As a server owner myself with multiple rented servers I can say that charging is a bad idea. You can always go the donations right and even set it up for certain things only available to donators but the idea of paying per month actually scares people and they can turn on you. Just speaking from personal experience.
Some major servers can get away with it but the fact there are so many free ones it would be terribly hard to keep a customer base.
Bump. I guess what I'm wondering is if server's are able to hold 1000+ people eventually (they can hold only 200 or so now, amirite?) could P2P server companies be feasible? Like, actual businesses.
The thing is, if you charge a monthly fee most players will probably leave because there's a billion other servers out there that don't charge money. It's something that would be nice, since running a server costs a lot of money, but in practice it probably wouldn't work.
Bump. I guess what I'm wondering is if server's are able to hold 1000+ people eventually (they can hold only 200 or so now, amirite?) could P2P server companies be feasible? Like, actual businesses.
You would need a godsent computer to be able to host a server with 1000 people, coupled with a 10 Gigabyte/second upload and download speed
Nobody would play a P2P server. Well, I can't say NOBODY, but most people wouldn't. Pretty much every single server is free to play, so you would need something REALLY special to draw people in.
A. Run multiple servers
B. Hire real server staff
C. Hire a part-time dev team or
D. Just make the server generally better?
Or is a Minecraft server just not worth the money?
Some major servers can get away with it but the fact there are so many free ones it would be terribly hard to keep a customer base.
You would need a godsent computer to be able to host a server with 1000 people, coupled with a 10 Gigabyte/second upload and download speed