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Hey guys, today I want to discuss a bit more of a touchy subject, something I don't usually like to bring up.
Donations have always been like a tipping system in my eyes - if you thoroughly enjoy playing on our servers or in our community, want more out of it, and want to support us, then anyone has the option of donating. Unfortunately, this needs a bit of discussing, since Panorama came out.
As you all know, the Panorama UI was released as the now default UI back on August 2nd. With this update, Valve had removed the MOTD window - which is what we used to display ads, which in turn supports our community and helps pay the costs that keep our community services running. For the vast majority of the time that we ran ads, they were not required to stay on. Those who wanted to support the server could lower the volume of them, and others with poor internet connections/not-so-great PC's could disable them entirely. Now that this is gone, we have to re-evaluate our services & costs, the price of VIP (which has been slightly raised already), and how to deal with this in the future. There is some bit of cash reserves from when ads were plentiful to keep supporting the community, however this issue needs to be solved ASAP!
This month we are looking at about 15% of our monthly costs covered by donations so far. That's a pretty scary number, considering we are halfway through the month. There have been entire months recently where we have had only 5-10% of our costs covered by donations, which is incredibly low. Judging by previous months donations, I will need to make some drastic changes to make up for this, and unfortunately the EU dedicated server is looking like the first cut. As much as I would've loved to keep up several of the servers there, it's not looking feasible at the moment. At best, if donations make up for this month's quota I can keep a small VPS over there for the most popular servers (possibly a Tier 1-6 public surf server, KZ, and Retakes servers).
I guess this leads me to this question; what could I do to incentivize donations? What would make you want to donate? Let's have a discussion!
tl;dr - Panorama UI on CS:GO means no more ads, donations are low - send in those donations or we'll have to tighten our belts! Also, what do you want to see for VIP?
Donations have always been like a tipping system in my eyes - if you thoroughly enjoy playing on our servers or in our community, want more out of it, and want to support us, then anyone has the option of donating. Unfortunately, this needs a bit of discussing, since Panorama came out.
As you all know, the Panorama UI was released as the now default UI back on August 2nd. With this update, Valve had removed the MOTD window - which is what we used to display ads, which in turn supports our community and helps pay the costs that keep our community services running. For the vast majority of the time that we ran ads, they were not required to stay on. Those who wanted to support the server could lower the volume of them, and others with poor internet connections/not-so-great PC's could disable them entirely. Now that this is gone, we have to re-evaluate our services & costs, the price of VIP (which has been slightly raised already), and how to deal with this in the future. There is some bit of cash reserves from when ads were plentiful to keep supporting the community, however this issue needs to be solved ASAP!
This month we are looking at about 15% of our monthly costs covered by donations so far. That's a pretty scary number, considering we are halfway through the month. There have been entire months recently where we have had only 5-10% of our costs covered by donations, which is incredibly low. Judging by previous months donations, I will need to make some drastic changes to make up for this, and unfortunately the EU dedicated server is looking like the first cut. As much as I would've loved to keep up several of the servers there, it's not looking feasible at the moment. At best, if donations make up for this month's quota I can keep a small VPS over there for the most popular servers (possibly a Tier 1-6 public surf server, KZ, and Retakes servers).
I guess this leads me to this question; what could I do to incentivize donations? What would make you want to donate? Let's have a discussion!
tl;dr - Panorama UI on CS:GO means no more ads, donations are low - send in those donations or we'll have to tighten our belts! Also, what do you want to see for VIP?