Donations & Prizefund - Why?

[bleh-]

The sensitive subject of donations..

As we all know in recent years and due to the downfall of ClanBase (rip) the competitive play across the board for UT has somewhat taken a step back. We have had flutters of activity on both sides of the pond with GU.iCTF and also ph34r's recent saDM Duel Cup, and on the other side the last of the ClanBase OpenCups. But it's safe to say it's definitely slowed down on the European side. My vision for this cup is to spice things up and host a cup that people are actually interested in again. Again, without stating the obvious, unless I receive an email from the CEO of nVidia telling me they have seen the challonge page by chance and wanted to sponsor this cup it is going to rely on the community to help with this. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that could spare anything between $1-$25, or €1-€25. If we put this in real terms, if every player that has signed up to this cup so far in the past week donated €12.50 ($17.13) we would be sat on a prize fund of €337 ($461) which would mean the winner of this tournament would be taking away €236 ($323). Now if we look at it in a different light, if every person who has viewed this forum over the past 24 hours were to donate as little as €5 ($6) we'd be sat on a prizefund of €1070 ($1466). Now I don't know about anyone else, but that doesn't seem like it'd be completely impossible.

This game requires the help and continued support of the players, already we've received some donations but to make this a cup worth competing in we would need more.

[m3ss]

I agree that the community likely needs some sort of re-invigoration or spark and perhaps a prize pool could do that. I don't think chipping in a few dollars is unreasonable, and as you said if many people are willing to do so it could amount to a decent prize pool. It might be worth dedicating a small percentage of the pool to something like a best prediction prize or even perhaps a random drawing for those people that might feel they don't have a chance to win their donation back by competing.

[bleh-]

[InfamousRaider]

I may be alone in this but I am against tournaments with cash prizes. I feel like it encourages cheating in a game with outdated and imperfect cheat protection. I also feel like anyone left playing UT after 15 years isn't playing this game for money, they are here for the spirit of competition and because UT is hands down the best arena shooter ever created.

Just want to be clear I'm not trying to diminish your efforts bleh. I love when players put forth the effort to host cups in UT and I truly hope for nothing but the best in this. I just wanted to put my 2 cents in.

[m3ss]

While I certainly agree with you IR, I think in the 1v1 format it's a lot easier (though not 100% foolproof) to police the competition through demos alone. When you get into larger formats like 5v5 it's going to be a lot more difficult and more time consuming to do the same, but not impossible.

[bleh-]

[DREW-TANg]