World Opponent Network (WON) was an online gaming service created by

Sierra Games Sierra Entertainment, Inc. (formerly On-Line Systems and Sierra On-Line, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genr ...

as the Sierra Internet Gaming System (SIGS). WON was used by games such as ''

Homeworld ''Homeworld'' is a real-time strategy video game developed by Relic Entertainment and published by Sierra Studios on September 28, 1999, for Microsoft Windows. Set in space, the science fiction game follows the Kushan exiles of the planet K ...

'', ''

Half-Life Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable ...

'', '' Outpost 2'', '' Star Trek: Armada'', '' Soldier of Fortune'', '' Dark Reign 2'', '' Silencer'', and '' ARC'' in addition to online versions of casino games and early entries in the '' Hoyle'' games series.

History

WON was launched in April 1998. Sierra was purchased by

Havas Havas SA is a French multinational advertising and public relations company, headquartered in Paris, France. It operates in more than 100 countries and is one of the largest advertising and communications groups in the world. Havas consists of ...

in January 1999, and

Cendant Software Vivendi Games was an American video game publisher and holding company based in Los Angeles. It was founded in 1996 as CUC Software, the publishing subsidiary of CUC International, after the latter acquired video game companies Davidson & Assoc ...

was acquired by

Havas Interactive Vivendi Games was an American video game publisher and holding company based in Los Angeles. It was founded in 1996 as CUC Software, the publishing subsidiary of CUC International, after the latter acquired video game companies Davidson & Assoc ...

, who would then maintain WON. In March 2000, Havas Interactive merged WON.net with Prize Central Net to form Flipside.com. Regardless, games such as

Valve A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically fitting ...

's ''Half-Life'' continued to use the service. In 2001, Valve acquired WON from Flipside.com and began to implement the

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporizatio ...

system in beta form. Over the next few years, as Steam was developed and tested, WON continued to operate. Valve shut down the last of its WON servers on July 31, 2004. All online portions of Valve's games were transferred to their own Steam system. The announcement disappointed some of the long-time ''Half-Life'' and ''

Counter-Strike ''Counter-Strike'' (''CS'') is a series of multiplayer tactical first-person shooter video games in which teams of terrorists battle to perpetrate an act of terror (bombing, hostage-taking, assassination) while counter-terrorists try to preve ...

'' players who had become accustomed to the older versions of those games still being hosted on the WON servers. For example, WON servers hosted version 1.5 of Counter-Strike, while Valve's Steam system required users to update to the newer version 1.6.

WON2

After the shutdown of WON, some players continued to run patched versions of the games ''Half-Life'' or ''Counter-Strike'' to connect to a free service called WON2, a clone of WON. It allows users to use the original server browser to connect to ''Half-Life'' servers, and their various mods, including ''Counter-Strike'' 1.5 and a Steamless version of 1.6. At its height, between the years 2005 and 2010, over 1,000 servers and 5,000 to 10,000 players were online at any time, marking WON2 as the largest unofficial multiplayer gaming network in the world. As of December 29, 2017, WON2 is still operational with hundreds of players connected to the server playing Counter-Strike 1.5 at peak hours, with the majority of the servers being hosted in China.

References

External links

Complete WON.Net Network replacement for all WON.Net supported Games
{{Valve Multiplayer video game services Sierra Entertainment Valve Corporation