mad respect for that, i wish more orgs were transparent like this

RGL run a website written in ASP.NET, not sure if Core or not, but if not, then they must host it on a machine with Windows Server which is obnoxiously expensive compared to hosting things on Linux
depending on if you maintain a Windows license yourself or you use pay as you use option, prices will differ
in pay as you use case it's at least twice more expensive if not thrice when comparing to a machine with Linux with exact same specification (vCPU, RAM, disk, network throughput etc)

here is some nerd stuff about real disk usage
etf2l use this: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/ for demos storage and it costs 3.20 EUR/mo/net for ONE TERABYTE of data
5 TB costs 20.80 EUR/mo/net which is something which definitely would cover all needs for demos for RGL and ETF2L together for many years with current policies, not entirely with demo upload enforcement for every player, in that case it would be enough for one league to run out of space without any retention (removal of old files) for a few years
after the server failure in 2019 we lost all demos on etf2l historically and after keeping all of the new ones we have:

Filesystem                                Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
xd.your-storagebox.de:/home  1.0T  140G  885G  14% /mnt/external-storage

meaning etf2l will die faster than this storage gets entirely full
you have to keep in mind that each season only stv demos has to be uploaded from each game, demos usually have idk ~100 MB (after compression) per match and you have like idk 80 matches a season in prem? + we keep demos from requested demos by the etf2l staff and players

on average around the same for each player if they were forced to upload demos, so assuming the worst scenario which is highlander, you have 1.8 GB per match, for 6s it would be 1.2 GB per match
ETF2L 6v6 Autumn 2023 had something around 300 matches in non-top tier, ~115 top-tier
that gives us around 500 GB per 6v6 season and probably something similiar to hl considering less players are involved in that overall, also less teams so less matches to play
you don't have to keep these demos forever, it's enough to keep it for a season or two
it can be more costly but it's definitely not something impossible to do, for etf2l it would mean it wouldn't live without anybody donating it from time to time but it's not like you won't be able to take advantage of this sort of solution
etf2l server costs € 15.85/mo net (with backups) + 3.20 EUR/mo/net + $12.98/yr for domain renewal + a few eur/mo for mail service because afaik it's paid
staff isn't paid anything for work, so it's around 28 EUR/mo gross to run ETF2L right now

what is needed here is willingness to put work into making it happen and enforcing demo upload

edit: added backup price
the devil is in details; these disks which are with vps/dedicated servers are usually ssd (hot, fast storage, pricey) and these on external services like we use are usually enterprise-grade hard drives (cold, slow storage, cheap) and connected thru network protocol which means we have a latency, but it's completely acceptable for files you don't have to access immediately

etf2l has the same problem and based on my knowledge the main problem about having AC admins are:
- nobody wants to do this shit
- it's time consuming to watch demos carefully
- (afaik) no good tools to catch so most likely it's based on assessing player's behaviour manually
- if you ban a liked player in the community you are very likely to be harassed/doxxed/disrespected in the community regardless if the cheating was evident or not (sometimes)
- some people who apply to AC have questionable intentions, for example after AC have banned someone on ETF2L, cheater's friend sent an application to the staff email, this situation had place multiple times
- there is no incentive for people to apply other than taking a proper care of the way league works, people appreciate work when they see fruits of it and AC work is entirely behind curtain, hard to be transparent

offering money is probably not an option because idk how much money RGL has but ETF2L has no money and it barely lives on its own, it lives thanks to all donators and some money from adsense
also if you are supposed to get idk 20 eur/mo for many many hours throughout the month if you look at it purely financially it's not good unless ur a school kid

rgl ac full admin list isn't public, but the problem with ac exists in eu too; there are two ac admins where there are idk 700-800 people actively playing on etf2l, that means there might be a huge backlog of cases to go thru and it can be a problem here to take care of it properly

i don't say we can't say anything negative at ac administration overall; however when dealing with them you should take on account the situation as a whole

why tf it was up in the recent discussion ._. sry for necro

i would also check your pc health because it's far from being new (your cpu was released in 2012) and since you probably play on a hdd that can also lead to performance issues
check disk health, check ram health, the best steps to start

this plus deals.gg are the best options for buying games cheap, they lead you to the cheapest deal available and have historical price data from various shops

SERNIK
https://www.polonist.com/polish-cheesecake-sernik/
important: if you add raisins to it go to hell

WHERE
BaseStack Łódź
Rewolucji 1905 Roku 45
90-215 Łódź
Polska (Poland)

WHEN
19-21.07.2024, Friday-Sunday (games are in all days)

EVENT LINK
https://poland.tf
https://discord.poland.tf or https://discord.gg/C3TWmwj

SIGN-UPS
going to open on 24.03.2024, 19:00 CET, signup link will be provided on our Discord

SCHEDULE
TBA

TOURNAMENT FORMAT
TBA, tournaments chosen by the players who are signed up, we do an MGE soldier tournament and we are very likely to run a 6v6 tournament as it's probably going to be the most picked up choice

THE OFFER
Entrance fee:
- 300 PLN (65 EUR, 56 GBP, 69 USD) for adult players
- 220 PLN (48 EUR, 41 GBP, 51 USD) for minor players
- 30 PLN (7 EUR, 6 GBP, 7.52 USD) for spectators
Only personal sign-ups for players. There are 95 seats available: 87 in the rooms, 8 on open space organized separately in the venue.

Fee includes:
- one drink for spectators
- full PC rental (240 Hz/144 Hz FHD screen, PC capable of running TF2 on 240 fps, full perhiperals set) for players

LAN experience:
- tournaments for all players signing up, depending on their choice
- tf2pickup.org system available locally for pugging
- entire event is being held in English by people with LAN organization experience since 2018
- venue sells food and beverages, most importantly beer and vodka
+ low overall costs (flights to Warsaw or Łódź), sleeping costs are usually 100-150+ PLN/night, beers in shops are like 1 EUR each, in bars/event venue it's a double price

old players

one of the problems which were in the community was lack of access to cheat feed as some orgs kept it for themselves only, most of them are closed source so you must be friends with them in order to use them
most of them because Arie's cheatfeed which code is 10 years old is still working and some time ago I did some effort in making it more accessible, so now you can self-host it thru Docker which makes it easy to set up anywhere you want including LAN use, which was one of my goals for poLANd.tf 2024 #winter
https://github.com/Arie/tf2_live_stats
I host my own instance but since the codebase is old and probably a bit insecure I don't share access to it publicly but it's super easy to make it work on your own
so now only producers need to make a change (if they want to, big if)

i played on tf2lobby and it was indeed a ground breaking change from pugging on IRC, sadly I don't remember the stack
I remember tho that this site has this "seized by USA something" replacement page when someone does some illegal activity in the web like FTX being a scam recently and that's how this site died basically
tf2center is written in java (cannot disclose what version) if that helps
ETF2L is written in php with ETF2L API v1 being written in Perl
also from early stuff serveme.tf is still up and it's written in Ruby

harrow is a greek god irl with his posture

it's burger only list
-rep

shoutout to:
- basestack for an amazing service, it's been above my expectations for sure (to a point where in some cases they were ready to borrow their own [employees' private] hardware just to ensure everybody are ok with their needs if something would break)
- essentials.tf / printstream for support with everything, without you our production would be way less enjoyable to watch
- wonszu for helping me with various things including getting production/observer pc's with rtx 4090's inside and making some major decisions about the event which led to the outcome you saw yourself
- jmax for devoting himself to the production setup and management
- deli for recreating our event brand from scratch, setting our merch website up, i love the way our logos and pages look like, also our stingers on stream were great, also thanks for cool cider
- sodium for solo managing the tournament (i wasn't a great help for him) and getting some cool belgian beers
- audiofall and antimation for amazing video designs provided
- zuri for creating our entire merch portfolio as well as making photos, helping with reception and making such a beautiful event poster
- mały for taking care of servers and being ready if things would go south and helping with LAN pickup setup
- feno for taking care of various things related to the event like taking care, attempting to get event sponsors etc
- samus and beater for observing the entire event
- beater, benpl, meer, not steven, turbotabs and wan for turning the broadcast into a funny and enjoyable show
- pablo for helping with some tournament shenenigans from the shadows
- hackerspace kraków for sharing us their raspberry pi's (shoutout to an anonymous helper)
- arie for helping with setting up LAN serveme so getting servers to play was a true joy for everybody
- wiethoofd for tips about using cameras over raspberry pi
- dcs and aoshi for sharing their knowledge while we were preparing for the entire thing
- steve seguin for help with vdo.ninja as a developer
- fireside casts for casting matches nobody would watch otherwise while still being interesting to watch
- eric smith from valve for getting our post in and having an in-game notification about the grand final match
- danny for teaching me how to reach out to potential sponsors
- all people who have donated thanks to which we were actually able to make this event happen, including:
+ fr3unen
+ olo
+ whip
+ meer
+ cyanic
+ zambz
+ 0mger
+ bluraf
+ masuj
+ graba
+ audiofall
+ bigzzz
+ taylorswiftfan100
+ others :)
- olo for many cool beers to try out
- teo for epic tekken 8 and guilty gear strive matches
- all players from finland for being such chill and enjoyable and wholesome people
- everybody who dared to drink the green dragon with me
- everybody who attended for creating such a cool atmosphere, i have surpassed my expectations about how happy people will be about overall event organization and getting feedback about having no major problems with servers was a music for my ears