Though Counter-Strike is itself a mod, it has developed its own community of script writers and mod creators. Some mods add bots, while others remove features of the game, and others create different modes of play. Some of the mods give server administrators more flexible and efficient control over his or her server. "Admin plugins", as they are mostly referred as, have become very popular (see Metamod, AMX Mod and AMX Mod X). There are some mods which affect gameplay heavily, such as Gun Game, where players start with a basic pistol and must score kills to receive better weapons, and Zombie Mod, where one team consists of zombies and must "spread the infection" by killing the other team (using only the knife). There are also the Superhero and Warcraft III mods which mix the first-person gameplay of Counter-Strike with an experience system, allowing a player to become more powerful as they continue to play. The game is also highly customizable on the player's end, allowing the user to install or even create their own custom skins, HUDs, sprites, and sound effects, given the proper tools. When Counter-Strike was published by Sierra Entertainment/Vivendi Universal Games, it was bundled with Team Fortress Classic, Opposing Force multiplayer, and the Wanted, Redemption and Firearms mods."[5] On 24 March 1999[verification needed] Planet Half-Life opened its Counter-Strike section. Within two weeks, the site had received 10,000 hits. On June 18, 1999, the first public beta of Counter-Strike was released, followed by numerous further "beta" releases. On April 12, 2000, Valve announced that the Counter-Strike developers and Valve had teamed up. Counter-Strike 1.0 was released around Christmas 2000. On January 25, 2003, a world wide competition was held by Valve and hosted by Dell. Numerous Dell desktops and laptops were awarded in the competition which attracted over 10,000 participants. The competition was held over a two week period, with the winner ("b0b") being announced on February 15 on Valve's website.[citation needed] On 15 September, the current version, 1.6, was released. In 2004, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero was released. It contained a single player campaign and bots, as well as other changes. Counter-Strike was originally played online through the WON gaming service, which was shut down in 2004,[6] forcing players to switch to Steam. The non-Steam version of Counter-Strike (version 1.5) can still be downloaded from sites such as FilePlanet.[7] Due to the closure of WON, part of the player community responded by creating their own WON network, dubbed WON2.[citation needed] In March 2007, Valve implemented mandatory advertisements through Steam in official maps and in the game's GUI overhead. Customers have expressed frustration with the ads, including an over 200 page thread on Valve's official forums,Counter Strike Source Codes,Counter Strike Source Keys, saying that they violate original terms of service and distract from the game.[8] The thread was later deleted by an unknown moderator. Counter Strike is famous for the culture surrounding it, which includes everything from professional gamers and leagues, to excessive cheating and disruptive behavior. Certain professional teams (such as SK Gaming, mTw, NaVi and fnatic) have come to earn a living out of it, while other clans and community based groups neither lose nor earn money via member donations which are self-sustaining in return for administrator rights in servers involved in the community. Counter-Strike remains extremely popular to this day. There are currently professional online leagues supporting Counter-Strike, such as the E-Sports Entertainment League (ESEA), and CyberEvolution, a pay-to-play league. Various LAN tournaments are held throughout the world such as the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC),Day of Defeat Serial number,buy Day of Defeat, the World e-Sports Games (WEG), and the World Cyber Games (WCG). Championship matches in these events are televised with commentary and analysis. Half-Life and other contemporary games took full advantage of hardware graphics acceleration in the late 1990s, replacing earlier software-rendered games such as Quake. The continued popularity of Counter-Strike has meant that older video cards such as the 3dfx Voodoo3, ATI Rage 128, and Nvidia RIVA TNT2 remain useful. There have been a multitude of games claimed by their developers, reviewers and fans to be "Counter-Strike killers," but none have seriously been able to dent its overall popularity.[citation needed] Server statistics in 2002 showed that Counter-Strike servers outnumbered their Battlefield, Unreal Tournament 2003 or Quake III first-person shooter counterparts at least 3 to 1.,CS source keys,Day of Defeat cd key,[not in citation given] However, as criticism of Condition Zero showed, the GoldSrc engine has already been surpassed by several generations of newer engines. Even Counter-Strike: Source has been criticized for not progressing the gameplay enough and failing to take full advantage of the Source engine.[11] In China's northern port city Tianjin, some police officers have used Counter-Strike as a tool for tactical training.