Sun, Jun 25, 2023 by snowblind

As a follow-up to this post.

So what happens next for the league? I can't really say.

On a personal level (for context on my headspace, not as an excuse) - I have not been giving UGC the love and attention it deserves for several years. To be honest I am beyond burned out between my stressful day job, my family commitments, other personal pursuits and not to mention ADHD and depression that have been riding shotgun with me for decades. Last fall it all boiled over and I landed in the ER with what I thought was a heart attack, thankfully it was just a severe panic attack.

Since then I’ve been keeping UGC at even more of an arms length away, delegating more and trying to get by doing only the parts I was essentially needed for. Running UGC all these years has been one of my fondest hobbies but a hobby that brings with it (at times) tremendous stress. I could write a novel on the amount of truly horrendous things our admin team has had to endure from players over the years (predominantly from the TF2 side which I ran during its height.) That being said, I’ve already received several DMs from OW players telling me to kill myself over this situation. All to say, I have ZERO gas left in the tank for UGC. If I’m being honest it’s not a passion anymore, it’s a nuisance.

So why not quit? That’s complicated. Our site is clunky, old & error-prone. It’s been partially revamped and bolted onto a thousand times in the 13 years I’ve been here. As a volunteer hobbyist league no one has enough time (or frankly expertise) to revamp it the way it deserves. The site is a horrid mishmash of ColdFusion (mostly), PHP, Bootstrap & HTML. There are several essential components of how the league operates that still require SQL, FTP and sometimes Remote Desktop access. Not the kind of access you hand out to just anyone and not a skillset typically needed in a league admin. There are only 2 individuals remaining at UGC that have all the access and understanding of how it works and one of those individuals has been MIA for a long time dealing with personal issues. If I quit at any point, the whole thing stutters to a halt. So I’ve been staying out of a sense of obligation which is not good for anyone involved.

This is not an excuse or me asking for sympathy. It’s more to give context on how I would come to let a situation like this unfold in the first place. I’m sorry to ViteRamen, the rest of the UGC staff and the OW comp community at large for letting you down.