CEO & CTOJust imagine, if there are 16 teams in a league, each producing 78 laps worth of data at the Monaco iGP, then 1248 laps worth of data is generated from the race alone, before factoring in practice, qualifying, strategies, driver and staff contracts, finances, sponsors and other data. Then imagine that we have thousands upon thousands of races running, let's just say 10,000 for example, then that equates to 12.5 million laps in a single afternoon's worth of data!
Over a year ago, to combat the fact that a lot of data comes from inactive mobile players, who maybe installed the app and didn't use it much, we started removing inactive players from leagues, defined as anyone who hadn't logged in within 28 days. This was very effective at reducing load, but brought complaints from league hosts who said their Pro and Elite tiers actually needed the inactive players to stay populated. So, as a compromise we opted to only remove inactive players from Rookie.
Several months later, this has led to an accumulation of inactive players in Pro and Elite and many of the recent problems. Simulating millions of laps of data for hundreds of thousands of players every single evening, with many inactive players among that, is not sustainable. Mobile apps have a very high "churn" rate generally (it's pretty much industry standard now that only 10% of people keep any mobile app installed).
Over a year ago, to combat the fact that a lot of data comes from inactive mobile players, who maybe installed the app and didn't use it much, we started removing inactive players from leagues, defined as anyone who hadn't logged in within 28 days. This was very effective at reducing load, but brought complaints from league hosts who said their Pro and Elite tiers actually needed the inactive players to stay populated. So, as a compromise we opted to only remove inactive players from Rookie.
Several months later, this has led to an accumulation of inactive players in Pro and Elite and many of the recent problems. Simulating millions of laps of data for hundreds of thousands of players every single evening, with many inactive players among that, is not sustainable. Mobile apps have a very high "churn" rate generally (it's pretty much industry standard now that only 10% of people keep any mobile app installed).
Clearly then, we cannot afford for inactive players to have resources allocated and impact on the experience of active players. It would be illogical to maintain the status quo. As a compromise I've made the necessary decision to prioritise our active players, and we must ensure that they get the best service possible. From this point onwards players will be removed from leagues for inactivity as follows:
- Rookie - After 30 days of inactivity, a player will be removed from the league
- Pro - After 60 days of inactivity, a player is removed
- Elite - After 90 days of inactivity, a player is removed
This ruling has come in to effect immediately, and we can guarantee it will improve the quality of the service for all active players by reducing the strain on our servers significantly. Within as little as a day, there should be significant and noticeable improvements. Spacing the timing among tiers as we have done will keep the higher tiers populated for slightly longer, allowing them to remain more active, while still ensuring improved quality of service for all active players.
In addition to this we are working on infrastructure improvements that mean we'll be able to handle the kind of load we've seen even with all the extra players, to allow for growth in future. I will elaborate on this in an upcoming blog.
Thanks for your continued support.
