SetsulETF2L also somehow managed to figure out this apparently hugely complicated and expensive "filehosting" thing before RGL even existed
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