Today, Ubisoft announced the start of a month-long celebration marking the upcoming tenth anniversary of the popular TrackMania franchise. Ubisoft also shared that TrackMania recently surpassed 18 million registered players, making it one of the most played eSports racing titles of all time.

With almost 10 years’ of eSports expertise now in the rear-view mirror, Nadeo, a Ubisoft studio, has grown TrackMania from a simplistic puzzle game running on a few servers to a beautiful, massively-multiplayer game running on the powerful ManiaPlanet gaming system, which lets players organize, create, compete and exchange with others. Along the way, players from more than 100 countries have joined in the fun, 950,000 tracks have been played online and TrackMania Nations recorded the series’ highest number of players on the same track: 256.

Over the years eSports has turned from a niche past time to a hugely popular phenomenon that continues to grow exponentially. Viewership has gone from hundreds to hundreds of thousands, and TrackMania continues to be one of the pillars of this growing activity, alongside games like League of Legends.

“TrackMania Nations was one of the first titles that presented itself as an eSport,” said Yves Guillemot, CEO and co-founder of Ubisoft. “Ten years later, the games are as relevant and dynamic as ever, and that is a tribute to the Nadeo team and the passionate, growing community of TrackMania players.”

Nadeo is offering fans a free multiplayer demo of all TrackMania² titles until December 15 as part of the tenth anniversary commemoration. The studio also is sponsoring three community creation contests that focus on track building, 3D car modelling-and-skinning and video creation.

Additionally, Nadeo is hosting a worldwide ‘LANiversary’ party for fans on December 14. The event will include community tournaments and a TrackMania retrospective. Finally, Nadeo is offering special collectors’ bundles of TrackMania, giving players all three TrackMania² titles for £15.99/$19.99, or all three plus TrackMania United Forever for £22.99/$29.99. Players can download the demo from maniaplanet.com and Steam.