There are over 40,000 people playing Counter-Strike right now online and that isn't even including what is probably a few thousand more people playing on LANs. No FPS action game has ever had this many people playing it online at a single time.

My question is WHY?

Why play so much Counter Strike? Don’t they have better things to do??

Shacknews tells from an objective perspective why Counter Strike is so attractive. Definitely worth a read.