Mods & Steam

Through the door DOOM opened for mods came Counter-Strike, born as a Half-Life mod (its two creators went on to join Valve as employees), and DotA, which grew out of Warcraft III custom maps (nurtured for years by the anonymous "IceFrog"). Steam itself, when it became the mandatory install path for Half-Life 2 in 2004, met fierce backlash as "unnecessary DRM" — infrastructure that began by being hated eventually became the standard for PC game distribution. The door to indie games in 2008 opened on top of this circuit.