The league of champions

08 November 2019

There was a remarkable spoiler in a piece we wrote on our 2019 strategy day. Unlike we’re used to, we promised to start working on a feature there. And when you promise something, you have to deliver. Delivering on a promise is particularly hard in a hectic and unpredictable industry like ours.

Still, we wanted to because we felt the biggest wish of our users couldn’t be ignored much longer. It’s a very complicated project, true. It changes the core of how we play OSM, also true. And there were more reasons not to go through with this.

But we did. Our users wanted to manage on the highest level in OSM. Europe’s best clubs facing each other in a knockout system. With only one winner. Deep down, this is what we all wanted. Because as a football fan, this is the best you can get.

We started working like there was no tomorrow. Pretty fast, we came up with a beta version where hundreds of thousands users helped shaping the new feature. On September 17th, the big red button was pushed. Immediately, our Tournament feature was live for every user in OSM. Our Instagram and Facebook turned into waterfalls of hearts and favourite clubs.

It’s a popular motto: listen to your users. We did, but not on this scale. With a very clean release and an even better bulk of user feedback, pride remains. And this is only the beginning. Our users want so much more and so do we! Maybe we should start promising things more often.