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World Opponent Network or WON was an online gaming service, created by Sierra Games as the Sierra Internet Gaming System (SIGS). WON was used by games such as Half-Life, Star Trek: Armada, Soldier of Fortune and online versions of casino games.
Sierra was purchased by Havas in January 1999 and Cendant Software became Havas Interactive, which came to control WON. In March 2000, Havas Interactive merged WON.net with Prize Central Net to form Flipside.com. Regardless, games such as Valve Software's Half-Life continued to use the service.
Valve shutdown the last of its WON servers on July 31, 2004, officially killing the remnants of WON. All online portions of Valve's games were transferred to their own Steam content delivery system. Many of the gamers that used WON until its demise were very disappointed with the news. Some say that Counter-Strike, the most popular game on WON, will never be the same.
After the shutdown of WON, some servers continue to run a patched version of Half-Life or Counter-Strike, where a LAN mode is simulated that allows play over the Internet, but without a regular WON ID. Such WON IDs are used to identify players over net, as each WON ID is calculated from an individual CD-key.
WON is still held in high esteem by some long-time Half-Life players, who view it as being more efficient in terms of speed than Steam.
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