📘 🧑🏾‍🤝‍🧑🏻 🤸🏾 E-sports club in isolation: distributed gaming as an opportunity not only to survive, but also to earn 👦🏻 🌇 🤘🏻

In the process, decentralization burst into a runet. I saw an article on Habr “Games for money: experience in the distributed gaming network of the owner of several servers” and realized that I was working in the same network. I have never tried mining, I have a game club in general.

Last October, I opened the 59FPS eSports Computer Club in Perm. It was created as a base for esports tournaments, and everything went well before ... well, you are all aware of the epidemic, yes. Under the cut - a story about how the club manages to work almost normally in a crisis thanks to distributed gaming.

Club Opening History

For several years I headed the Perm branch of the Russian Federation of Computer Sports. We have been working for a long time, and the problem has been hindering development all this time. Namely, the lack of a modern equipped platform for esports competitions. In the end, it seemed logical to me to create such a platform myself. They say the truth - “If you want to do well, do it yourself”, which I did. As a result, he opened a computer club with powerful equipment and a comfortable environment for players.

After we opened, the reviews went. Judging by them, the club really turned out pretty good.

Club equipment

The room is not very large, there are only 20 playing places in it, which, however, are placed so that it is convenient for e-sportsmen. The seats are equipped with an eye to the holding of e-sports tournaments and the training of e-sportsmen.

Here are the characteristics of the machines:

CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3600. The number of cores is 6, the frequency is 3.6 GHz.
RAM DDR4 16 GB PC4-21300 2666 MG2 Corsair, 2 pcs x 8 GB.
VGA Palit GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER JS PCI-E 3.0 8192 MB.
Network connection - 500 Mbps.

Epidemic and mode of operation

Almost from the very opening, visitors came to us. Actually, why not? Computer clubs are by no means extinct - they are still popular among those customers who value team spirit in the game process, personal contact with other participants in the game process. And loners come from time to time to watch and play.

In general, things went well. But, unfortunately, the club was opened, as mentioned above, in October, so that in normal mode it was possible to work only a few months.

Even after it became known about the virus in Europe and the Russian Federation (but before the announcement of quarantine), visitors continued to play. The last few days before quarantine there was a slight decline in attendance, but only on certain days. In general, revenue remained at the same level, there were no problems with this.

But, unfortunately, March 28 had to close. I thought the club could hold out until the official mandatory weekend (March 30). But no - on March 28, when several e-sportsmen trained at the club (they participated in the qualifying stage for the Russian championship in computer sports), police officers came to us. Law enforcers reminded that the club needs to be closed. I had to obey. Now we conduct competitions exclusively online.

Search for new opportunities

The club had to close, and I was among those whose business suddenly ceased to generate income. Even worse - from the first day of quarantine it became unprofitable, because regular payments have not gone anywhere. Communal, rental, etc. - All this must continue to be paid. He began to look for the opportunity to capitalize on those resources that remained - equipment and a stable Internet connection.

Many computer clubs during the quarantine began to lease gaming PCs, giving cars to private users. We also decided to try and opened the acceptance of applications for a gaming machine for temporary use. But they did not rush into the pool with their heads, but showed caution. They began to carefully check those who want to play at home on a powerful computer. As it turned out, caution was justified: 5 out of 6 applicants had unsecured debts to the bailiffs. These are loans debts, fines, taxes. Amounts reached 180 thousand rubles, and the amount of debt for many years did not change or even increased. This meant only one thing - a person does not have an official source of income from which bailiffs could write off debt or part of it.

Accordingly, if such clients for some reason cannot return the computer, or return it incompletely, even if I go to court and win it, I will not be able to return the money or equipment. The risk was huge, especially in the current situation, so I decided to abandon the “gaming PC for rent” service and come up with something else.

A suitable option was found quickly enough. So, in the community of computer club owners actively discussed distributed gaming systems - the most frequently mentioned service was Drova and Playkey. There were much fewer risks than in the case of rent, so we decided to try it.

I chose Playkey - simply because its head office is located just in Perm, my hometown. Not only "kindred" feelings played a role, but also a desire to help gamers from our city improve their playing skills, plus give them the opportunity to participate in e-sports competitions.

Network connection

I left a request on the site, and they immediately contacted me. Work began on connecting equipment to the service. During the implementation of the project, some problems arose, but they were quickly resolved - fortunately, the support of the company is not only sane, but also competent. The main problem was that the processors in my servers are from AMD. They are less common in gaming machines, so the connection is somewhat more complicated. We also had to remove the M.2 SSDs from the machines, because, according to the support staff, they interfered with the normal operation of the Playkey software. But we quickly resolved all the technical difficulties. As I was told, the version of CentOS that the service used to install on client PCs did not support this type of SSD. Later, the problem was solved by updating the kernel of the OS,therefore, it is no longer necessary to remove drives from computers to work with a distributed network.

Computers connected to a distributed network become nodes whose resources are available for gamers who want to play in the cloud. When a gamer connects, the service searches for the node closest to it and launches the game on this server. Plus for the gamer - low latency, the quality of the game is approaching the gameplay on your own PC. Well, the company and partner that provided the server get paid.

How much does the club earn with the help of the service?

Each machine brings $ 50 per month - a fixed payment. An amount of 130 rubles per day is fixed in the contract, it turns out 78,000 per month with 20 machines running on the network.

This is about 6-10 hours of loading for each machine per day.

But about 60% of this amount goes to costs that are associated with the work of the club. First of all, these are utility bills - electricity, Internet, etc. Plus the costs of the club itself, which could not be frozen for the period of quarantine. Net profit is about 30 thousand rubles per month. In principle, this is not bad, because the fact that the business does not suffer losses is already good, we will not close. And after quarantine is completed, the training of e-sportsmen will resume.

It seems to me that a distributed work scheme will develop in the future, since it is beneficial to everyone, both network participants and the services that offer this scheme. My club continues to work, we can say that it and during the quarantine period is full of gamers, albeit virtually. If Permians read the article, then here is his address - ul. Sovetskaya, 3. It is located next to the sociocultural space “Shpagin Plant”.