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Hello!
Let’s get one thing clear: we love it when Minecrafters host servers. Tiny or massive, running vanilla Minecraft or a heavily modded version, we think they’re all great. Playing with friends in persistent worlds is awesome. Everyone knows that.
Over the past week there’s been lots of discussion about Minecraft servers and your right to monetise them. Legally, you are not allowed to make money from our products. There has been one exception to this rule so far – Minecraft videos. We’re about to make a second exception – Minecraft servers.
Hosting servers can be expensive. We want to give community members a way to cover their costs. That said, we don’t want our players to be exploited, or to have a frustrating time unless they pay. The following rules, which may be tweaked at a later date, have been created with those points in mind.
You are allowed to charge players to access your server
So long as the fee is the same for all players, you are allowed to charge for access to your server. You are not allowed to split your playerbase into paying, and non-paying users, nor can you restrict gameplay elements to different tiers of player.
Basically, if you’re charging for access to your server, you are selling a “ticket” and there can only be one type of ticket, no matter how much people are willing to spend.
You are allowed to accept donations
You are allowed to accept donation from your players. You can thank them publicly, or in-game, but can’t give them preferential treatment for donating. You are not allowed to restrict gameplay features in an attempt to make money.
You are allowed to provide in-game advertising or sponsorship opportunities
Running servers can be expensive, with that in mind, you are allowed to put adverts in your Minecraft worlds to help with costs. Used within reason, adverts and sponsorship can be good ways to fund a server.
You are allowed to sell in-game items so long as they don’t affect gameplay
We don’t mind you selling items in game, but they must be purely cosmetic. Pets, hats, and particle effects are OK, but swords, invincibility potions, and man-eating pigs are not. We want all players to be presented with the same gameplay features, whether they decide to pay or not.
There is one exception to this rule – capes! We have a lot of fun making cool capes for extra-special members of our community and Minecon attendees. We’d like to keep them as exclusive as possible. So, yeah, no capes please, for free or otherwise.
You cannot charge real-world cash for in-game currency
We don’t mind you making up currencies which players earn through playing but you are not allowed to sell it for real-world cash. Remember – if the stuff you sell affects gameplay, we’re not cool with it.
Don’t pretend to be us, and provide your customers with loads of info!
If you do decide to monetise your server, you must clearly state that the purchase is not associated with Mojang, declare who the money is going to, and provide a purchase history and contact details. You should also check up on the legality of selling digital items in your specific region.
Thanks for reading!
As I hope you’ve noticed, these rules are making attempts to prevent Minecraft servers becoming “pay-to-win.” We hate the idea of server hosts restricting Minecraft’s features to players who have already bought our game! It seems really mean.
We’re hoping that these rules will give hosts opportunity to continue creating awesome Minecraft worlds, and for our players to enjoy them without worrying about cash.
Have a good day!
It was like with apple trying to get jailbreaking illegal, they were getting nowhere with it and just gave up.
seeing as the money is not being spent on a minecraft item just points
Correct. MS Points are how XBL got away with not charging tax on items. But of course dumb dumbs complained they want 'real cash' and now everything is taxed.
This one has over 800 and is still growing rapidly. It makes me happy to see that people do really care about this, and about the Minecraft community in general, enough to keep this debate going for 800 posts.
Thank you all for not being a dead community.
That's one of the restrictions; you may not charge real-world cash for in game currency. You may argue that you point system isn't an in game currency; however, if it is in relation to Minecraft, said currency must abide to the EULA as well.
well it technically wouldn't be in-game currency as the points would only be credible on the outside. like for say I use buycraft and purchased 50 points. I could then redeem those tokens for items in-side the game. the points themselves could easily be for other things as well besides just minecraft "donations"
either way its after midnight and im in no condition to really debate anything lol. (not being rude in anyway)
Actually, giving things like god armor for donations, or even blocks, isn't bad,
Stop making us suffer because you don't have the money to pay for stuff/ don't want to.Actually, they can't take any legal action, atleast in any U.S based servers, so yeah.
At first I was excited by the prospect that people could charge money for people to access their server. It was really quite exciting, I could see ideas for some new things coming through.
But then I read that they would start enforcing the lack of legality regarding selling perks and items in game. This I did not like so much. I really started to worry. All servers cost money, that is well known. Especially popular servers like Gazamo, Mineplex, etc. They have thousands of players online, they probably cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to keep them running every month. They RELY on donations.
But 98% of people don't donate because they're nice, they donate because they want perks. With this now no longer legal it makes me scared for the idea that now most servers won't be having enough money to run their servers. So then naturally they would charge money. In fact I would think that most servers would now be charging money. So now I wonder, how is this better for the players? Because now they would have to be paying a dollar or two per server (Thousands of players for thousands of dollars probably means not too much money). But for people like me who play on many servers, that's a problem. Yes I have the communities that I visit daily, the survival servers and whatnot. But I like minigames too. If they were all charging me money to pay, then I'd be forced to pay 10, 20 dollars every month to play. It would feel much more like a pay to play idea.
Any thoughts? I really don't see how else this could go. Some Youtuber's make enough money that I'm sure they could run their server fine without charging players (although then they would have to take out part of their paycheck). But for most servers, yes they would be earning money, but the majority of players, who are just players, would be suffering.
Thoughts?
mojang cant tell you what to do on you're server that is right, but they can tell you what to do with they're software that is known as a "minecraft server".
this include modified version of the software like bukkit mcpc+ and forge.
And how do you know they can't take legal action?
When said currency relates to Minecraft; they must abide the EULA. Any use outside of that obviously would not. It still counts as the consumer buying digital currency, and then spending it in Minecraft; in which, Mojang wants to prevent.
>Thats what keeps servers alive
Sorry to cherry pick but that's absolutely absurd. I guess they should apologize for not wanting minecrafterss to be casual? You can still donate to help keep a server alive, and EARN your gear by mining and crafting it, whoa just like the games name! Are people really that lazy nowadays? Jeez. I can only imagine the tears that would be had if half the people nowadays were gamers in the NES era...
as long as those points are not used to give items or alter the game play its still classed as a virtual currency which you cannot sell
you guys really need to expand your brains think out side box for a min and understand how to make money the legal way
i run a server and i dont care about the new rules cause i always followed the old rules and i still get donations cause people like my server not cause of what they dont get ingame, your server is either good and people support it or its not and you need to scale back and work on making it better
scale back to more affordable levels or make server so good that people will donate with out getting items and or game changing perks
you all act as if just because it was not ever enforced that the rules were never there in first place this whole thing is old news just many of you never cared to read terms. something i learnt from playing games like blizzard and other games is there eula and TOS needs to be understood fully before choosing to play a said game.
It is not mojang fault nor responsibility to make sure you read it, that is on you guys if you choose not to and then find out later you dont like it then that's just tough you should learn to read first.
the new rules do not stop you form making money infact they allow for even more money to be made you just have to change the mind set that items are what people what to buy most servers offer items and resrict use of said items unless donator
like for instance servers have donations options to use lava/water buckets get access to nether etc etc the list goes on
most these server make more money then they need to.
all in all your complaining about stuff thats been there from day one its just now bad servers have abused this fact and mojang have had enough of it you want to point blame, go point blame at the servers that are breaching eula just to make proffits