That's why in my statement I said

For S2 because we knew that our estimates of money brought in through the sustainability fee versus the cost of the LAN were going to be tight, at best.

So, as I said in my last post, as you understood then, we were not going to have extra money to help cover the staff who were coming to the event. Which is why we never talked about it for S2. That doesn't mean, that's what we should aim for though.

We should aim to not only cover the cost of running the LAN, but also help support our volunteer staff. If we want sustainable LAN's, it's hard to expect our volunteer staff to shell out hundreds of dollars each time. Being able to help support our staff in some way, even if it's not 100%, is a good goal to aim for.

The big difference between those two seasons is that one of them did not have a LAN and the other was supposed to.

If you look at ESEA numbers from Season 31, the final season.
It was: Invite Division Prize Pot: $12,600
Invite: $10,900 (~86.5%)
IM: $1,200 (~9.5%)
Open: $500 (~3.9%)

So even with our LAN numbers skewing the distribution, RGL still gave a higher % out to lower divs then ESEA did.

The only reason we adjust those is to have a better prize pool so players can help cover their cost for coming to the Invite LAN playoffs. The reason did not adjust them back from last season was because we canceled the LAN so late, players likely already spent some money that they may not have been able to get back (flights, hotels, etc...) If we do not have a LAN this season, then the numbers will go back to normal.

We lowered and kept the fee to help build up a bank of money to help cover future LANs. As just because the LAN didn't happen in S2 doesn't mean that money still exist, we're still in discussions with Helix to try to work something out.

The money we got from just the LAN fee's in S2 was not going to cover all of the cost related to the LAN, let alone have any money to help support the volunteer staff who are coming out. (e.g. cover their hotels or some of their travel fee's.)

The reason we called it the LAN sustainability fee is for sustainability. To have a fund that's dedicated exclusively to helping cover future LAN fee's, help support our staff, etc... This money is earmarked specifically to help cover the cost related to future LAN's and to make it so we can make sure that LAN's are a consistent part of RGL's future.

I hope that we do not have to ban anyone on the probation system. I would strongly prefer if all probation players could just be respectful towards each and not use bigoted language during scrims/matches as is the norm for the vast majority of our playerbase.

It is upsetting that the actions these players chose to take is going to have potential ripple effects among invite teams, but to avoid banning a player who has broken rules to help a team form is not a principle we wish to stand behind.

The things you describe are entirely different. Banning someone for spamming slurs in the meme discord, verses targeted homophobic harassment are very different. We have received reports for players saying slurs/other negative things in private Discords, where we have done nothing and have no interest in going to that level. When it turns to repeated targeted harassment, doxxing, etc… we begin to take action and log details.

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This whole situation is incredibly disheartening, especially to me personally. I have reduced scratchh’s longer bans a couple times when he was banned in the past. When he had the year long ban for multiple bomb threats, I was a proponent pushing for giving him a third chance in our league. I’ve talked to him multiple times over voice, including that night and I was very clear with what he needed to do: how his actions have been harmful to others, and how easy it is to move away from this.

I wanted him to succeed and I still do, but I don’t want any participation in the league to come at the cost of other users having to put up with blatant toxicity or players going out of their way to be hostile and harass others when interacting with people outside of their selective friend group. This concept applies equally to all players inside of the league, and seems to be a large area of misunderstanding in the community. Players do not get banned inside of RGL because our administration team holds personal vendettas towards them or their friends. Non-routine RGL bans are never applied by a single person, and meetings are held on a regular basis where multiple people weigh their thoughts and opinions regarding all league-wide decisions. We do this to ensure that situations are handled properly and that single administrators aren't able to make decisions without the verification and approval of others.

We cannot police behavior everywhere, nor would we want to if we could. I think that ideally, players inside of our league would treat each other with the same respect online as they would on LAN or face to face. We want our players to avoid saying bigoted language while playing in competitive tf2 settings that could be related to RGL, and we want our players to be free of targetted harrassment from others who play in the league. I think most can agree that these goals are reasonable, and almost all of the players who play in the league have little trouble naturally maintaining those standards of behavior.

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At the start of the year, we started to put players into a probation system. This system is intended for players, like scratch, who have a long history of harassment or who have been banned three or more times in RGL (scratch falls into both categories incidentally). Scratch’s first ban was for extremely excessive toxicity during a prolander cup and his next two bans were for ban evading using alt accounts. Scratch’s fourth ban was applied in the ban wave where we started to place players on probation. This ban was for when he made posts about calling in bomb threats to the BTS and RGL LAN venue. We removed that in agreement that he would turn a new leaf, and that his days of harassment and thoughtless actions / ’joking’ would be put behind him. Under normal circumstances, a player with this behavioral record would typically already be perma-banned. Second chances have been given to scratch on numerous occasions to stop being an asshole in our league for a very long time.

Most players inside of the league do not have consistent problems with toxicity, harassment, and hateful language. For those who do, we use our probation system. Players on probation are told under no uncertain circumstances that they will be held to a higher standard of behavior, and to be respectful to other members of the community. Our goal is to give players a chance to stop problematic behaviors, and create a system to remove them from the league if they don’t. Being a decent person is all that's being asked for, and it's a bar that isn’t very high to meet.

It is very pretty uncommon that we get requests for information on the bans we make by the person who was banned, since a majority of the bans we make are for things that happened publically. When someone gets banned, they often do not need to ask to see what they did, because they already know. For the smaller percentage of cases that are from verified private reports. We keep that sensitive information private to help protect the victim who made the report.

So, I would say it is very uncommon with standard bans that players do not fully understand what they were banned for and the only time we withhold that information is when it is to protect the victim in the situation.

An issue we hope to avoid with players on probation is for the players in question to toe the line while inside of RGL’s platform, but continue to harass other players in every other context. This has proven to be a problem in the past, and has caused us to accept information taken from usually ignored sources in regards to players placed on probation. Our goal for players on probation is for them to be given a chance to change their behavior, that's why they are on probation and not just banned outright. This goal is rendered meaningless if a player doesn’t actually change their behavior and instead just hides it.

All that said though, even for players on probation, we do not really change our policies regarding bans from dms/twitch streams/etc. It is simply information we gather for a reference point when determining when to lift a players probationary period. This is also why I feel it's important to clarify scratch’s ban reasons as well, given how much wild misinformation people have extrapolated from the few messages I sent.

Your arguments are very centralized over scratch’s dms with ben, and you further spend a lot of time trying to discredit ben's report and liam's character. In truth, Ben’s report is only one of 6 reports made on scratch in the last 4 months and is a very minor part of why this ban was applied. For full transparency though, let's have a look at the dms included in ben's report.

Here is the conversation that happened between ben and scratchh, which was missing from the original post. Note that ben and scratchh have had no recent contact. The only time that ben and scratchh interacted, to his knowledge, is when he rang for his HL team a while ago. So, they do not know each other at all.

Image

So, scratchh instigates the conversation with a person he does not know. Scratch then calls the gay relationship "scary" and then tells this person he does not know they are a ‘disgusting freak’ for being in said gay relationship. Scratch initiated the conversation and went out of his way to say some rather nasty things, but this alone wasn’t the main focus of his ban. Instead, you should rather turn your attention towards the chat messages that scratch sent during the log you linked.

SCRATCHH im already erect and ive been ehre fo 30 seconds

SCRATCHH lol della says yikes
SCRATCHH hey della pres tab
SCRATCHH note the team ur on
SCRATCHH and dont speak :D

SCRATCHH GOOD MED PICK!!!
SCRATCHH LETS GO

SCRATCHH ٠●•۩۞۩[̲̅Ŋ̲̅σ̲̅σ̲̅Ь̲̲̅۰̲̅đ̲̲̅σ̲̅ώ̲̅ŋ̲̲̲]۩۞۩•●٠
SCRATCHH ٠●•۩۞۩[̲̅Ŋ̲̅σ̲̅σ̲̅Ь̲̲̅۰̲̅đ̲̲̅σ̲̅ώ̲̅ŋ̲̲̲]۩۞۩•●٠

SCRATCHH based esports black

SCRATCHH blacked

SCRATCHH desperate della
SCRATCHH keep shooting me

SCRATCHH just play sniper
SCRATCHH un
SCRATCHH you lost anyway

SCRATCHH LOL
SCRATCHH u suck
SCRATCHH dont ? me

SCRATCHH i fed into u and ur bming retard

SCRATCHH keep sniping
SCRATCHH youll hit one
SCRATCHH *DEAD* TheBigWeiner : stay dead
SCRATCHH ٠●•۩۞۩[̲̅Ŋ̲̅σ̲̅σ̲̅Ь̲̲̅۰̲̅đ̲̲̅σ̲̅ώ̲̅ŋ̲̲̲]۩۞۩•●٠
SCRATCHH ٠●•۩۞۩[̲̅Ŋ̲̅σ̲̅σ̲̅Ь̲̲̅۰̲̅đ̲̲̅σ̲̅ώ̲̅ŋ̲̲̲]۩۞۩•●٠
SCRATCHH ٠●•۩۞۩[̲̅Ŋ̲̅σ̲̅σ̲̅Ь̲̲̅۰̲̅đ̲̲̅σ̲̅ώ̲̅ŋ̲̲̲]۩۞۩•●٠

SCRATCHH *DEAD* TheBigWeiner : stay dead

SCRATCHH i dont see gay people
SCRATCHH cant see ur whole team

SCRATCHH holy shit shut up
SCRATCHH good one
SCRATCHH *DEAD* TheBigWeiner : stay dead
SCRATCHH *DEAD* TheBigWeiner : stay dead
SCRATCHH ٠●•۩۞۩[̲̅Ŋ̲̅σ̲̅σ̲̅Ь̲̲̅۰̲̅đ̲̲̅σ̲̅ώ̲̅ŋ̲̲̲]۩۞۩•●٠
SCRATCHH stop sniping
SCRATCHH so dumb

SCRATCHH holy shit
SCRATCHH you are so retarded

For context, many of the players on the team that scratch was scrimmaging are trans. The first message in this list was a message scratch sent upon reaction to seeing the team’s players, and is considered the worst offending message. On top of that, there are also messages where scratch is calling players retarded and gay, and a message very likely intended as a remark meant to make fun of players on the other team based on their trans identity (‘based esports black’). These chat logs are undeniably grounds for a player to be banned inside of RGL- so in this case the question was always regarding how long the ban would be applied for. What makes this ban such a long length is that scratch is on probation, receiving his fifth ban inside the league, has been receiving behavioral reports at least once a month since being put probation, and all of this has occurred after he already negotiated two prior ban lengths down under promises he wouldn’t be a problem inside of the community any longer.

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Froyotech get's a map advantage. So essentially it's a Bo5 that starts on map 2.

Clearcut is not map that will be played tonight, only the first four listed are correct.

Thanks to everyone who tuned in

VOD on twitch: Ford Gaming vs 100B

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Semi-Finals: Froyotech vs 100B
Quarter-Finals 100B v Rat Jail

Holy shit this game

LIVE NOW: https://twitch.tv/rglgg

Highlight:

Generally, we aim to have at least one high level/very experienced player on our casts. We're not always able to accomplish this goal, but I agree that there's a big difference in quality when you have someone who has a high level of understanding of the game, map, players, etc...

If any Invite players are interested in casting, feel free to add me on discord or steam.

https://twitter.com/CodexaGG/status/1240125388086489089

So let's break this down

- Multiple volunteers are putting in their free time and energy to create a production
- You deem this thing as having value, since you want to view it
- They are simply trying to get a little bit of money that they can pass along to the people who put together the cast and cover their expenses

- you can still download an STV and watch it back yourself
- you can still watch it live for free
- you can still watch it when it gets uploaded to youtube for free
- It's still free if you have amazon prime and use your gift sub with them

So a group of people who volunteer their free time, energy and effort into something that has value to you, and some of you are incredulous that they're asking for a small donation to help support what they do? When you still have plenty of options to watch it for free, if you don't wish to support them financially.

This is being made into a bigger issue than what it is. Either you can support them, because you appreciate what they provide to the community or just use one of the other options to get it for free.

This match was moved from last week to tonight @ 11pm.

Watch it at twitch.tv/RGLgg

Crazy finish to the first half: https://clips.twitch.tv/QuaintEasySrirachaFunRun

Match is live! https://www.twitch.tv/rglgg

http://AU.RGL.gg

The next season will have registration opening up soon. You can play in their pugs at https://discord.gg/GYcpVmR

They focus on Prolander and No Restriction Sixes.