Patent ID: 7231447

Claim:
A network game system for operating on a network a game made up of basic content containing a basic program for executing start of a game solely and one or more types of relevant content each containing a relevant program corresponding to the basic program for further advancing the game started by the basic program, said system comprising: a content management section adapted to set a content providing home page address of which users are not notified in one or more content providing servers each in which the relevant program is placed; and a search engine for finding a target content providing home page adapted to receive over the network, hint keywords, input by a user, from a user terminal and for using the received keywords as the search condition to perform a search processing to create a list of relevant content providing home page addresses and sending the list to the user terminal; wherein the content providing server comprises a counter for counting the number of times the relevant content has been provided to the users from the content providing home page; the content providing server sends the relevant content placed in the content providing server to the user terminal in response to a download request made by the accessing user; and the content providing server limits the number of users for which the relevant content is to be provided from the content providing home page by terminating providing the relevant content when a count of the counter reaches a predetermined value.