Tencent announced its 2025 Q2 results this week, and one game it has consecutively mentioned is Delta Force: monthly average DAU exceeded 20 million in July, versus 12 million in April (both China domestic figures).
Elsewhere on Steam, Delta Force has slowly but steadily gained on Marvel Rivals since both games launched last December, and is now neck and neck with Apex Legends.
It’s safe to say that Tencent, and specifically TiMi’s J3 Studio (also marketed as Team Jade?), has found the recipe for success in the HD shooter space globally. This capability was not built up overnight. J3 has been making shooters for a long time – Nizhan (PC, UE3) back in 2012; Crossfire Mobile (Unity) in 2015; one of Tencent’s 2 competing PUBG Mobile games in 2018 (the losing one which was shut-down, UE4); Call of Duty Mobile (Unity) in 2019; and finally Delta Force (cross-platform, Unreal).
One thing I heard recently is that J3 got some code access to Call of Duty during the development of CODM. This was cited as a factor that helped them improve their ability in making the gunplay feel good. Whether this anecdote is truth or fiction, J3 devs definitely would have had some amount of discussion and interaction with veteran Call of Duty devs, and it would have likely enhanced their domain expertise.
In contrast, Lilith Games’ Farlight 84 finally launched in China (also cross-platform, Unreal). Local media widely talked about its 6-year dev cycle and “1 billion RMB” budget (~$150M). Unfortunately the game is quickly dropping in the charts. I’ve been surprised that Lilith stuck with this game for so long, given its lack of market resonance from its previous launch outside of China.
A long-running theme of this blog is Chinese devs’ steady expansion in the global games market. They started with mobile leapfrogging, back in the early-mid 2010s, and first in China and then globally. But they were never going to be confined to the mobile platform. They are now knocking on the doors of the core HD genres – often referred to as “cars, guns and balls” (“车枪球”) locally. The contrasting outlooks of Delta Force and Farlight 84 show that the technical barrier to entry remains high, but some teams are getting through.