Probably more due to Half-Life, TFC, and CS. The enormous player bases were forced to adopt Steam. And then Valve continued to put a few more good games.
Honestly CS:S was a bit of a miss—largely considered a failure by the 1.6 community—but it didn’t matter because TF2 came out and was a smash hit.
Honestly CS:S was a bit of a miss—largely considered a failure by the 1.6 community—but it didn’t matter because TF2 came out and was a smash hit.