Strikerz Inc. and XTEN LIMITED’s skill-first football title, UFL 2026 Mobile, is slowly stepping toward its full launch after expanding its soft launch globally on May 22, 2026. Following earlier regional testing phases, the game is now available to a much wider audience as part of its second rollout stage.
We at GamingonPhone have been following the mobile version ever since the first hints started appearing back in late 2024. So with the soft launch finally live, we sat down with Strikerz Inc. CEO and co-founder Eugene Nashilov to talk about the game’s growth, community feedback, co-op ambitions, and more.
The birth of UFL: “We felt like the market wanted something else”
Talking about how UFL originally started, Eugene explained that the idea came from frustration with how repetitive football games had become over the years. According to him, the competition eventually became more about licensing battles than innovation on the pitch.
“We felt like the competition on the market had been stale for quite a long time,” Eugene told us. “Ultimately the competition went into a situation where it was mostly a licensing fight.”
That frustration eventually pushed Strikerz Inc. toward creating its own football experience back in 2016. At the time, the company itself was extremely small. Eugene revealed that it originally started with just him and the now CTO, Max Chernega, before slowly growing into the 400+ person studio it is today.
Football itself has always been deeply personal for him too. During the interview, he shared that he used to play semi-professionally before suffering multiple ACL injuries, something that eventually pushed him away from playing competitively.
“I’m a big football fan. I played semi-professionally as a youngster, but sadly, I tore my ACL twice.” That attachment to football also shaped the studio’s approach toward accessibility. Eugene explained that one of UFL’s biggest goals from day one was making football gaming more available to everyone, especially at a time when major football games heavily leaned toward premium pricing models.
“The idea behind UFL was to make football accessible,” he explained. “There was basically no other choice but to pay for football games at that time, and we wanted to shift toward free-to-play.”
UFL’s soft launch numbers are huge, and more work is being put into improving it
Naturally, the biggest topic during the conversation was UFL Mobile itself and how the team feels now that the game has entered its global soft launch stage. Eugene admitted that while the launch has been exciting, it has also been stressful because of how different mobile is compared to PC and consoles.
“I’m super excited about it because you always feel this passion when you’re launching a game anywhere. Obviously, mobile has been a very big step for us. First, it was a technical challenge to optimize the console game for mobile devices, and secondly, because it reaches millions of people very fast,” he shared
The numbers already look promising, too. According to Eugene, the game has crossed around 1.3 million registered mobile players so far, despite the studio not running heavy marketing campaigns yet. “The speed at which people downloaded the game is crazy,” he shared his excitement. “We are not doing aggressive marketing right now either, so obviously, I’m super excited about it.”
At the same time, he repeatedly emphasized that the current build is still far from the final version the team wants to release globally. “That’s exactly why we call it a global soft launch. I’m mainly looking at performance. We’re analyzing with the team how everything works, which ideas worked out, which ideas didn’t, and what we need to change and optimize. We still need to test things out, both in the metagame and in the core gameplay.”
The team is currently focusing heavily on gameplay feel, defensive balancing, reaction timing, touch controls, and overall pacing. According to Eugene, one of the biggest challenges has been adapting football gameplay to fit shorter mobile play sessions. “On mobile, players don’t always have one or two hours to play,” he said.
As for the connection with the fanbase, the philosophy is simple: “community-centric”. He adds: “One of the core elements of UFL’s DNA has always been community-centric development. We try to stay close to the audience, understand what they want, and involve them in shaping the future of the game. That’s a philosophy we intend to continue following.”
A separate mobile engine built specifically for accessibility
One of the more interesting technical discussions during the interview involved UFL Mobile using a completely separate engine instead of directly relying on Unreal Engine across all platforms. While many modern sports titles use Unreal or Unity for cross-platform development, Strikerz decided to create a proprietary engine specifically optimized for mobile devices, and I was curious to know the decision behind this.
“We always viewed mobile as a separate experience,” Eugene explained. “People play differently on mobile, and they deserve an ecosystem where they can enjoy the game without having to compete with players on platforms that operate in a completely different way.” According to him, the goal was to make the game run smoothly across a massive range of devices, including lower-end phones that usually struggle with graphically demanding football games.
“When you have an engine that can run on a wide variety of devices, you make the audience pool much bigger. Not everybody can afford a high-end device nowadays. UFL has always been designed as accessible football for as many people as we can reach.” Eugene also believes mobile itself can eventually become one of the biggest drivers behind UFL’s growth globally, considering how massive the mobile audience is.
“If someone enjoys the game on mobile and also owns a PC or console, they may decide to try the experience on another platform as well. That’s why we see strong synergy between all platforms, and running a separate engine for mobile is a strategic move for us,” he further added.
Co-op gameplay is a major focus moving forward
As the discussion shifted toward gameplay systems, one thing became very clear: Strikerz wants UFL to become much more social over time. When we asked about co-op systems and social experiences, Eugene went into detail explaining how football games naturally become frustrating when played alone for too long.
“When you lose alone, it becomes this love-hate relationship,” he laughed. “You leave the game, come back later, and repeat it again.” Co-op completely changes that feeling because even frustrating moments become enjoyable when shared with friends. “When you have friends playing with you, negative moments become funny, you can rant together.”
The team is already planning larger co-op support across platforms, including mobile. Ranked cooperative progression and shared rewards are ideas currently being explored internally. “When you understand each other and make the perfect pass before scoring, it feels like your minds are synced,” he said.
Skill moves led us straight into a Ronaldo vs Messi debate
Since I had already spent quite a bit of time with the soft launch build myself, I brought up one feature I personally felt could massively improve gameplay further: advanced skill moves. Right now, UFL Mobile already includes a few flicks and movement-based mechanics, but Eugene confirmed the team wants to significantly expand those systems later on.
“I personally love skill moves,” he said immediately. “I love doing flashy things in football games.” At the same time, he admitted implementing those mechanics properly on touchscreen controls is much harder than it looks. “There’s a team experimenting with how skill moves should work on touch controls,” he explained. “Our game design team is actively experimenting with skill moves, and I’m sure the variety of moves available to players will continue to grow.”
Then the conversation unexpectedly turned into football fan territory. While discussing stepovers specifically, Eugene suddenly started talking about Cristiano Ronaldo’s younger years and how much he loved watching that style of football.
“As a Cristiano Ronaldo fan, I really want proper stepovers in the game,” he said. “I remember him at 17, 18, 19 years old just destroying defenders with them.” Of course, I immediately replied with “Messi fan here,” which got a laugh from Eugene straight away before he started comparing how differently both legends approached football.
“Cristiano evolved from a flashy winger into a killer striker,” Eugene explained. “Leo is different. He doesn’t need flashy moves because he changes direction so quickly.” Even while leaning toward Ronaldo personally, Eugene still called both players “absolutely equally genius,” words that were right indeed.
Customization is expanding, but competitive players still care more about winning
Toward the end of the interview, we also discussed customization systems and monetization. While UFL Mobile already features cosmetics, kits, stadium customization, and a Star Pass system, Eugene admitted the team initially expected players to care far more about vanity items. Instead, competitive progression ended up becoming the primary focus for most players.
“When we launched on console, we thought cosmetics would matter more. But players mostly focus on player cards and competition.” Still, customization itself remains important to the team moving forward. Eugene even laughed while explaining how much time he personally spends adjusting visual details for players inside the game.
“I like having different boots, different sleeve styles, different combinations, it lets me express myself visually,” he said. According to him, football today is already much bigger than just a sport. In his words: “Football is not just a sport anymore. It’s a lifestyle thing,” he said.
That idea is also influencing how Strikerz views future collaborations and crossover content. Instead of limiting the game strictly to football-related branding, Eugene openly discussed ideas involving entertainment franchises and unexpected themed experiences. “It could be something completely crazy,” he laughed. “Maybe a Rick and Morty stadium or a Star Wars-themed event.”
Still, he made it very clear that these kinds of ambitious crossover plans are not the immediate priority right now. According to him, Strikerz is still heavily focused on improving the core gameplay foundation first before experimenting with larger entertainment integrations.
“I think people should start expecting things from 2027 onward,” Eugene said. “Until then, we still have a lot of work to do on the core game and foundational systems.”
“Our ambition is to become one of the top three football games”
Eventually, the conversation moved toward the obvious question: competition. And Eugene didn’t avoid the comparison with EA Sports FC Mobile or eFootball.
“Our ambition is to become one of the top three football games. Football is already established, but our ambition is to be recognized among the top three in the eyes of the audience. There’s still a lot of work ahead of us to achieve that, but our ultimate goal is to stand alongside the industry’s leaders and compete at the highest level.”
That is obviously an enormous challenge considering how established the current football gaming giants already are. But after spending time with the game and hearing Eugene discuss football with genuine passion throughout the interview, one thing became pretty obvious: UFL Mobile is not trying to imitate what already exists simply.
For now, Strikerz Inc. remains focused on improving the soft-launch build, listening to player feedback, and preparing for what they hope will be a much bigger global rollout later this year.
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