> I'd have to download Steam, buy individual games like Counterstrike, and the wackiest thing would be the "surf" gamemode.

It's interesting that you chose Counter-Strike as an example, as that is a Half Life mod itself, and by 2006 there was a large ecosystem [1] of Half Life modifications using Metamod and AMX Mod (X). The last one in a weird C-like language called Small or Pawn, which was my first programming language that I made serious programs with.

Especially the War3FT mod where users gained server-bound XP in combination with a reserved slots plugins which allowed top-XP users to join a full server really created a tight community of players on my tiny DSL home-hosted server.

[1] https://www.amxmodx.org/compiler.php?mod=1&cat=0&plugin=&aut...