Owing to interesting events last night, the Minecraft EULA - in particular, where it pertains to multiplayer servers - has become a very hot topic. So what's all the fuss about? Why is this even a thing right now? Bebopvox gives a pretty solid breakdown of the situation, both from the perspective of Mojang, and the community at large.
PLEASE NOTE:
Some key points about the situation, in TL;DR format:
- Has the EULA changed? - No, not yet
- Is Mojang shutting down servers? - No
- Are there talks about finding a middle ground with server owners and Mojang? - Yes
Agreed. I'm tired of videos for "news".
The EULA never changed, Mojang just made it more obvious that you shouldn't make money with their work by forcing people to pay to use items, or by distributing their files with AdFly or things of the sort. Donations to keeping servers up and donations/AdFly links for modifications to the game are, in theory, still acceptable. But as the community has demonstrated, they did a terrible mistake by assuming good faith.
EDIT: "You can charge for hosting servers, but not for gameplay features." https://twitter.com/...869769301409792
EDIT2: "We get a LOT of support errands from parents of kids that bought items for hundreds of dollars, wanting their money back."
https://twitter.com/notch/status/475213194072686592
1. Some server sell packages, as much as $10,000 for something on the server. No, I don't know the details. Yes, they do sell those packages.
2. Some people have found that their children have gotten ahold of credit cards, and complained to Mojang about this, not aware that Mojang is not the server person.
3. Mojang has gotten upset at the bad image from the bad apples.
4. Mojang wants to stop the bad apples, the high-priced servers, etc.
On the other side:
1. Quality server support -- staff, handling minigames, operating servers for hundreds if not thousands of people -- is very time consuming.
2. In exchange for the time of the support staff, some servers want to be able to pay -- the very simple idea is that if you are putting in what is effectively work, you should be compensated for it.
3. DDoS protection is expensive. The internet has become a mafia with a protection racket. If you are popular, you will need to spend money to stay up.
The result is simple: Quality, popular, and well-staffed servers cost money -- real money -- to operate, and have to be able to operate as a business, to bring in money to stay in operation.
Somewhere, there is a "fair, middle ground" between the bad apples, and letting good ones operate.
Where is that line? Unknown.
What is the distinction between a good apple and a bad apple? Unknown.
What is Mojang's current plan, according to this video? To figure out what they are willing to let server operators do for money, and what they are not willing to let server operators do for money, and then update the EULA to indicate this.
Okay, it sounded a lot better in my head and was just my suggestion. Mojang can't necessarily go around and check every server for breach of the rules while also still trying to work on the game. As for the EULA, they should just clarify what is okay and if those that really put the time, effort, and dedication to running a server (ie Hypixel or Mineplex) then a small deal could be worked out that satisfies the needs of both sides.
Just my two cents...don't hurt me.
Inferiorist? What? I seriously don't understand your point or position.
In other news, as we look at the EULA, it seems that they take contrary positions, at least from my reading.
The one major rule is that you must not distribute anything we‘ve made. By “distribute anything we‘ve made” what we mean is “give copies of the game away, make commercial use of, try to make money from, or let other people get access to our game and its parts in a way that is unfair or unreasonable”.
I parsed that as (give copies of the game away, make commercial use of, try to make money from, or let other people get access to our game and its parts) in a way that is unfair or unreasonable. I'm probably not doing it the way a certain person that started this debate is, either.
However, based on my reading, one key point stands out: UNFAIR OR UNREASONABLE. It's not unfair to give someone a small perk for giving a server money. It's unreasonable for anything to cost $10,000, yes, but MOST PERKS fall in these lines.
Thing is, then they add a bullet point list, for "clarification", that confuses things.
So the one major rule is that (unless we specifically agree it – such as in brand and asset usage guidelines) you must not:
Q: Are servers trying to make money, i.e. charge ridiculous prices for items and perks that are clearly meant to make profit?
A: Most of these servers are simply attempting to recognize those who have supported them.
It's almost like saying that a charity can't acknowledge the donators it gets. Frankly, if I found out that was to be stopped, it might impact my donation, despite the fact that the effect was unchanged.
Now, the problem here, is the sharks that have the ridiculous purchases.
I think there ought to be, as Jetra suggested, a team of volunteers that go and look for overpriced BS around the servers, and then, report that to a central database, which is linked both to Mojang, AND THE COMMUNITY AT LARGE (MCForums, PMC, etc.). The sites would then be able to add warnings to servers suspected of being money pits, or extortionate. For instance, the servers where you HAVE to buy something to use certain normal items that are integral parts of Minecraftian life. That means the items CANNOT be earned by playing, not that there is an option to buy them immediately and a reasonable way to get them without having to pay. For instance, a server where there's a month wait for lava buckets and fire, or you can buy it for $4.99, as a hypothetical.
Title tags are most likely reasonable unless they're exorbitantly expensive or don't stack. (Expiring tags, I personally don't like, but the rest of the world has varying opinions on that.)
THAT, would be reasonable.
What I heard Erik saying was NOT reasonable. Granted, it was his opinion, but his opinion, he should know, has much weight and thus if there's no official opinion, he shouldn't be throwing his personal opinion out there.
Points 3 and 4: Doomsaying he may be, but there AREN'T any statistics and he's probably right enough in that most servers give perks for donations.
just dont sell items
I agree.
This is really confusing.
the minecraft gaming community admins itself, peeps dont like a server or admins of a server, it gets hit by griefer teams, lol.
peeps do what they can to support their servers, to support 100 slot servers or larger, it takes alot of hardware power and ram to run all that, and theres a good share of peeps that cant run those 100+ slot servers on their own. they get help from some donaters in their player bases. for a good stable 20 slot server, you need 3 gb's minimum cause the server depending on whats used for plugins ranges around 340-700+ MB ram. thats with no players.
mojang would be killing hundreds of servers and possibly minecraft itself by trying to enforce anything like this.this late in the game
This idea popped into my head when I was watching the video. Mojang should work on a player API that they have been talking about and make it Realms compatible. Then modders can make there mods for servers instead of having to make modded servers, thus more people would use mods on servers. Server owners can then still have there nice anti-grief/World-Gaurd/chat plug-ins to keep their servers nice and clean. Mojang can then easily keep track of who has servers and could monitor the donations made to servers (to an extent of course).