Along the way, decentralization broke into Runet. I saw an article on Habré and realized that I work in the same network. I have never tried mining, I have a gaming club in general.
In October last year, I opened the 59FPS eSports computer club in Perm. It was created as a base for hosting esports tournaments, and everything was going well until ... 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.
The history of the opening of the club
For several years I have been the head of the Perm branch of the Russian Computer Sports Federation. We have been working for a long time, and all this time the development is hindered by a problem. Namely, the lack of a modern equipped site for holding 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 it well, do it yourself”, which is what I did. As a result, he opened a computer club with powerful equipment and a comfortable environment for the players.
After we opened, the reviews went. Judging by them, the club really turned out to be quite good.
Club equipment
The room is not very large, there are only 20 gaming places, which, however, are placed so that cybersportsmen feel comfortable. The places are equipped with an eye to holding e-sports tournaments and training e-sportsmen.
Here are the machine specs:
- CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3600. The number of cores is 6, the frequency is 3.6 GHz.
- RAM DDR4 16GB PC4-21300 2666MG2 Corsair, 2pcs x 8GB.
- 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 have by no means died out - they are still popular among those clients who value team spirit during the game, personal contact with other participants in the game process. Yes, and loners from time to time come to watch and play.
In general, things went well. But, unfortunately, the club was opened, as mentioned above, in October, so it was possible to work in a normal mode for only a few months.
Even after the virus became known in Europe and the Russian Federation (but before the quarantine was announced), visitors continued to play. The last few days before the 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, on March 28 we had to close. I thought the club could hold out until the official mandatory weekend (March 30th). But no, on March 28, when several e-sportsmen were training at the club (they participated in the qualifying stage for the Russian e-sports championship), police officers came to us. Law enforcers reminded that the club should be closed. I had to obey. We are currently running 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, it has become unprofitable from the first day of quarantine, because regular payments have not gone away. Communal, rent, etc. All this must be paid for. I started looking for an opportunity to make money on the resources that remained - equipment and a stable Internet connection.
Many computer clubs began to rent out gaming PCs during the quarantine, giving the machines 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 wanted to play at home on a powerful computer. As it turned out, the caution was justified: 5 out of 6 applicants had outstanding debts to the bailiffs. These are debts on loans, fines, taxes. The amounts reached 180 thousand rubles, and the amount of debt did not change for many years or even increased. This meant only one thing - the person does not have an official source of income from which the bailiffs could write off the debt or part of it.
Accordingly, if for some reason such clients cannot return the computer, or return it incomplete, then 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, distributed gaming systems were actively discussed - the Drova and Playkey services were most often mentioned. There were much fewer risks here than in the case of a lease, so we decided to try it.
I chose Playkey - simply because its head office is located in Perm, my hometown. Not only "kindred" feelings played a role, but also the desire to help gamers from our city improve their gaming skills, plus give them the opportunity to take part in eSports competitions.
Connecting to the network
I left a request on the site, and I was immediately contacted. Work has begun on connecting the equipment to the service. During the implementation of the project, some problems arose, but they were quickly resolved - fortunately, the company's support is not only sane, but also competent. The main problem was related to the fact that the processors in my servers are from AMD. They are less common in gaming machines, so the connection is somewhat more complicated. I also had to remove the M.2 SSDs from the machines, as they, according to the support staff, interfered with the normal operation of the Playkey software. But we quickly solved all technical difficulties. As they explained to me, the version of CentOS that was used by the service for installation on client PCs did not support this type of SSD. Later, the problem was solved by updating the OS kernel, so now it is no longer necessary to remove drives from computers to work with a distributed network.
Computers connected to a distributed network become nodes, the resources of which are available to gamers who want to play in the cloud. At the moment the gamer connects, the service looks for the node closest to him and launches the game on this server. Plus for the gamer - low latency, the quality of the game is close to the gameplay on your own PC. Well, the company and the partner who provided the server receive payment.
How much does the club earn with the help of the service?
Each machine brings $50 a month - payment is fixed. The contract fixed the amount of 130 rubles per day, which is 78 per month with 000 machines operating on the network.
This is about 6-10 hours of download per machine per day.
But about 60% of this amount goes to the costs associated with the work of the club. First of all, these are utility bills - electricity, internet, etc. Plus the expenses of the club itself, which could not be frozen for the quarantine period. Net profit is about 30 thousand rubles a 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 the end of the quarantine, the training of cybersportsmen will resume.
It seems to me that a distributed scheme of work 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 is full of gamers even during the quarantine period, albeit virtually. If Permians read the article, then here is his address - st. Sovetskaya, 3. It is located next to the socio-cultural space "Shpagin's Plant".
Source: habr.com