R
RogueOne
Guest
A lot of you may have suspected this was in the works for a long time, but I can now announce that it seems likely that BWCSL will be moving to a pay-to-play model, beginning next season. Although this may come as an unpleasant development to some of you, I assure you that this would not be considered unless I was convinced that there was a good case that this was in the league's best interests.
Ultimately, the servers and bandwidth that are required to run a league do not come for free and, in its current state, BWCSL does not even come close to paying for itself. In addition, with each new version of CS taking up more and more CPU power for servers, our running costs have increased over time and will continue to increase in the future.
I was recently presented with a choice by Barrysworld: I could continue to run the leagues for free, with our current servers and with a limited level of support, or else I could move the league to a pay-to-play model, ensuring improved servers, a better prize-pool and better technical support. With our servers already stressed to the limit by CS1.5, the choice seemed to me to be clear. I have not yet given a final decision on this matter, but I have discussed this with the admins and short of anybody presenting some extremely compelling arguments, we will proceed with the plan.
As far as I know, the pay-to-play system for leagues would be the same as that which is already used for the normal publics/bookables package. In other words, each competing player would take the standard BW package, which is £24/year (or £12/year with a GAME reward card) and in addition to allowing you to use public servers, bookables and webhosting for a year, this would also allow you to compete in leagues for a year. We would also, as I say, be able to offer much better servers and better prizes, possibly including prizes for the lower divisions.
At any rate, I welcome any reasonable discussion of this.
Ultimately, the servers and bandwidth that are required to run a league do not come for free and, in its current state, BWCSL does not even come close to paying for itself. In addition, with each new version of CS taking up more and more CPU power for servers, our running costs have increased over time and will continue to increase in the future.
I was recently presented with a choice by Barrysworld: I could continue to run the leagues for free, with our current servers and with a limited level of support, or else I could move the league to a pay-to-play model, ensuring improved servers, a better prize-pool and better technical support. With our servers already stressed to the limit by CS1.5, the choice seemed to me to be clear. I have not yet given a final decision on this matter, but I have discussed this with the admins and short of anybody presenting some extremely compelling arguments, we will proceed with the plan.
As far as I know, the pay-to-play system for leagues would be the same as that which is already used for the normal publics/bookables package. In other words, each competing player would take the standard BW package, which is £24/year (or £12/year with a GAME reward card) and in addition to allowing you to use public servers, bookables and webhosting for a year, this would also allow you to compete in leagues for a year. We would also, as I say, be able to offer much better servers and better prizes, possibly including prizes for the lower divisions.
At any rate, I welcome any reasonable discussion of this.