The Ants Map Maker was a treasure trove for Ants players, who would collectively go on to create over 850 known maps, all from the original code. Once the average player was able to easily create their own map, however, most "new" maps ended up as unoriginal knock-offs of the six original maps and Ocean. Many of these maps contained bugs within the code which would cause a player's game to crash or to not start at all. One notable exception was the Popcorn map, a map 14 minutes long that combined the fun of Treasure with the skill level of Islands with an entirely new map layout added in, complete with barriers, additional food, and additional ants. Despite the increase in maps, and thus an increase in players to the site, Microsoft still publicly refused to acknowledge any of the new maps as "official" maps. By this time however, it was too late. Maps were everywhere, and the surge in availability of new maps, no matter how poorly constructed, once again caused a temporary increase in popularity and player population for Microsoft Ants.