The OpenRA game is available since many years. Its an open source clone of the famous Command&Conquer series. What makes the software interesting is, that it will run under Windows and LInux as well. In contrast to other Real time strategy game, no costs are charged for the users. Since two weeks the amount of players on the server has hit new records. In the past, it was difficult to find enough player to fill a map, but since a while this is not a problem.
Today there are more than 300 players at the same time on the servers, and new games are starting all the time. Technically this was possible in the past as well, what was missing in the year 2019 were a larger amount of players. It seems, that some newbies have discovered the game and are participating in the matches. On the website there is a statistics available https://www.openra.net/players/ which shows the increase of active players since April 2020.
Perhaps it make sense to introduce the game itself. What the users has to do is to manage a large amount of units at the same time. In contrast to a simple jump'n'run game there is not only a single character on the screen, but the user is in charge of 50 and more units at the same time. It's some sort of chess, but much faster. In the typical match 4 vs. 4 players, the situatiion will become chaotic very soon. That means, each player is in control of 50 and more units and the map is showing hundred of sprites at the same time who are doing something or not.
The OpenRA game has much in common with World of Warcraft. The difference is, that the graphics is only 2d and no background story is told. The result is, that the game engine itself is very little. The .exe file needs only 18 MB on the harddrive, which includes all the graphics, the multiplayer mode and even a replay mode to analyze games played in the past.