If you were involved with PC gaming in the early 2000s, it was almost impossible to avoid Counter-Strike, an online tactical game that pits one team of counter-terrorists against another team of terrorists in multiple objective-based rounds.

I was personally introduced to Counter-Strike in the most 2002 way possible: at an internet café in the Beaches neighborhood of Toronto. I was hooked less by its skill-based team-play aspect and more by the prospect of exploring the boxy 3D environments that approximated real-life locations like offices, warehouses, and ancient ruins. While immersing myself in Counter-Strike’s distinctive online subculture, I had little idea I was participating in a game that would lay the foundations for the next phase of digital capitalism.

Counter-Strike hasn’t gone anywhere. In fact, it’s more popular and successful today than when many of us first played the game twenty years ago. The latest iteration of the franchise, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, boasts 21 million monthly players and, in 2018, made over $400 million for its parent company, Valve Software. Through a combination of free labor, audience capture, and opaque economics, the original Counter-Strike helped Valve consolidate much of the burgeoning PC digital distribution sector and extend the value, longevity, and significance of its own proprietary software.