World Opponent Network

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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 Homeworld, Half-Life, Star Trek: Armada, Soldier of Fortune, Dark Reign 2 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.

In 2001, Valve acquired WON from Flipside.com and began to implement the Steam system in beta form. Over the next few years, as Steam was developed and tested, WON continued to serve.

Valve shut down 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 system. The announcement disappointed some of the long-time Half-Life and Counter-Strike players who held it in high esteem for being, in their view, more efficient in terms of speed and system resources than Steam.

After the shutdown of WON, some players continued to run a patched version of the retail versions of Half-Life or Counter-Strike, which connects to a WON replacement called No-WON (or WON2), and 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), much as they could before WON's shutdown.

WON also had its fair share of problems. Some found themselves permanently banned for no apparent reason. WON also caused some connection issues in relation to servers.

Since its shutdown, users who try to connect to WON in games such as Half-Life (non-steam version) receive an error message.

There was even a funeral held for WON (see below for link): "I am having a WON funeral on July 31, 2004 at 7:00pm till 10:00pm (central time). The funeral will be held at an IRC chatroom (irc.gamesurge.net)" (#wonfuneral)".

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Half-Life series
Main series: Half-Life (Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Decay) | Uplink (demo) | Half-Life: Source | Half-Life 2 (Episode One, Episode Two, Episode Three) | Lost Coast
Other (GoldSrc): Counter-Strike | Counter-Strike: Condition Zero | Counter-Strike Neo (arcade) | Day of Defeat | Deathmatch Classic | Ricochet | Team Fortress Classic
Other (Source): Counter-Strike: Source | Day of Defeat: Source | Half-Life 2: Deathmatch | Half-Life 2: Survivor (arcade) | Half-Life Deathmatch: Source | Portal | Team Fortress 2
Player characters: Dr. Gordon Freeman | Adrian Shephard | Barney Calhoun | Dr. Gina Cross | Dr. Colette Green
Other characters: The G-Man | Alyx Vance | Dr. Eli Vance | Dr. Isaac Kleiner | Dr. Judith Mossman | Dog | Dr. Wallace Breen | Father Grigori | Lamarr | The Vortigaunts | Odessa Cubbage | Dr. Richard Keller | Dr. Rosenberg
Enemies: Alien Controller | Alien Grunt | Antlion | Barnacle | Black Ops | Bullsquid | Carnivorous Leech | Chumtoad | The Combine (Soldiers and synths, Combat tech, Non-combat tech) | Gargantua | Gonarch | Half-Life 2 enemies | Hazardous Environment Combat Unit | Headcrab | Houndeye | Ichthyosaur | Nihilanth | Race X | Snark | Tentacle
Key locations and events: Black Mesa East | Black Mesa Research Facility | The Citadel | City 17 | The Coast | Nova Prospekt | Ravenholm | Seven Hour War | Xen
Technology: GoldSrc engine | Half-Life TV | Mods (Half-Life, Half-Life 2) | Source engine | Source SDK | Steam | SteamID | Valve Anti-Cheat
See also: Gearbox Software | Half-Life High Definition Pack | Turtle Rock Studios | Uplink (film) | Valve Corporation | World Opponent Network
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