The challenge

The audience is 13 to 21 and impatient: slow pages lose them and unsafe chat loses their parents. Tournaments generate bursty, real-time load. And the community runs on Discord, so the platform had to feel like an extension of it rather than a separate destination.

What we built

• Tournament engine — Brackets, scheduling, check-in and live results with real-time updates handled by an Elixir service built for concurrent connections.
• Performance work — Rendering strategy, asset budgets and caching that cut load times by 40% against the previous platform.
• Moderation and safety — Automated content filtering, reporting flows and moderator tooling designed for an under-18 audience.
• Discord integration — Account linking, role sync, tournament announcements and results posted where the players are.

How we worked

Load-tested tournament days before launch; moderation rules co-written with the community team and tuned on real chat logs.

Outcome

A platform that stays fast on tournament nights, a community parents can trust, and a Discord integration that made the site part of the players' existing routine.