This was wonderful to read. It reminded something that happened to me:

During early 2000s me and my friend used to create custom Counter-Strike maps because we enjoyed mapping. We created several maps but almost none of them got played on internet servers because people liked to stick with more known maps like de_dust or cs_assault.

Maybe 10 years later somebody asked me via some messenger or email if I still had the .bsp file of a particular map of ours. I was very surprised about this message because it was so random at that point in my life, I already moved on to other hobbies than mapping. But apparently the map was a hit among Turkish internet cafes and people were looking for the BSP file to play it after internet cafes lost their popularity and everybody had internet at their homes.