On Facebook's video-sharing platform, some strange-looking games began to appear.
At first glance, they looked somewhat familiar, as if they had been seen somewhere before. But upon closer inspection, the models and maps in the games were unlike anything people had seen before.
People were curious—what were these new games, and why hadn't they heard of them before?
A game this unique and eye-catching should've been heavily promoted.
Yet, there had been no news about it whatsoever.
Driven by curiosity, people clicked on the video pages of these unusual games.
Then, through the introductions, they learned that these games were modded versions of Counter-Strike.
But… what were mods?
...
In the videos, the creators began explaining.
"Hey everyone, welcome to my channel. I'm ***. If you're interested, just give the video a like and hit that follow button. That way, all the effort I put into making these videos is worth it."
After a brief self-introduction, he officially began explaining the mod he was playing.
"Those of you following my content might recognize this game—it's Counter-Strike, but with a twist. This is part of a brand-new feature from the Battle.net platform called the Creative Workshop. In here, you can download all sorts of player-created mods and transform the original game into something entirely different. First up, let's take a look at a popular mod right now: Farm Defense: Zombie Edition."
"This mod was created by an indie dev team. Their original game was Farm Defense, which I already thought was pretty cool. But in this zombie version, the original gameplay is preserved while adding a layer of intensity and urgency. It's a rare and well-made mod."
"In addition to this, there's also the official Counter-Strike Zombie Mod, a Hide-and-Seek mod, and more—all incredibly fun."
Just watching the video made people itch to try it out themselves.
"Interesting..."
According to the video, all these mods were completely free. As long as you owned Counter-Strike or other open-source games, you could access all modded content in the Creative Workshop—entirely for free.
So essentially, you're paying for one game and getting several.
And apparently, you could also create your own gameplay experiences.
It didn't take long for people to head over to the Battle.net platform.
The Creative Workshop was now front and center on the interface, featuring a robust recommendation system. If a mod had enough positive ratings and user interest, it would be promoted in a more prominent spot for players to explore.
To promote the new Creative Workshop feature, Battle.net launched a 7-day free trial event for all of its open-source games.
This meant that any player willing to invest a bit of time could play through a huge chunk of these games within a week.
Stardew Valley, Counter-Strike, StarCraft…
Multiple open-source games saw massive surges in player traffic in just one day.
Based on projections, the number of PC players globally hovered around 10 million.
That still didn't compare to the 100-million-plus player base on home consoles.
Battle.net, however, owned 70–80% of the PC market. With such dominance, there was very little room left for competitors. As a result, more and more new PC gamers found themselves with just one real choice—to download Battle.net and explore its game offerings.
Three days later, all of the open-source, time-limited free games shattered their previous peak online player records.
Counter-Strike reached a new high with 730,000 concurrent players.
And that number was still climbing fast. StarCraft and Stardew Valley also saw surging numbers, with total concurrent users across Battle.net hitting 3.3 million.
To attract more traffic, Battle.net had chosen to make its user data public—something that differed from Gamestar Entertainment's usual practices. But perhaps that was because Gamestar had no real PC rivals, and publicizing this data only further enhanced its platform's appeal.
After all, the more players you could prove you had, the more indie developers would be drawn to release their games on Battle.net, rather than other, smaller platforms.
A tiny platform with just 10–20k users would cap your sales at that same number.
But a platform with confirmed millions of users—even if your game was mediocre—offered far more exposure.
3.3 million concurrent users—just the concurrent number. This stunned many game studios.
"So the PC market is actually this big?"
They had never paid serious attention to the PC space before.
Typically, concurrent users represent only a tenth of total registered users. But this time was a bit of an exception—since the top games were temporarily free, players were naturally flocking to them in droves to get the most out of the event.
This data even shocked Surei Electronics' higher-ups.
Hayakawa Ueto suddenly realized he may have underestimated PC gamers.
Their passion for gaming was just as strong.
But this was driven by the power of "free."
And free doesn't generate revenue.
Especially after YOO's massive financial collapse the previous year, most investors had become wary of internet-related hype and metrics.
No one trusted reported "concurrent users" or "registered users" anymore.
Ueto included. He, too, believed this was probably just a flash in the pan—nothing sustainable.
But Battle.net was having the time of its life.
The huge influx of users placed an enormous strain on its servers. Demand for server resources skyrocketed.
As a result, Gamestar had to temporarily redirect some GS1 server resources over to Battle.net.
At the same time, Takayuki immediately ordered server expansions. He took network stability very seriously.
Players were sensitive. In games like Counter-Strike, even slight latency could ruin the experience. And if the network crashed due to server overload, that would deal a massive blow to players' trust in Battle.net.