The origin of pwn in gaming context is in quake multiplayer which predates CS by some years. I also recall seeing people on irc using it before that in the same context as cracking a system.
Back in the day, I played Counter-strike, Quake, Warcraft, Doom (I played PvP against people in my dorm using modem using IPX protocol pre-Internet). The first place I saw it was definitely Counter-strike. My guess is that it originated in CS and then leaked out from there.
Unless Y2K comes before 1989 it most certainly did not come from Counter-strike. Pwning something had existed throughout the 1990's hacker culture and likely was in use in the 80's too. There are some of us old enough to remember it being used. It probably stemmed from QWERTY keyboards and o/p being close to one another. "Pwned" is an easy typo from "Owned" and "owned by [some hacker/hacker group]" was always common way to deface hacked websites. It easily predates Counter-strike's release date by at least a decade so it could not have originated from CS.
“Phrack World News” and it’s acronym are a different usage to the word synonymous with “own” — which is not saying it wasn’t in use before counter-strike, but the link isn’t good evidence for it.
Do a bit better research. It stands for Phrack World News in this context. I also read Phrack back in the day as well.
How about trying to search through all the Phrack articles to find the use of the word "pwn" that doesn't refer to Phrack World News? Spoiler alert: you won't find any usage of "pwn" or "pwned" until well past 2000. If it was so much part of hacker culture you would have seen a reference in the earlier articles, but you don't.
