Over the weekend, Dreamhack Winter went down. Beginning in 1994 with a couple of Swedish dudes who rented out a school hall to play some video games, it’s now the world’s biggest LAN party, bringing over 25,000 PC gamers together in the one spot for some games, music, cosplay and sweating.
Last year, the official numbers recorded 17,618 unique devices (ie, computers) coming to the party. This year that figure was smashed, with 22,483 devices being registered, and a grand total of 26,672 visitors, up almost 2000 from 2013.
Alongside the more casual gaming and parties, the weekend featured a number of big esports events, for everything from Counter-Strike to StarCraft to DOTA (and even Hearthstone).
These images were taken for the official Dreamhack account by photographer Gabriel Kulig. You can see more here.
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20 responses to “World’s Biggest LAN Party Had Over 22,000 Computers, Looked Awesome”
In other news, we had the biggest LAN party on the tiny island I live on (about 1200 people total, most retired), 12 people playing BF2 and DOTA2… wheres my article? lol
Soo many things I could say about this.
1. I bet my kidney they played dubstep.
2. Christ, the sheer amount of SNACKS
3. Did they mine for bitcoins to pay for snacks?
4. Did it smell like BO or overpowered deodorant?
5. Did anyone get hacked/infected?
6. Did anyone verbally abuse or sexually harass anyone?
You can guarantee we’d have seen an article from Patricia if number 6 had happened 😉
number 6. no, because it was all lads.
What? No girls? But, but, but, articles told me –
Did they LIE???
Or is Sweden like China where boys outnumber girls?
That’s because females consider themselves gamers, despite only playing Facebook games.
I think you need to rephrase. I’d say that guys and girls who play real games need to be one stat and guys and girls who play trash like Candy Crush need to be another stat.
That way we’d know what percentage of gamers is each is the right context. Females don’t “Only play facebook games” there are a shit tonne that play normal games despite how your above sentence reads.
facebook games don’t count and im sure that’s exactly what they did to get those numbers.
This is what you and the fellow above you sound like. Not a good look, is it?
OMG becky, I just reached level 436 on Candy Crush, I’m such a hardcore g4m3rgrl.
“46% of women cite their smartphone as their preferred gaming device and 48% of men prefer consoles.”
“It’s possible that the women surveyed identify less as gamers and might be more prone to gaming on a casual or opportunistic basis, rather than deliberately seeking out game hardware and games like the more hardcore (male or female) gamer might.”
http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/2013-gamers-survey-results-demographics-platforms-and-smartphone-use/
you do have a point. stats dont lie….unless you want them to.
Forced. Doesn’t sound like that at all.
I remember attending a 1000 person LAN at the then Telstra dome (I think late 90’s) and I thought that was epic. So a 25,000 LAN would have just blown my mind.
Big day in!
Was awesome, lots of Dc++ hubs going.
Air conditioning wasn’t great.. Was the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere of some 2000 odd players I believe.
That was early 2000 I believe as I was rocking windows 2000 at that point before xp was here I believe.
Ahh memories. Wish to return to that one day, even host my own massive one.. Respawn is the closest atm.
Ah yes Big day in! So much BF1942, that and I finally got introduced to Counterstrike. That game was the madness back then.
Would it not be very hot in there with all those peecees and what not running? That is unless they have air con. Also who forks out for the electricity bill?
I read it’s in Jonkoping, Sweden. So they probably just opened a few doors when it got too hot.
My bet is crowd funding payed for it. I don’t see any booth babes or rampant amounts of advertising, so it probably wasn’t sponsored by the gaming industry.
they have an expo area in hall b for sponsors the drink is sponsored by coke and monster the dreamahck open was sponsored by eizo, hyper x, razer and monster and all the other competitions were sponsored as well
Fuck, lan events in WA are dead imo, not the whole concept but the spirit.
Went to RF lan not too long ago and after the main tourneys had finished bout 11pm the same day 80% of the people packed up and went home, no one wanted to play games with us and just stuck to playing Diablo 3 or wow etc… by themselves, you then had a good bunch of them also watching anime and posting on reddit.
wtf happened to good old lans?
“wtf happened to good old lans?”
The industry wiped them.
Nothing supports LAN as everything is internet. The reason? You have tighter control and easier access to your consumer if they have to log in to your internet server. So LAN has the same chance of coming back as the dial up modem.
Its pathetic that the XB1 doesn’t have LAN play, we used to do this with our Xbox consoles all the time… on a slightly smaller scale.
No mention of Fnatic crubmling down due to illegal exploits or the mounting case against flusha being a cheat by allegedly embedding a aimkey in his peripherials firmware…
Good reporting, would read again.