"It is just a meme, they will never actually launch."
"We will not provide casting or support for your league."
"Why does everyone keep believing that TFCL will ever exist?"
If you are gonna use ChatGPT, can you at least leave the emojis in?
We get it. There is a well deserved trust issue. We have promised the world, and then kept failing to deliver on our promises. Scrim automation, match automation, pick up game platform, **$40,000 prize pools.** We have overpromised in the past, and we kept overpromising. And then, boom! Gone. Nothing ever launches. It just vanishes into the abyss.
We have burnt a lot of bridges, and some are likely never going to be rebuilt. We have given the community hope, only to yank it away time and time again. So what makes this time any different from all the other times TFCL tried to "come back from the dead?"
We have Kept Our Development A Secret
We have been working on TFCL since late last year, and only told a handful of people about our revival. One of our main problems in the past, was we would announce stuff far before it was ready. For instance, we announced our server network back in 2016.
This time around, we have opted to only reveal TFCL revival when we actually had a service ready for launch. Which, for the record, is right now.
We are Only Doing The Bare Minimum
We are not here to run a league, a pick up game platform, an automatic scrim platform, automatic administration via custom built algorithm, yearly lan tournaments, or any other stuff that may have been promised or worked on in prior iterations of TFCL.
Instead, we are just going to offer a TF2 league. A core league experience for high level sixes play, with us copying the ESEA format and structure. We have got three divisions, in-game medals, match servers, and a prize pool.
That is it. Simple, straightforward, reliable. We are here to build and provide something that is consistent. Something that you as a player can easily understand and compete in.
Fee & Operational Transparency
When you pay to play in TFCL, you are directly contributing to the prize pool. We guarantee between $10,000 and $20,000 every season, depending on number of teams, our sponsors, and advertising partners. _(season 1 will have $10,000)_
We are Running Alpha Tests
There are no "what ifs" anymore. We are being clear and upfront with what you are getting out of TFCL, and are running a total of three alpha tests, with the first one happening **right now**. Each test will have a specific focus, and we will build things up based on the feedback we receive.
We are not just doing a "trust me bro" thing. This is real, and it is happening now.
(join our Discord for updated alpha information)
We have Partnered With UGC & KnightComp
We are not in this alone. TFC League has partnered with both the UGC League and the KnightComp league, run by SolarLight.
We will have a separate article about this later on.
We are Here To Prove Ourselves
We have had a less than stellar past, that goes without saying. While our initial league was relatively successful between 2016 and 2019, getting over 10,000 players and 500 teams, we severely misjudged the relevance of RGL at the time, and opted to put TFCL into a dev focused hiatus. Then when ESEA dropped TF2, we had to rush development, and forced an early relaunch in a scene that was now dominated by RGL. Despite our best efforts, our hiatus and development delays made it so we simply could not compete. The players we had, moved to RGL.
We made mistakes, going from the second largest North American League (for total players), to barely even registering on the map. Fast forward a few years, and we kept running into backend issues that prevented us from creating the league we have been promising since day one.
But now, we are here to prove ourselves. We are running various tests to build and test critical systems, and want to change our reputation from "sketchy league that never launches" to "stable league with predictable prizes and structure".
By the end of the day, we are creating TFCL for the competitive Team Fortress 2 community. We hope you will be open to giving us another chance, or at the very least, allow for us to prove ourselves.