The DPL was created for the pure enjoyment of the DPChallenge community and thus rules exist to keep things lighthearted and fun. These rules may be amended at any time, though if an larger update occurs, it will generally be followed by an announcement. NOTE: These rules are in addition to the normal challenge rules, including those for voting.

To keep the competition fair while still letting you team up with friends, we are using a Performance-Capped Preference System. The goal is to honor preferences where possible without creating super-teams (aka Ribbon Hogs).

The system has two type of parameters:

1. A list of preferences - Requests made by players telling us whom they would like to be in a team with
2. A Skill Cap - a limit on a team's combined strength to ensure fairness. For this season, the cap is set at 60%

• Submit your preferences - When registering for the new DPL season you will be asked to list up to two people you would like to play with, ranked as: 1st choice and 2nd choice
• Mutual 1st choices are guaranteed to be placed together - You rank them #1, and they rank you #1
• Skill-cap rules for all other requests - All remaining requests will be considered in the order below, only if satisfying the request keeps the team under the Skill Cap (based on past performance):
  1. Mixed mutuals - one person ranks the other #1, the other ranks them #2
  2. Mutual 2nd choices - Both rank each other #2
  3. One-way requests - First consider your #1, then your #2 (if the cap allows).
• Random fill - After preferences are processed, we will randomly assign remaining members to complete teams. The random assignment will be done with a constraint to keep all teams under the Skill Cap.

Many questions regarding the teams formation are answered in the DPL FAQ section

and remember: It is a game.

The rules were last updated on Dec 17th, 2025.

• add a new user to your team at any time during the season if your team began the season with fewer than the maximum number of players allowed. We will increase the number of allowed players during the mid-season break in order to compensate for non-contributing members.
• discuss challenge entries with team members, via email, PM, or in your team's forum thread, as long as all post-processing is done by yourself.

• participate in more than 1 team in a given season.
• vote on your team members' entries while a DPL season is in progress.