Questions
The things people ask before their first bracket.
Getting started
What you need before your first bracket.
Do I need to buy anything?
Yes, to play. The launcher, the league network and Nova (opens in a new tab) come with a pro-gamer subscription at five dollars a month, and you need the first two to reach a bracket at all. The game itself is Blizzard’s: the current build is free from them, and the launcher finds whichever build you have. Watching, reading profiles and backing other players stays free, with no account.
What are the three tiers?
Amateur at five dollars a month, Pro at $25 a month, and Partner, which is a contract rather than a card. Every tier is a full membership: the launcher, Nova, the ladder, and money from your own fans from day one. Amateur plays most brackets; Pro and Partner play every one, including the Pro-only brackets, and their ladder games carry higher stakes both ways.
What are the three tiers?
Amateur at five dollars a month, Pro at $25 a month, and Partner, which is a contract rather than a card. Every tier is a full membership: the launcher, Nova, the ladder, and money from your own fans from day one. Amateur plays most brackets; Pro and Partner play every one, including the Pro-only brackets, and their ladder games carry higher stakes both ways.
Can I register today?
Yes. Pick a tier, give us your in-game name and email, and the link to download the launcher is in your inbox the moment you sign up. Install it, sign in, and your profile goes up with your first game.
Which games can I play?
StarCraft: Brood War is running now. Chess, Helldivers 2 and Aliens: Fireteam Elite are listed and open the day enough people say they want them: press Count me in on a game’s page and you are counted. A game’s page shows its brackets, what you need, and who plays it.
How long does setup take?
About fifteen minutes, once. You install the launcher, sign in, and it finds your game, joins you to the league network and reports every match with the replay attached. After that, every bracket is three clicks.
Is there a map of the whole site?
Yes. Every public page, grouped the way the menu groups them, lives at one address, and there is a small Site Map link at the very bottom of every page.
Playing
The launcher, the builds, the network and the ladder.
Why are there two builds of StarCraft?
The current free build plays the weekly brackets. The 2009 build, 1.16.1, is the only one our bots can run on: Nova runs on BWAPI, which hooks into that build, and the 2017 patch shut BWAPI out for good. The two cannot see each other. The launcher knows which build a match needs and starts that one, so you only have to own the game.
Is this safe for my existing game install?
Yes. The launcher finds the StarCraft you already have and leaves it as it is. It installs nothing over the game, holds no password, and keeps its own token where other programs on your PC cannot read it. Nothing about your PC is visible to the league except game traffic and match results.
Can I play from another country?
Yes. Games this old only find opponents on a local network, so the league runs a private one across the internet, and the launcher joins you to it when you sign in. Your PC and the league host then behave as though they are on the same router, wherever you actually are. Games that run on their own official servers need none of this.
How do ranks work?
The old-school Pro Gaming Tour ladder: D minus at the bottom, A plus at the top, and a rating that moves every time you play an official match. Everyone opens at D plus, ten placement games sort you out, and the ladder puts you where you actually belong. Beat someone above you and you take a lot; lose to someone below you and it hurts.
What is a practice round?
A game either player marks as practice before it starts, in the launcher. It plays by the same rules as a bracket game, the replay is uploaded the same way, and it changes nobody’s rating. Practice rounds are how you learn a matchup, or spar with Nova, without putting your rank on the line.
Why does the launcher connect to Google Calendar?
Because most of the people who play here are busy parents, and a league match has to fit around real life, not the other way around. In the launcher you talk with your opponent and settle on a time that genuinely works for both of you, instead of a slot the league hands you. Once you both agree, Google Calendar makes it official: the match goes on both your calendars, and each of you gets a reminder before it starts.
Nova
The training partner that plays all three races.
What is the Nova program?
One opponent who plays all three races, free at any hour, and who keeps what it learns about you and gets harder. Nova carries a real rating in each race, earned the same way yours is, and is marked as a bot on the ladder so the table reads honestly.
Can Nova beat me?
Probably, at first. Nova is far above the computer opponent that shipped with the game and well below a top human, and its strategy is shallow once you learn the patterns. It does click faster than any human ever will, which is the one genuinely unfair thing about it. Anyone who tells you a StarCraft bot plays at professional level is selling something.
Does Nova really remember me?
Yes, and there is no mystery in it. It picks a plan when it joins your lobby, records which plan it used against you and whether it won, and next time the plans that lost to you get less likely. It files all of that under your in-game name; change your name and, as far as Nova is concerned, you are a stranger again. Playing Nova needs a subscription. Reading about Nova does not.
Can Nova talk to me during the game?
Not right now. Nova plays; it does not talk yet. Backing the founder of OPLeague, N0vaW0LF, on his player page goes toward advancing what Nova can do in the game, and a voice is at the top of that list.
StarCraft
Builds, maps and replays, for the one game that is live.
Which version of StarCraft does the league use?
Both, and you do not have to choose. Brackets against people are played on Remastered or on the 2009 build, version 1.16.1, whichever one you already have. You only need 1.16.1 to play Nova, because the bots hook into that build and the 2017 patch shut them out of the current client. The launcher knows which build a match needs and starts that one, so you never have to think about it.
Who made the league maps?
We did. Sessrumnir, Frostgate, Jotunheim and the rest were built here on known-good terrain and balanced by measurement rather than by feel: mining rate, gas distance and rush distance come out identical for every player, and each map publishes its own fairness numbers. They are free, they arrive by email, and every one of them opens in both builds of StarCraft.
Do I have to upload my replays?
No. The launcher reports every match when it ends, with the replay attached, so there is nothing to find on your drive and nothing to type in. That is also what makes a result checkable: a score with no replay behind it is a claim, and the league does not rank claims.
Money
What it costs, what it pays, and what the league keeps.
How does a player actually make money here?
Four ways, and you pick any mix of them. Fans back you directly at prices you set. Prize money comes out of the brackets and the ladder. Your own streaming stays yours, on your own channel. And a Pro or Partner member can list merchandise and sponsorships on their page. Nobody has to do all four, and the league does not decide which kind of gamer you are: some are streamers, some are purely competitive, some are sponsored, and most end up a mix. That is your personal brand to build, not ours to assign.
Where does the prize money come from?
From the subscriptions, at a published share. Forty cents in every dollar paid for access goes straight back out as prize money for brackets and the ladder. It is not sponsorship and it is not the league topping up a pot to look generous: the people playing for it are the people funding it, which is why the share is printed on the pricing page rather than described in general terms.
Is being backed by fans like Substack or Patreon?
That is exactly the shape of it. Each player sets their own tiers and their own prices, and the league fixes nothing, suggests no house rate and caps nothing. What a fan pays goes to the player, less twenty percent that the league keeps for running the site and the payouts. You can earn from your first day, and you do not need a large following to start.
What does a higher tier actually change?
Three things. Reach, storage and payout speed. Entry to the brackets marked Pro-only. And the stakes on the ladder: a Pro game moves your rating further than an Amateur game, both ways, and a Partner game further still, so a win is worth more and a loss costs more. What it never buys: a softer bracket, a bye, a reschedule, a rematch, a map veto, or a point for a game you did not play.
Do I need a big YouTube or Twitch audience to make money here?
No, and that is much of why the league exists. The big platforms pay you only once you clear their thresholds, and clearing them usually means treating content as a full-time job, which is a trade most people with families should never have to make. OPLeague is built for the gamer with a smaller but loyal following instead. One person backing you at a price you set is real money from the day you start, with no follower count to reach first.
How do prizes work?
Prize pools are funded from subscriptions at the share published on the pricing page, and paid out to bracket winners and the season champion. Every member is eligible for all of it: no tier ever buys an advantage in a game, a softer bracket, or points you did not earn.
What does the league keep when a fan pays me?
20 percent of what arrives through the site, which covers hosting, prize money and the people who run it. The rest is yours, paid out on your tier’s schedule, and every line is itemized. You set your own tiers and your own prices; we do not fix them, suggest a house rate or cap them.
What does a higher tier actually change?
Three things. Reach, storage and payout speed. Entry to the brackets marked Pro-only. And the stakes on the ladder: a Pro game moves your rating further than an Amateur game, both ways, and a Partner game further still, so a win is worth more and a loss costs more. What it never buys: a softer bracket, a bye, a reschedule, a rematch, a map veto, or a point for a game you did not play.
For fans
Watching, backing a player, and what that does and does not make you.
Does OPLeague have its own streaming platform?
Not today, and you do not need one to be watched here. You connect your YouTube or Twitch account and your stream and your videos appear on your player page, so everything about you lives in one place without you moving your audience anywhere. If enough of the audience wants the league to host streaming itself, we can build that arm quickly. It is a question of whether it is wanted, not of whether it can be done.
Do I need an account to watch?
No. Every bracket is public and every free replay is downloadable without an account. Player pages, the ladder and the results are open to anyone. You pay only when you want to be in a bracket, or when you choose to back a player.
If I back a player, does that make me a pro-gamer?
No, and it never will. Backing a player does not put you on the ladder, does not make you a pro-gamer and never earns you player email. It is a fan paying a gamer, at a price the gamer set, and that is all it is. The pro-gamer tiers are for people who play.
Who can I back, and is it open yet?
Any real, named adult on the players page; that is the Authenticity Policy, and it is why a face and a name are required of anyone taking money here. Bots cannot be backed. You back a player from their own page, at a tier and price they set, and your card is handled by our payment processor, never by us.
Rules and fairness
Replays, disconnects, age, and your own privacy.
Why do you need the replay? Can you not just pull my results?
No, and the reason is worth knowing, because it is why the strictest rule here exists. A league game runs over a private network and never touches Battle.net, so Blizzard has no record of it, and neither does Steam or anyone else. The only proof the game happened is the replay, which the launcher fingerprints the instant it appears and uploads for you. If the launcher ever fails, you can report the match by hand with the replay attached, and that is the only manual route there is. Chess is the exception: Chess.com keeps your rating and will show it to us if you prove the account is yours, which is why a proved account has its ratings on its profile, labelled as Chess.com and not as an OPLeague rating.
I lost because I disconnected. Now what?
A drop inside the first two minutes with no fighting is a replay. After that the game stands. If you drop twice in one series through no fault of the league, the series is rescheduled at the organizer’s discretion. Bring it to an organizer the same night, with the replay.
How old do I have to be?
Eighteen to register as a pro-gamer. Fans can be as young as thirteen with a parent’s approval. Many pro-gamers will have fans under eighteen, so their conversations are passively monitored, and anything inappropriate toward a minor is a permanent ban on the first offense, with a report to the police where it belongs.
Can I keep my profile out of the directory?
Yes, with one switch. It leaves you off the players page and out of the sitemap we send to search engines, and out of the weekly email too. Your page still works at its own address for anyone you give the link to. What you cannot hide is your face and name if you take money here; that is the Authenticity Policy.
I connected my Steam account. Why does only some of it show on my profile?
Because the league approves every game before it appears on a player’s page. Platforms like Steam carry libraries that include adult and NSFW titles, and we do not let those show up on this site just because a gamer connected their account. So a connection reads only the games we run or have listed, and only the figures we ask for: hours, achievements, a rating. Everything else in your account stays where it is. We limit what comes across from off-site gaming accounts for your own privacy as much as for the integrity of the league’s name.
Still stuck?
Tell us what you are seeing and somebody works through it with you, usually the same night. Nobody has ever been the first person to hit a given problem.