Smilegate to close Berlin office just over a year after it opened
Crossfire developer shuts down European base as part of new business strategy
Smilegate, the studio behind the hugely popular first-person shooter Crossfire, will close its Berlin office by mid-year.
Opening its doors just over a year ago, Smilegate Europe's directive was to drive growth of the Crossfire IP in western markets, with a particular focus on esports.
With over 650 million registered players and eight million concurrent users, Crossfire is one of the most popular first-person shooters in the world, though it's success it mainly confined to China and Korea.
Despite just last month featuring in the Intel Extreme Masters in Poland for the second year running, Crossfire has seemingly been unable to make a large enough splash outside of Asia to justify a permanent European presence.
"The decision has been taken to implement Smilegate's new business strategy which foresees restructuring of certain parts of the business in the Smilegate group," said a Smilegate spokesperson.
"This will not have an impact on customer relations as all products, particularly Crossfire, will continue to be serviced by Smilegate as normal."