Yeah I wouldn’t give actual prizes for online tournaments like this, especially ones so regular since it just incentivises cheating.
If you look at chess, cheating in titled Tuesday is a big issue and concern and that was a few thousand dollars maybe. They had to random spot checks and video calls with players and went as far as developing a browser that you have to use to play for prize money events.
People cheat for less, including for rating and just for fun.
It’d be much better to just switch up the format of the tournaments to make them more fun if you want more engagement.
You could
- change the settings to be more in line with the automatch settings, matching popular settings
- make them shorter so it’s not so much of a time commitment
- make them more visible rather than a tiny icon. For instance make a tournament section to watch live tournament games on the games page
- Have a tournament like lichess’ Arena where you can drop in and out and pause participation