This page details a slight change in the SC2SEA donation / payout system. Basically now donations help pay not just for tournaments, but go towards helping to pay for the sites hosting costs as well. In the event there isn't any funds left for prize payouts, SC2SEA will take care of it and be responsible for the payments of prizes for all our regular tournaments in the following years to come.
Lastly, it also explains how you can help SC2SEA by purchasing from our store or donating. This page will also have a hall of fame and a detailed list of everyone who has ever donated.
SC2SEA Monthly Costs:
Here is a breakdown of what it costs to run SC2SEA every month in USD.
Dedicated "Pro" Server: $175
Sandy Bridge Xeon Server
3.2GHz quad core Xeon E3-1230 CPU
Passmark CPU mark Score of 8,200
16GB ram
500GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
Remember our old laggy server which was reduced to a crawl when our traffic got heavy? We aren't slow anymore but it comes at a price
Sponsored Tournaments: $135
CO X 4 = $25 X 4 = $100
Masters Cup = $30
Paypal Transaction Costs: $5
Approximate monthly fee to run SC2SEA: $175 + $135 = $305 or $3,660 a year
Dec 2012 Update: We don't run CO's anymore as there are wT's so its just $205 / month.
Self-Sustainability
I started commercialising SC2SEA in May 2011 first with the introduction of TGM. This was partly to provide something valuable people could use, that didn't exist - I recognised there wasn't a proper comprehensive Starcraft 2 Guide out there for lower league players wanting to improve. And so I roped in my buddies mOOnGLaDe, OxygeN and we started our risky venture.
The overall aim however, was so that SC2SEA would one day be self-sustainable, a site that could generate enough income to cover its expenses and hence last forever and not succumb to the financial costs of running it, like many of the small sites that come and go. Previously the hosting expenses were coming out of my own pocket, as donations were never enough and were solely used for tournament funding.
I'm proud to say that for the last 6 months, we have been "sustainable", with the shop generating enough income that spilled over and thus covered the sites running costs, and hopefully this will continue this way for years to come. As such, there will be now no more need solely depend on donations for our tournaments but of course they still help tremendously finance the very expensive hosting costs.
So what has changed?
SC2SEA will now sponsor all tournaments regardless of there being sufficient "donated tournament funds" or not. There will be no more "call for donations" news post in the past as we do not have to solely depend on random acts of kindness, although that is always welcome. In the event that there isn't enough donated funds, SC2SEA will take care of it and handle all the payouts. In other words, we have reached self-sustainability!
Donations will now no longer go straight into the tournament fund, but help pay for the sites overall monthly expenses as well. Bear in mind these donations help tremendously as our monthly costs are high.
Recent donators will still be displayed in the news post of every CO and on the right side of SC2SEA. So all this is basically a change that goes on in the background.
Remember donations still go a long way and help contribute to the $305/monthly costs we face. If you love SC2SEA and are on it daily, or you like what SC2SEA has done to develop eSports in our region and want to play a part aiding this, here are some ways you can help give back or support us:
We get a small profit from the first three and some of that goes towards paying for our sites expenses but its the donations help the most. Every donation is kept and accounted for, and will be listed on the respective pages.
Donation List:
See the post below this!
Donation Hall of FAME!
Let me know if I missed someone because I did this manually.
Even the smallest donations help keep sc2sea running! All donations go towards helping our site run including our monthly server hosting fees and sc2sea sponsored community tournaments we host. Find out more here.