You can run a community Valorant tournament with as little help as possible, but you won’t be able to do that without somewhere reliable for everyone to go for information and support. A reliable ‘home base’ or a tournament webpage hosted on a VPS is a place where all of the brackets, rules, check-in and tournament updates and prize possibilities (such as a valorant digital gift card) are stored in one central location. When your VPS works correctly, your Discord will become much quieter, your players will likely arrive on time for their matches and you’ll be able to concentrate on more enjoyable aspects of running the tournament.
Bracket Page is a Stressful Test
Your bracket page will receive a significant increase in web traffic on match day and it will not be ‘just a page’. The requests for the bracket page will be coming from everybody at the same time, creating an overwhelming volume of web page requests, including mobile taps, page refreshes and last-second questions. To have a good understanding of the performance of your bracket page, it’s best to use a benchmark. According to the 2024 Web Almanac (HTTP Archive), 59% of mobile pages and 74% of desktop pages had good Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), with a good benchmark of under 2.5 seconds.
The gap between mobile and desktop pages matters because your audience is most likely to be checking match times from their phone, while juggling their Discord app, preparing for the match and possibly eating dinner. Because of that, it’s important to keep your check-in and bracket experience boring in the best way possible. Design your check-in and bracket ‘truth pages’ so they are lightweight, with minimal to no additional scripts, and be aware of how to cache each page so your VPS does not have to re-create a page for every player who refreshes the bracket page.
Remember that no matter how popular your tournament is, the Internet will still have nonsense. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with how well-known you are, and whatever automated machinery is being used will continue doing as it does regardless of who you are. For example, Cloudflare has announced that they mitigated 4.5 million DDoS attacks in Q1 of 2024; that’s a 50% increase from the previous year. According to them, gaming and gambling was the most targeted industry globally for HTTP-based DDoS attacks in Q1 of 2024 (seven+ out of every 100 DDoS mitigations).
That’s not reason to panic; it just means that a ‘bracket hub’ is still a website like any other public site and needs sensible caching, rate limiting and a design that allows it to remain fast for users reloading thousands of times at once, the same way a standard site needs to remain in business when that happens.
Email Rules Win Tournaments
When you have a fast-loading site, it means the next failure point is at a much quieter level. A player won’t see that database queries aren’t running quickly, but they will notice not receiving a check-in email. The best mindset for tournament operations managers is to view your website as the ‘source of truth’ and all of your messaging as the platform to deliver it. Your tournament website contains schedules, rules and brackets, while your messaging channel provides the right link to the right person at the right time.
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According to Google’s email sender guidelines, starting on February 1, 2024, anyone sending emails to Gmail accounts must comply with minimum requirements. Those who send 5,000+ messages per day to Gmail accounts must create an SPF and DKIM record, as well as implement DMARC on their sending domains. You may not get to 5,000 emails in a day if your tournament is small, but you should act as though you will in the future. Proper authentication of email is not about marketing your tournament but more about ensuring that your tournament registration confirmations and check-in links are not mistaken for spam.
A VPS setup is a great investment because it allows you to control your own domain, DNS and sending identity rather than relying on the default settings that come with a free tool.
Every email notification should direct the recipient back to a single ‘today’ page on your website (check-in timeframe, lobby information, current brackets), allowing you to easily update only one page whenever a change occurs. Before registration opens, create a few pages that are designed to reduce questions and prevent disputes:
- A landing page with the timezone, format and time that the check-in process will begin, with bold print that states: ‘Check-in opens at…’.
- A rules page that includes eligibility requirements, how maps/picks will be handled and how any disputes will be resolved.
- A prizing page that clearly indicates what the winner of the tournament will receive and when they will be paid.
- A check-in page that clearly defines the check-in procedures and what constitutes a no-show.
- A bracket page (or a page that contains bracket links) that will always have the same URL.
- A status/updates page that contains last-minute announcements and any changes to the tournament schedule.
While all of this may seem excessive at first, it will simplify your life later on. The ‘fast truth’ pages on your community tournament website serve as a quick reference guide for your players, creating a level of trust between your community and you while keeping your answers consistent and friendlier throughout.
Rule The Pages
In addition to creating positive vibes, having clear parameters for your tournament can help you build your tournament website on a solid foundation. For NA-based community events, the Riot North America Community Competition Guidelines offer clear parameters (as well as Tier 3 prize limits). Without Riot’s permission, your total prize pool cannot exceed $10,000 (currently USD or $12,000 non-cash prizes) and the total value of prizes you award in all competitions in a single calendar year cannot exceed $100,000 without Riot’s prior approval.
When writing your tournament website copy, you can use the above to create clarity for your players. Clearly state which tournament tier you are playing for, clearly define the prize pool and explicitly describe potential ‘What if…’ situations. In addition to the security aspect of your website, you can also treat security as a way to protect your community’s time and trust. In their 2024 Executive Summary for the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, Verizon reported that the exploitation of vulnerabilities to gain access to information has almost tripled, increasing by 180% from 2023 to 2024. This increase is due to the high number of zero-day exploitations that occurred with MOVEit.
As such, your tournament preparation plan should include regular updates to your OS, web stack, CMS and plugins, as well as backups that are easily restorable. If a new player visits your website for the first time, would they find it well-organised enough to give you their email address and be able to show up on time?
Make It Easy to Compete
Focus on creating three items to create an ‘official’ feeling for community tournaments without creating the illusion of being a high-level competition: fast truth pages, authentic communication and easy-to-follow or easy-to-reference tournament rules. Additionally, there are predictable tentpole event windows within the greater VALORANT calendar that are known to inspire local community tournaments and watch parties. It is during these times that your tournament website will likely experience the greatest traffic.
If your tournament website is built like a small operations system, a tournament will be able to run itself at some level.
