Who is Keyrune?
Keyrune Inc was founded in 2019 as Flattsware, LLC with an eye on making Magic: the Gathering Arena tournaments accessible to organizers and fans worldwide. We took Melee to Beta in February 2020 as “MTGMelee.com” just before the country went into Covid-19 lockdown. In a very short period of time we have solidified Melee as THE premier platform for Arena tournaments. We brought in nearly 20,000 users in just 6 months as we partnered with Organizers including Red Bull Untapped, Star City Games and Wizards of the Coast to host more top level Magic: the Gathering Arena and Online events than any other platform. Keyrune Inc is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
Our Team
Scott Elliott
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Scott Elliott joined the tabletop games industry full-time in 2003, when he led development of high-level organized play for Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. He has run gaming events on four continents, and in four different decades, for partners like Wizards of the Coast, Konami, Pokemon, Asmodee, Blizzard Entertainment, Marvel, and DC. While at Gen Con, Scott helped grow annual attendance to 200,000. At TCGplayer, he led growth of its Pro Retailer program to support thousands of LGS locations across the US. “I love building business plans for fun, scalable events that entertain people, and provide a profit engine for organizers,” says Scott.
Jason Flatford
Founder and Executive Vice President of Product
Jason fell in love with tournament operations in 2010 when he became a Magic Judge. Soon after he accepted a job with StarCityGames.com as an Organized Play Coordinator and Software Developer. During his time with SCG, he was technology lead on many of Magic’s largest tournaments to date. Jason moved onto the network security field, but never could shake his affinity for gaming. In 2019 he started working on Melee as a side project, and would eventually leave his previous field to focus entirely on the increased demands of his company.
Brad Nelson
Founder and Product Manager of Melee
Ever since Brad’s debut on the competitive Magic: the Gathering scene in 2009, he has been one of the game’s largest brands. He turned his early success as a professional gamer into content and marketing opportunities with ChannelFireball, Star City Games and Wizards of the Coast. After a decade-long career as an accomplished professional player, Brad shifted his focus to the business-side of the industry. “I’ve loved my time as a Pro Player, but after 15 years of it I’m ready to take on new challenges”, says Brad.
Steve Port
Founder and Consultant
Steve’s introduction to competitive gaming was in the early 90s when he began organizing leagues for strategy games. This was followed closely by organizing sanctioned events for Wizards of the Coast . This early hobby quickly turned into full time employment as he acquired contracts with companies like Wizards of the Coast, Upper Deck, and Konami. From 2001-2015 Steve organized some of Magic’s largest tournaments while also starting and overseeing several companies connected to the tabletop gaming world.
With a combined total of five decades worth of Magic: the Gathering experience, our mission is to help push this game into the Esports era. We love Magic, and want to see it have all the tools it needs for players to enjoy it. Tournament organization and operations was our strength so that’s where we started, but it’s not going to be where we stop.
What is the goal?
That’s simple, it’s to provide the best experience for both community-based organizers and their players. With Melee, organizers will be able to smoothly run Swiss events, bracketed tournaments, and even custom leagues. All of these events will be able to support single player or variable-sized teams as well.
In our experience, tournament software has always been cumbersome, buggy and inconsistent. Many examples historically have been unintuitive to the user and would often produce many mind-boggling exceptions. A poorly run tournament can ruin an experience for a player. Bad experiences with tournaments are shared instantly via social media, and can have a long-lived effect on brand loyalty.
The plan is to not only make Melee easy to use for Organizers, but also the players. Everything needed to run a tournament will be on the site itself. Well, besides the games of course! Deck submission, pairings, opponent’s decklists, standings, chat support with opponent’s and tournament organizers, and previous tournament results all in one place. These, and so much more are currently in the works for Melee.
Why Magic: The Gathering?
The quick answer is Magic Arena. Wizards of the Coast has invested tens of millions of dollars into their new gaming platform, and has made the push into the esports ecosystem. “Strike while the ironworks is hot”, am I right?
The deeper truth is simpler though; we love this game. We’ve all worked closely with it for over a decade, and want to see Magic have all the tools it needs for players to enjoy it. Right now Magic Arena does not support tournaments, and we want to fix that. Our goal is that with Melee everyone around the world can experience the joy of playing well run events from the comfort of their own homes.