Spacewar! was a F2P PvP game with no microtransactions and no battle pass. Although it's hard to quantify exact player numbers (it precedes Steam charts), for a while it was the most played videogame in the world.

Its real-time graphics and multiplayer combat were very influential, and widely copied by many other games.

[–] sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

It also popularized the "mechanic" of online matchmaking through steam for pirated and abandoned games. Thank you Spacewar, very cool.

Edit: the Steam one is a test game for their steamworks system with source code from the original game. The more you know.

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago

Wow this brought it full circle, the name looked familiar but then it clicked, back in my pirating days lol

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

for a while it was the most played videogame in the world.

I see what you did there!

Space War history

SpaceWar is the first game to be frequently ported to different computers, back when computers took up a big portion of the room they sat it, and when "porting" was practically re-coding, from scratch, in Assembler.