> disk space

CS just downloaded 185mb of network resources for me to play. I would have thought those resources are stored on my disk, and not just in memory.

> installation time

That 185mb of resources took ~1 minute to download. By the time it had finished, it told me the server was full.

Regardless this is still very impressive.

But I'm sure more people played this right now because of the low barrier to entry.

And the admin rights might not even be technical. Not a lot of people are fond of installing games on the laptop from work.

But like I said, everything has tradeoffs.

This is the key point. If I'd seen a post about CS with a zip of an executable I would have passed.

Why? Because it probably wouldn't have run correctly or I would have had some other issue with it.

Let alone checking the provenance and worrying about malware.

No. The cracked version(s) that are played in schools and whatnot are usually just a zip file you extract and run.

A good way to get malware as well. I could never trust those cracked versions. One cracked version made CS 1.6 with Navy Seals looking for bin Laden, which I thought was fun.