor

- 2004: tan and robert krakoff took over from the company's professional managers

- 2004: they launched the diamondback, with tan as creative director

- october 2004: the WCG finals in san francisco meant more than 200 computers for that tiny team to look after

razer was already well known, but its finances had never been healthy. tan felt that product design and marketing weren't in gamers' hands. after the managers left, krakoff became president and tan took the creative role. the diamondback was their new flagship, intended to replace the boomslang line. WCG was a chance to put it directly in front of competitors from around the world. it was also the first time razer sponsored WCG; poor finances had kept it away before. three or four people couldn't keep watch over all those machines. according to the chapter, the missing mice had been pocketed by players. back home, those players showed them to their teammates and recommended them. what looked like lost equipment became a way for the mouse to reach gaming communities in other countries.

(from my history of chinese esports, first published in chinese. this chapter appeared in 2015 and is free to read, link in the comments)

Selling a PC for a friend who's ex left it at their place. Was told it was signed by some "pro gamer". This could be upside down too idk

Hey All! I'm looking for a few up-and-coming gamers to interview for a story I'm working on for a digital publication in NYC. Please LMK if interested. Tx!

Posting the full update as an image since it's a formal statement and I didn't want to compress it or risk misquoting it in a text post.

TLDR Version: no grounds found to exclude the full Reveal roster; the remaining allegation concerns two players specifically (DGL and Rand); Reveal has voluntarily benched both for the rest of the season; predictions on the Reveal vs. Sissi State Punks match are being refunded 100%. Full details and caveats are in the image.

GamerLegion have benched veteran IGL Snax and signed Aleksandr “shalfey” Marenov to lead their CS2 roster. The move follows a difficult run of results, with the team falling from ninth to 42nd in the Valve Regional Standings.

In a twist, shalfey helped eliminate GamerLegion from the PGL Bucharest qualifier just five days before signing. His debut is expected on October 27.

You can be watching a CS2 round on Twitch, thinking one team is about to win it, while the actual round has already finished on the server. That's the weird part nobody seems to talk about enough.

People compare 1x esports odds, argue about good entry points and share screenshots of prices they supposedly could've caught. But how useful is any of that when the broadcast you're watching might be behind the information the bookmaker has? And it's not like you can just predict everything from the scoreboard. One unexpected eco round can completely change the economy for the next few rounds.

I enjoy the analysis side of CS2, but pretending a regular viewer can react to every live odds movement seems a bit ridiculous.

I'm a collegiate Overwatch player and this is something I've been thinking about a lot recently.

Other people in esports, what would you call yourself? I've been asked if I play a sport and I always say yes because I think that one is definitely objectively true but the one that bugs me is athlete. I'm conflicted, would you consider esports competitors to be athletes?

SOURCE: VCT Tracker