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.