On Facebook's video-sharing platform, so strange-looking gas began to appear.
At first glance, they looked sowhat familiar, as if they had been seen sowhere before. But upon closer inspection, the models and maps in the gas were unlike anything people had seen before.
People were curious—what were these new gas, and why hadn't they heard of them before?
A ga 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 gas.
Then, through the introductions, they learned that these gas were modded versions of Counter-Strike.
But... what were mods?
...
In the videos, the creators began explaining.
"Hey everyone, welco 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 ga—it's Counter-Strike, but with a twist. This is part of a brand-new feature from the Battle platform called the Creative Workshop. In here, you can download all sorts of player-created mods and transform the original ga into sothing 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 ga was Farm Defense, which I already thought was pretty cool. But in this zombie version, the original gaplay 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 gas, you could access all modded content in the Creative Workshop—entirely for free.
So essentially, you're paying for one ga and getting several.
And apparently, you could also create your own gaplay experiences.
It didn't take long for people to head over to the Battle platform.
The Creative Workshop was now front and center on the interface, featuring a robust recomndation 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 launched a 7-day free trial event for all of its open-source gas.
This ant that any player willing to invest a bit of ti could play through a huge chunk of these gas within a week.
Stardew Valley, Counter-Strike, StarCraft...
Multiple open-source gas 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 ho consoles.
Battle, 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 gars found themselves with just one real choice—to download Battle and explore its ga offerings.
Three days later, all of the open-source, ti-limited free gas 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 hitting 3.3 million.
To attract more traffic, Battle had chosen to make its user data public—sothing that differed from Gastar Entertainnt's usual practices. But perhaps that was because Gastar 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 gas on Battle, rather than other, smaller platforms.
A tiny platform with just 10–20k users would cap your sales at that sa number.
But a platform with confird millions of users—even if your ga was diocre—offered far more exposure.
3.3 million concurrent users—just the concurrent number. This stunned many ga 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 ti was a bit of an exception—since the top gas 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 gars.
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 beco wary of internet-related hype and trics.
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 was having the ti of its life.
The huge influx of users placed an enormous strain on its servers. Demand for server resources skyrocketed.
As a result, Gastar had to temporarily redirect so GS1 server resources over to Battle.
At the sa ti, Takayuki imdiately ordered server expansions. He took network stability very seriously.
Players were sensitive. In gas 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.
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