The Crossbow appears in the mission "WMD," which is set in the Ural Mountains, 1968. The crossbow can fire two different types of bolts, including normal or explosive bolts. It also has an attached sniper scope, which the player can steady and also zoom in further. The Crossbow also appears in the mission "Executive Order" for a short amount of time with a Variable Zoom scope. The Crossbow has fairly high hip accuracy, and although it is fairly strong, to score a one-shot kill the bolt needs to hit an enemy's head or chest.

Unlike other scoped weapons, the crossbow can be reloaded while aiming down the scope.

The Crossbow also appears in multiplayer, available at level 33. It has no attachments or camouflages available and always fires explosive bolts. Unlike its Single-player counterpart, the multiplayer crossbow fires projectiles that do drop over a certain distance like the ballistic knife. It is one of the weapons used in the Sticks and Stones Wager Match playlist, along with the Ballistic Knife andTomahawk. It is also the 19th weapon in Gun Game. When a player is hit by an Explosive Tipped bolt, the screen flashes red and an indicator comes up in the shape of an arrow with the word "Stuck" on it, indicating the player has been hit with an explosive bolt. Its explosive bolt's explosive range is very small, and will not even cover the width of most of the rooms in the game.The killfeed icon for a direct impact from a crossbow bolt is the same as that of any other grenade direct impact.In Hardcore, being hit by a bolt is fatal. In Core and Barebones, a player can be killed by the bolt alone if the player's health is low enough, player on their "2nd chance" can be killed with just one bolt; on some occasions, a headshot from crossbow can kill the target with just one bolt.he crossbow can be obtained in Zombies mode via the Mystery Box. It automatically comes with Explosive Bolts like in Multiplayer. The blast radius makes it useful for taking out groups of zombies. However, the very long reload time makes it difficult to use effectively in solo mode, as the player is left vulnerable. However, its Pack-a-Punched version partially solves this problem by distracting any zombies near where the bolt lands, similar to a Monkey Bomb.