Happy (belated) New Year! This year for RochesterLAN, pending a few personal things first, my goal for the group is to get newer players into the competitive side of the game and have an environment where they can test out the competitive waters and network with other players. As a result, we'll be doing specifically one event this year where Steam gift cards will be awarded in some capacity (nice bonus for players to come out and play, not enough for highly competitive people to fly out).

A couple of housekeeping statements as well- I will be always keeping the Discord and this Steam Group in sync with each other in terms of news and events happening that players may be interested in, hosted in part by us or otherwise (mostly otherwise). I know a lot of younger players don't really use Steam Groups that much anymore, but I want to ensure that people that have preferences are able to abide by these preferences instead of getting forced to use Discord.

The intent of this group was to give people who were interested in playing CS on LAN, even if not particularly at a higher level, a way to do so for the immediate Western New York area in order to really enjoy what in-person gaming has to offer instead of over the Internet. Personally, I lost sight of that when I first rebooted this in 2023. As a result, I do want to clarify that we do not have anything in the works for things related to getting Fragadelphia computers involved for big LANs at venues in Rochester, nor having tournaments with sizable payouts. We need to have the players first before we can consider anything like that, which means that it's important to facilitate an environment welcoming to new players in every facet of being new. We'd still appreciate and not say no to people coming to events no matter their skill level.

RochesterLAN has always been about local CS and it will continue to have that focus without any shred of doubt. Recently however I have been more willing to facilitate discussion and even assign community managers for other games that are best played with however many people are needed at LAN (TF2, Quake, HLDM, etc).