Call of Duty: Mobile

Did You Know?

• The Call of Duty: Mobile World Championship 2020 Tournament featured more than $1 million in total prizes.
• The 2021 tournament featured a $2 million prize pool.
• Platforms such as Money Gaming host regular COD:Mobile Battle Royale events allowing players to compete for real cash prizes.

Gameplay

Players can jump into two main ways to play: multiplayer and battle royale. Both offer ranked or casual matches, plus the option to create a private room to team up with friends. The game uses two currencies: Credits, which you earn just by playing, and COD Points, which you buy with real cash. You can enjoy everything without spending money, but some exclusive character and weapon skins require COD Points. Extra modes include Zombies, with an endless survival option and a Raid mode where you survive a set number of rounds then fight a boss, plus DMZ: Recon, a mode where you battle AI and other players to extract loot and weapons for cosmetic rewards.

Seasonal updates

Call of Duty: Mobile keeps things fresh by rolling out new content in seasonal updates. Each season introduces a Battle Pass packed with new weapons, character skins, maps, and time-limited events. These seasons also bring special challenges and game modes that let players earn in-game items and experience points. The whole season is built around a central theme, which often highlights teamwork, futuristic designs, or military settings. This theme-based approach gives each season a consistent look and feel. The Battle Pass itself has two tracks: a free one and a premium one. Players can unlock rewards on both, but premium prizes—like character skins and special decorations—require the paid version. Seasonal updates frequently include limited-time events with special objectives, rotating game modes, and login bonuses. Once an event ends, its rewards are gone for good. Beyond new content, these updates also bring technical fixes and balance adjustments, letting developers tweak weapon performance and game mechanics to keep things fair. This system supports the game as a long-running live service.

The core multiplayer is a first-person shooter that plays like earlier Call of Duty titles. Players can earn Scorestreaks—special weapons that unlock after hitting certain point thresholds. The main modes include Team Deathmatch, Frontline, Domination, Hardpoint, Search and Destroy, Control, Free For All, and Kill Confirmed. There are also special and limited-time modes that stick around for varying lengths, such as Prop Hunt, Rapid Fire, Sticks and Stones, 2v2, Capture the Flag, One Shot One Kill, Snipers Only, Gun Game, and Attack of the Undead.

The game also offers battle royale modes for up to 100 players. You can drop in solo, as a duo, or in a four-person squad. At the start of each match, everyone picks an ability—anything from healing to a launch pad. Once all players are ready, they board a transport plane that follows a random flight path across the map, which changes every game. Each team gets a jump leader who decides when and where to land, but players can break off and jump on their own if they prefer.

Development and release

Call of Duty: Mobile was announced in March 2019, with TiMi-J3, itself a TiMi Studio Group division, which is a subsidiary of Tencent Games, leading development. Many of the game's features were revealed at this announcement, promising a familiar experience for fans of the console game. The aim of the game was to take familiar aspects from the franchise's previous games and allow users to access them from their mobile devices. It features two in-game currencies, as well as a battle pass. The initial release was in Australia on June 15, 2019, following the soft-launches in Australia, Canada and Peru. Garena released the game in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand on September 29, 2019. The game was released in Europe, North America and Latin America by Activision on September 30, 2019, and by Tencent Games in South Korea on October 1, 2019. VNG Games released the game after the worldwide release in partnership with Activision and TiMi Studios in Vietnam on April 20, 2020. Tencent Games published the game for Mainland China on December 24, 2020. Call of Duty: Mobile features many playable characters, maps, and game modes from previous games in the series. Different control settings were included to cater to player's preferences. A zombies game mode was added to the game in November 2019, following the classic Call of Duty zombies survival formula. A Raid mode was also included where the player had to defeat a set amount of waves of zombies before encountering one of two final bosses.

Reception

Call of Duty: Mobile earned a "generally favorable" rating on Metacritic. IGN called it the best the franchise has ever been on a phone, highlighting a rewarding progression system that doesn't require spending money and a variety of modes, including a strong battle royale option. GameSpot noted that aside from cluttered microtransaction menus and minor convenience purchases, the game faithfully recreates the fast-paced multiplayer action of the main series. Polygon added that it doesn't feel like a watered-down version of the classic multiplayer format, but simply like Call of Duty. The game set a record for the biggest mobile launch ever, with over 148 million downloads and nearly $54 million in revenue in its first month. By June 2020, it had surpassed $327 million in revenue and 250 million downloads. That figure grew to over $480 million with 270 million downloads by October 2020. As of February 2022, global revenue from in-game spending had exceeded $1.5 billion, with over 500 million downloads by May 2021. By November 2024, the game had amassed more than $3 billion in revenue and achieved over 1 billion downloads.