I'd be interested to know, from those that say they have the right to run their server their way, just how much they are paying for the server ? they make it out to sound as if they are paying $100's a month ?
I'm genuinely curious
Personally. For about 10 - 20 people online, I've been paying about 300 dollars a month for the last few months. (and that's before payments to my amazing staff)
This is for a 12GB server with the ramdisk storage, and it's not even a big one, or one that huge servers pay for.
You might say it's a lot for just 20 people. But in all honesty it's not. I provide a quality server for the community we have. And if you want a decent server, that doesn't lag if you're more than 100 miles away from the host. You need to give up atleast 100 dollars. Then if you want plugins on that, easily add more to it. DDOS? that costs thousands for a good service!
And trust me if you ever get past the 20 player mark, you'll need it. Cause they'll be throwing up to 85GB of DDOSSing at you per second!
Later this month, I'm launching my new server Arithia. A server I've worked on in my spare time for free since December last year. Now I am going to up the quality even further as I know it will expand my playerbase. So between getting DDOS and upgrading to 32GB and the dedicated server it's requiring. That adds up to be a hell of a lot more money.
and apparently I've chosen the worst time in the world to do this. Cause with this change, I can't be certain I can sustain the quality server I'm currently providing. As much as I'd love to think that they would donate over 400$ a month out of their good will to support the server, it's wishful thinking, it won't work.
And before you call me a moneywhore or whatever, In the last 3 months, I've recieved a total of 10$ in donations. (Yes, I've shut down our donationstore until release), so I won't be "scamming" people to support the old server when we're switching it out. And even then, we're allowing our current players to bring all they can carry over
All I want is to give our community an amazing experience... As I see it, Mojang is putting that in jeopardy. And don't think for a second I won't stand up for myself and my community. Voice your opinions. Maybe just maybe Mojang will realize how much the system means for the community.
Are there server owners abusing the system to make thousands of dollars for themselves. Yes.. Definitely, there's no denying that. Is it wrong. In my opinion not at all. But wether I think it's okay or not, does not change the fact that if that's Mojang's problem. Mojang should affect those involved. Not those of us who doesn't hurt the community.
And one thing, I just want to remind everyone of. If you don't want to play on a server. All you have to do is click 2 buttons to leave it, no one is forced to pay anything, people do it because they want to. Hell if anyone is to blame for forcing players to support, it's Mojang for the "Minecraft Realms" with a monthly fee to even play on it...
its the server owners who are going to be against this and the players for it.
why would owners not be annoyed if their 300$ monthly pay check is wiped to nothing? how would you feel if your salary was just cut. for some people this is a career not a pastime.
The players on the other hand love this! it means no more rich 12 year olds who pay to win and are very 'OP'. no more servers with crappy owners who don't know how to run a server. No more PvP servers with 200$ ranks and godmode! on a PvP server!
You forgot to add. No more good servers [period]
Do you honestly think any of the servers you like to play on will be able to sustain themselves? hint: they won't... Maybe a few huge ones, but on 99% of other servers that relies on this, you'll start seeing a massive drop in quality.
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On this I will post similarly to what I had to say on the prior thread.
I ran a medium sized server for over a year. I only paid out of pocked for the first three months. After that, the server was maintained and even upgraded through PURE DONATIONS. I never gave any player any special treatment, no rewards. Just a "Thanks, I really appreciate it! You're the reason I'm able to do this." And a continued place to play.
Provide a GOOD, STABLE, FUN server, and people WILL support it. Yes, they'll do it for NOTHING but the love of the game.
To all of you crying that this is the death of servers... GET OVER YOURSELVES. You make it by on nickle&dime-ing your players, restricting normal aspects of play to a paid service, stuff that people can do in SSP, or any other server by default. You're not providing anything to the player, you're actually RESTRICTING THEM WORSE! THAT is what Mojang is trying to stop. THAT is what caused these issues in the first place. and THAT is nothing but greed on the part of the server owners.
If I had the means to start up another server at the moment (I'm a business owner and that's eating my funding.), I would, just to prove the point. You don't have to stoop to selling other people's work just to keep a server up. The ONLY reason someone would attempt to sell things on MC is to make a PROFIT. And the ONLY people, from ANY legal standpoint, able to profit from sales are Mojang, and any licensed vendor for merchandice. That's normal of ANY COMPANY PERIOD. If you don't obtain a license for the material, you CAN NOT profit from it. I am a business owner, I know what it means to run a company, and you lil entitled brats need to shut your mouths about crap you don't understand. You say your server is your 'business', that they're killing your 'job'. Do you have a license to operate a business for your county? (in the USA, not sure of other country's legal requirements) Did you get a DBA/CoAI? Do you report your income from the servers for Taxation? Trust me... if you go down the roads you are with these arguments... there's a LOT worse than a Ceise and Decist order coming your way.
Edit to add: Playing a game/running a server is a LUXURY. If you can't afford it, you can't afford it. That's not Mojang's problem. It is not their responsibility to make sure you get any kind of money for your servers. Luxury does not equal necessity. If you can't afford it's upkeep, you shouldn't be doing it.
Hmm. . .so I am, for example, no longer allowed to give Donator rank perks to get extra pets ? like.
Normal players can only have passive mobs as pets, Donator rank can also get aggressive mobs as pets. (Even though they are not aggressive as a pet, they just look cool.)
This is a great donator rank perk because It is a nice addition to the rank without making it more pay-to-win
Hmm. . .so I am, for example, no longer allowed to give Donator rank perks to get extra pets ? like.
Normal players can only have passive mobs as pets, Donator rank can also get aggressive mobs as pets. (Even though they are not aggressive as a pet, they just look cool.)
This is a great donator rank perk because It is a nice addition to the rank without making it more pay-to-win
This is no longer allowed ?
Cosmetic things, like pets, are still allowed, as long as they don't do anything to change gameplay. So no attack-zombies, but having a Zombie that ONLY follows you around would be ok.
Cosmetic things, like pets, are still allowed, as long as they don't do anything to change gameplay. So no attack-zombies, but having a Zombie that ONLY follows you around would be ok.
Hmm. . .what about perks like. . .25% more XP on some MCMMO skills ?
This is a good thing. Thank you, Mojang. It's true that it will make it a bit more challenging to adapt for server owners, but this will be good in the long run.
To all you people who are refusing to cooperate, you talk about your own "hard work" (configuring plugins... really? Good job. A 12 year-old could do that) and yet you have no problem stealing other people's hard work. Let me guess, you've also got a pirated copy of Bandicam and download all your music illegally? You are the reason we can't have nice things.
Configuring plugins, is that all you think server owners do?
Yeah configuring plugins is definitely one very time-consuming thing we do. and I'm not talking abut setting essentials up. Think of balance if there's any sort of class system, magic system etc. Think of the servers who make custom items. Renaming every item in the game. Like my server, a little spoiler if any players happen to read this thread, we'll have about 10 types of bread.. Do you have any idea how long it takes to come up with multiple names for every item in the game? and there's a lot more like it
Writing plugins, a lot of Owners, including myself write the plugins ourselves. Why? Cause we're not to contrary belief rich, we can't afford to pay plugin devs hundreds of dollars for plugins. I've put countless of hours into making my server diferent, Custom with high quality content.
Webdesign. Server owners usually have to make and manage their own website as well. If you take a look at www.Arithia.com That I'm proud to say have a complete custom theme, logo and so much more made by us. It takes 100's of hours to do this, especially when you're not experienced in the field and have to learn it first.
Support. and I can't stress this one enough. Wether all do it, or it's just me I don't know. But I make myself available every single minute I'm awake, I have tons of players on my skype so they can easily and quickly get a hold of me if they need any help whatsoever. And trust me they do. Wether it's where the IP is, or a glitch in Minecraft that caused them to die unfairly. I'm there to fix it. That actually takes a suprisingly large amount of time out of my day, to help my players. (and you might say I have staff for that), yeah I got an amazing staff. They help out when they can, but I can't afford to pay them, I really really wish I could. And I was genuilly hoping this new server would really kick things off and I could be proud to pay the amazing staff team we have, after they've been working for free. But with these news, I doubt it.
Scripting. We're writing custom scripts for npcs spawning and more, and it's a lot of them. Which is a whole other genre most Owners have to master.
Managing a team. We also have to manage staff. And as much as I love and admire my amazing staff team, it still comes with an extra work load. Personally I've chosen to run my server as much as a democrazy as possible, so decisionmaking can happen without my input. If the majority is for it. But even then, there's still hundreds of important pieces of information we have to read through carefully to make sure no mistakes were made, nothing treatead unfairly etc.
Financing, a whole other deal. Most of us aren't money hungry people who can live of donations. We need a job on the side to help pay for it. Cause if you think donations always does it? and even pays for food and rent, in 99% of the cases you are very very wrong.
I don't think I've ever gotten a penny in donations that havn't just been put back into my server.
content. Having created a server is far from enough to run a successful server community. You have to keep updating, bugfixing, creating good well thought out events, contests and most importantly content.
Mapmaking, this one is more rare. But personally. every map I've ever made for my servers, I've made myself. My upcoming one was a product of 2 months hard work, with about 10 - 18 hours a day working on making a giant realistic map with other 40 diferent biomes. Another skill that had to be learned and mastered first, not to talk of the cost for the programs it requires.
Marketing, think it's easy or "free" to market a server properly? far far from it... It takes a lot of work, learning and reading to teach yourself just the fundementals of marketing. Luckily I'm also studying for Economics and Business administration with innovation and leadership, so I know what I'm doing. But marketing is a huge stepping stone that most owners have an incredibly hard time mastering. And paying for. Have you seen what a prime ad spot on a popular site goes for these days O.o
Animation, now I was lucky that one of my staff members helped me out on this one. But I was just starting going through tutorials so we could provide our playerbase with an even more incredible kind of content.
Graphic Creation. The server changes, constantly. We need to make graphics almost weekly to provide this information in a pleasing manner. That's professional. and it takes a lot more than a few hours of learning photoshop and a lot of money to buy it. To master this.
Video production. All the trailers you see on servers, do you think those are free to make? or not time consuming? first off, you need to pay for a recording program, you need a video editing software, like Final Cut Pro. Or Adobe Premiere Pro. (for this.. Windows Movie maker, just doesn't cut it), you'll need to find liscensed music you can purchase the rights to. Edit the music to go with the trailer and so much more.
You might say some servers have staff to do some of that workload, and some do. Very true. But ask yourself how they got the staff in the beginning. If the owners didn't put a huge workload into the server, it would never have become a popular server with staff. (besides a few outliers that already had a good following base on youtube or whatnot) But most of us have and is working hard to where we are now.
Don't get me wrong, I love doing what I do, I'd do anything for my players. And it makes me happy to provide them with an amazing server and I now have an amazing toolset for the rest of my life. But don't say it's easy. If being a server owner is easy for anyone, they are simply not doing as good of a job as they should be.
In short, the obligations of a server owner FAR exceed that of a full time job. That statement is just insulting...
Webdesign. Server owners usually have to make and manage their own website as well. If you take a look at www.Arithia.com That I'm proud to say have a complete custom theme, logo and so much more made by us. It takes 100's of hours to do this, especially when you're not experienced in the field and have to learn it first.
That's a real nice site you got there and I can see the hard work put into it. I server even seen a server like yours be for I have heard of them just never have to time to look around haha. Like this topic I have read at lest 10 of the last 10 pages I been here for hours and its 3am I going to bed now after looking at your site. Maybe one day if this EULA is not a problem maybe one day my server will look just like yours hehe. It requires time though and money like you have said we need a way to fund that though as it can't come out of my pocketbook I am maxed out what I can pay per month already.
This is a good thing. Thank you, Mojang. It's true that it will make it a bit more challenging to adapt for server owners, but this will be good in the long run.
To all you people who are refusing to cooperate, you talk about your own "hard work" (configuring plugins... really? Good job. A 12 year-old could do that) and yet you have no problem stealing other people's hard work. Let me guess, you've also got a pirated copy of Bandicam and download all your music illegally? You are the reason we can't have nice things.
I'd love to see a 12 year old do what I do. I'll bet you on it.
And as far as stealing other people's hard work, all the content I made for my server, I created myself - making us the only Minecraft server in the world with an Autumn Forest made completely from actual leaves - and we're vanilla, so no mods, whatsoever.
And here's the funny thing. Our server has more features added to the game than what Minecraft currently even offers. Many of which I've custom written myself. And Mojang can say whatever the hell they want, but I wrote every piece of code for each plugin I've ever made. What I have made is unique, and original, thus replacing their half assed content.
And under Fair Use, I have taken the tools Mojang's provided and created something completely unique.
Let's use analogies to understand.
If you make a painting in Photoshop, does Adobe own your artwork?
If you make an image or sculpture in Minecraft, does Mojang own your artwork?
If you make an MMORPG that completely changes the way the game is played, that, my friend, is Fair Use under the following:
- Benefit to the public may be fair use. A commercial motive doesn't disqualify from claim to a fair use. A use that benefits the public can qualify as a fair use, even if it makes money for the user.
- The purpose and character of the intended use of the material involved is to create something new, and does not copy aspects of the current game of Minecraft.
- The material is not being used in a way that impairs the market.
I've spent 6 months pumping out content, developing and building upon the server and treating it as a game of its own. Minecraft doesn't have an economy. Minecraft doesn't have professions, or detailed quests that offer multiple outcomes for different stories. Minecraft is boring. It is because I have spent countless hours developing an MMORPG out of the empty shell of a game it is that our player base wants anything to do with it.
My biggest problem is that they are claiming that the community cannot make money off of their stuff, when the community is generating thousands of times more content than Mojang is, or ever will. And they refuse to acknowledge that.
I put more time each day into the server than they do sitting at work, in total. For 3 months, I consistently put 18 hours / day, Monday - Sunday. And that's work I've done. It's not their crap, it's mine. They didn't work tirelessly for 3 months under those conditions, I did. And apologies for my rant and very unhappy behavior. Our main goal is to support our server to share this amazing thing we've created with the tools Mojang provided for us. That being said, our server is not "Minecraft - the Game" ... It has evolved into something completely different, and that needs to be addressed, in my opinion.
There are definitely ways to monetise still - I created one last night that is within EULA but will also generate a potential stream of revenue - the dev team are working on it now and should be done next week. I've got 5 other routes I'm working on as well.
What might that be no one has posted any real stream of revenue yet if you found one I know everyone here wants to hear it.
I do see your argument Derpy - although I do not necessarily agree with it.
Everything everyone has worked towards has, first and foremost, worked towards it on ignoring the EULA. It's always (well, for a long time...) said "No Commercial Gain". It's pretty clean cut.
Everyone knew this before embarking on investing the amount of time they have done well before yesterdays formal announcement. Yet they continued to do so, on the basis that "It will be fine" or "they won't do anything". Now they have, and now everyone is upset.
There are definitely ways to monetise still - I created one last night that is within EULA but will also generate a potential stream of revenue - the dev team are working on it now and should be done next week. I've got 5 other routes I'm working on as well.
Yeah, we've got a work around, as well. It just irks me, y'know. They're basically trying to devalue the contributions of the community and their actual influence on Minecraft. But I really do think you can get away with fair use if you basically take the game, use it as an Engine to create an entire new game... Fair Use. I think both sides of the fence have a lot of valid points. Too bad a lot of the children are... children. Otherwise there might be grounds for a class action! Yay! Errybody gets $5 dorrah compensation!
that's assuming you're speaking of an adult, but the problem is the kids who make the majority of this community.
there's a reason there are so many restrictions placed on kids, most of them aren't emotionally and mentally mature enough to understand the consequences of many things, frivolous spending of money being one of them.
a sensible adult would never pay anything other than bare minimum since usually they know the value of money. it's the kids (and manchildren) who pay those outrageous prices that go into hundreds on something worthless, just so they could boast and feel superior to others.
kids don't have that much money though, so sometimes they steal their parents' credit cards to get it. then the parents blame mojang for the rogue server's crime, and may even try to sue them.
this eula is mojang's response to that, as well as legal ammo against the exploiting servers. before that, if they took that to the court they could've lost because the eula was too vague, so they didn't take action.
now that it isn't, they can easily win, so i'm expecting they'll start cracking down on the offenders much harder.
definitely not disagreeing with you on some of that.
That is why I was hoping Mojang would just make it a requirement that all server owners identify themselves as servers, so it can't possibly be mistaken for Mojang. And make a requirement to have server owners offer a 30 full refund if the donator is not happy with the purchase, that gives parents more than enough time to react to it.
Personally, I've never had an instance of any of my players asking for a refund. So I'd love to see some actual numbers, while a part of parents might be oblivious to the actual transaction which in most cases will come from Enjin or Buycraft* I'd love to see how much damage we're dealing with. Cause I think Mojang is making it out to be a much bigger problem than it actually is. In my 3 years of offering donation methods, I've never had a single player or parent request a refund.
And parents sueing Mojang over it? I've never heard such a story, and I don't think there ever will be. As stated a million times in this thread, they are not liable for the purchases that has been made, it's always been against the EULA, officially taking away their responsibility to deal with it.
and please don't make it sound like every server owner out there has donation packages for thousands of dollars. We don't. Even though running a server is incredibly expensive. The majority of us don't make donations for much more than what will keep the server alive.
definitely not disagreeing with you on some of that.
That is why I was hoping Mojang would just make it a requirement that all server owners identify themselves as servers, so it can't possibly be mistaken for Mojang. And make a requirement to have server owners offer a 30 full refund if the donator is not happy with the purchase, that gives parents more than enough time to react to it.
Personally, I've never had an instance of any of my players asking for a refund. So I'd love to see some actual numbers, while a part of parents might be oblivious to the actual transaction which in most cases will come from Enjin or Buycraft* I'd love to see how much damage we're dealing with. Cause I think Mojang is making it out to be a much bigger problem than it actually is. In my 3 years of offering donation methods, I've never had a single player or parent request a refund.
And parents sueing Mojang over it? I've never heard such a story, and I don't think there ever will be. As stated a million times in this thread, they are not liable for the purchases that has been made, it's always been against the EULA, officially taking away their responsibility to deal with it.
and please don't make it sound like every server owner out there has donation packages for thousands of dollars. We don't. Even though running a server is incredibly expensive. The majority of us don't make donations for much more than what will keep the server alive.
Additionally, the amount of donations we do get, is very rarely more than $20. If we even get donations.
Ping and ram are too differnt things. You should lower your ram to 4 GB and if you have DDoS problems then switch server hosts.
Of course they are. But you don't just pay for RAM when you buy a server. Yes a RAM is extremely important, the most important factor when paying for a server.
But bandwidth, stability, uptime, CPU, SSD, RAMDISK or HDD. All those combined, if you want better hardware to create a lagfree good experience, it's expensive.. Especially when you have players from all over the world. You can't just get a local host and say, oh it works fine for me with 4GB on a smaller server. It might not be good enough if someone is joining from the other side of the world if you didn't pay up the extra for a good bandwidth.
and this is just in my case. But I run over 100 plugins on my server to provide the custom quality content we have on our server.
Like Derpy mentioned earlier, we actually have more features on our server than the entirety of Minecraft. That's a lot of work, a lot of features and a lot of hardware requirements to run smoothly....
If you would like to donate $1000 to our server I'm sure I could tell you lol (but no Dia Pickaxe!)
Alas, I'm saying nothing at this stage. The first ones to find the right solutions to monetisation will have a far better chance to survive...Sorry
I love how this has become a survival of the wittest. Haha.
Personally. For about 10 - 20 people online, I've been paying about 300 dollars a month for the last few months. (and that's before payments to my amazing staff)
This is for a 12GB server with the ramdisk storage, and it's not even a big one, or one that huge servers pay for.
You might say it's a lot for just 20 people. But in all honesty it's not. I provide a quality server for the community we have. And if you want a decent server, that doesn't lag if you're more than 100 miles away from the host. You need to give up atleast 100 dollars. Then if you want plugins on that, easily add more to it. DDOS? that costs thousands for a good service!
And trust me if you ever get past the 20 player mark, you'll need it. Cause they'll be throwing up to 85GB of DDOSSing at you per second!
Later this month, I'm launching my new server Arithia. A server I've worked on in my spare time for free since December last year. Now I am going to up the quality even further as I know it will expand my playerbase. So between getting DDOS and upgrading to 32GB and the dedicated server it's requiring. That adds up to be a hell of a lot more money.
and apparently I've chosen the worst time in the world to do this. Cause with this change, I can't be certain I can sustain the quality server I'm currently providing. As much as I'd love to think that they would donate over 400$ a month out of their good will to support the server, it's wishful thinking, it won't work.
And before you call me a moneywhore or whatever, In the last 3 months, I've recieved a total of 10$ in donations. (Yes, I've shut down our donationstore until release), so I won't be "scamming" people to support the old server when we're switching it out. And even then, we're allowing our current players to bring all they can carry over
All I want is to give our community an amazing experience... As I see it, Mojang is putting that in jeopardy. And don't think for a second I won't stand up for myself and my community. Voice your opinions. Maybe just maybe Mojang will realize how much the system means for the community.
Are there server owners abusing the system to make thousands of dollars for themselves. Yes.. Definitely, there's no denying that. Is it wrong. In my opinion not at all. But wether I think it's okay or not, does not change the fact that if that's Mojang's problem. Mojang should affect those involved. Not those of us who doesn't hurt the community.
And one thing, I just want to remind everyone of. If you don't want to play on a server. All you have to do is click 2 buttons to leave it, no one is forced to pay anything, people do it because they want to. Hell if anyone is to blame for forcing players to support, it's Mojang for the "Minecraft Realms" with a monthly fee to even play on it...
You forgot to add. No more good servers [period]
Do you honestly think any of the servers you like to play on will be able to sustain themselves? hint: they won't... Maybe a few huge ones, but on 99% of other servers that relies on this, you'll start seeing a massive drop in quality.
I ran a medium sized server for over a year. I only paid out of pocked for the first three months. After that, the server was maintained and even upgraded through PURE DONATIONS. I never gave any player any special treatment, no rewards. Just a "Thanks, I really appreciate it! You're the reason I'm able to do this." And a continued place to play.
Provide a GOOD, STABLE, FUN server, and people WILL support it. Yes, they'll do it for NOTHING but the love of the game.
To all of you crying that this is the death of servers... GET OVER YOURSELVES. You make it by on nickle&dime-ing your players, restricting normal aspects of play to a paid service, stuff that people can do in SSP, or any other server by default. You're not providing anything to the player, you're actually RESTRICTING THEM WORSE! THAT is what Mojang is trying to stop. THAT is what caused these issues in the first place. and THAT is nothing but greed on the part of the server owners.
If I had the means to start up another server at the moment (I'm a business owner and that's eating my funding.), I would, just to prove the point. You don't have to stoop to selling other people's work just to keep a server up. The ONLY reason someone would attempt to sell things on MC is to make a PROFIT. And the ONLY people, from ANY legal standpoint, able to profit from sales are Mojang, and any licensed vendor for merchandice. That's normal of ANY COMPANY PERIOD. If you don't obtain a license for the material, you CAN NOT profit from it. I am a business owner, I know what it means to run a company, and you lil entitled brats need to shut your mouths about crap you don't understand. You say your server is your 'business', that they're killing your 'job'. Do you have a license to operate a business for your county? (in the USA, not sure of other country's legal requirements) Did you get a DBA/CoAI? Do you report your income from the servers for Taxation? Trust me... if you go down the roads you are with these arguments... there's a LOT worse than a Ceise and Decist order coming your way.
Edit to add: Playing a game/running a server is a LUXURY. If you can't afford it, you can't afford it. That's not Mojang's problem. It is not their responsibility to make sure you get any kind of money for your servers. Luxury does not equal necessity. If you can't afford it's upkeep, you shouldn't be doing it.
Normal players can only have passive mobs as pets, Donator rank can also get aggressive mobs as pets. (Even though they are not aggressive as a pet, they just look cool.)
This is a great donator rank perk because It is a nice addition to the rank without making it more pay-to-win
This is no longer allowed ?
Cosmetic things, like pets, are still allowed, as long as they don't do anything to change gameplay. So no attack-zombies, but having a Zombie that ONLY follows you around would be ok.
Hmm. . .what about perks like. . .25% more XP on some MCMMO skills ?
That affects gameplay, so no.
This is going to be sooo interesting for MinePlex, what a show it is going to be <3
Configuring plugins, is that all you think server owners do?
Yeah configuring plugins is definitely one very time-consuming thing we do. and I'm not talking abut setting essentials up. Think of balance if there's any sort of class system, magic system etc. Think of the servers who make custom items. Renaming every item in the game. Like my server, a little spoiler if any players happen to read this thread, we'll have about 10 types of bread.. Do you have any idea how long it takes to come up with multiple names for every item in the game? and there's a lot more like it
Writing plugins, a lot of Owners, including myself write the plugins ourselves. Why? Cause we're not to contrary belief rich, we can't afford to pay plugin devs hundreds of dollars for plugins. I've put countless of hours into making my server diferent, Custom with high quality content.
Webdesign. Server owners usually have to make and manage their own website as well. If you take a look at www.Arithia.com That I'm proud to say have a complete custom theme, logo and so much more made by us. It takes 100's of hours to do this, especially when you're not experienced in the field and have to learn it first.
Support. and I can't stress this one enough. Wether all do it, or it's just me I don't know. But I make myself available every single minute I'm awake, I have tons of players on my skype so they can easily and quickly get a hold of me if they need any help whatsoever. And trust me they do. Wether it's where the IP is, or a glitch in Minecraft that caused them to die unfairly. I'm there to fix it. That actually takes a suprisingly large amount of time out of my day, to help my players. (and you might say I have staff for that), yeah I got an amazing staff. They help out when they can, but I can't afford to pay them, I really really wish I could. And I was genuilly hoping this new server would really kick things off and I could be proud to pay the amazing staff team we have, after they've been working for free. But with these news, I doubt it.
Scripting. We're writing custom scripts for npcs spawning and more, and it's a lot of them. Which is a whole other genre most Owners have to master.
Managing a team. We also have to manage staff. And as much as I love and admire my amazing staff team, it still comes with an extra work load. Personally I've chosen to run my server as much as a democrazy as possible, so decisionmaking can happen without my input. If the majority is for it. But even then, there's still hundreds of important pieces of information we have to read through carefully to make sure no mistakes were made, nothing treatead unfairly etc.
Financing, a whole other deal. Most of us aren't money hungry people who can live of donations. We need a job on the side to help pay for it. Cause if you think donations always does it? and even pays for food and rent, in 99% of the cases you are very very wrong.
I don't think I've ever gotten a penny in donations that havn't just been put back into my server.
content. Having created a server is far from enough to run a successful server community. You have to keep updating, bugfixing, creating good well thought out events, contests and most importantly content.
Mapmaking, this one is more rare. But personally. every map I've ever made for my servers, I've made myself. My upcoming one was a product of 2 months hard work, with about 10 - 18 hours a day working on making a giant realistic map with other 40 diferent biomes. Another skill that had to be learned and mastered first, not to talk of the cost for the programs it requires.
Marketing, think it's easy or "free" to market a server properly? far far from it... It takes a lot of work, learning and reading to teach yourself just the fundementals of marketing. Luckily I'm also studying for Economics and Business administration with innovation and leadership, so I know what I'm doing. But marketing is a huge stepping stone that most owners have an incredibly hard time mastering. And paying for. Have you seen what a prime ad spot on a popular site goes for these days O.o
Animation, now I was lucky that one of my staff members helped me out on this one. But I was just starting going through tutorials so we could provide our playerbase with an even more incredible kind of content.
Graphic Creation. The server changes, constantly. We need to make graphics almost weekly to provide this information in a pleasing manner. That's professional. and it takes a lot more than a few hours of learning photoshop and a lot of money to buy it. To master this.
Video production. All the trailers you see on servers, do you think those are free to make? or not time consuming? first off, you need to pay for a recording program, you need a video editing software, like Final Cut Pro. Or Adobe Premiere Pro. (for this.. Windows Movie maker, just doesn't cut it), you'll need to find liscensed music you can purchase the rights to. Edit the music to go with the trailer and so much more.
You might say some servers have staff to do some of that workload, and some do. Very true. But ask yourself how they got the staff in the beginning. If the owners didn't put a huge workload into the server, it would never have become a popular server with staff. (besides a few outliers that already had a good following base on youtube or whatnot) But most of us have and is working hard to where we are now.
Don't get me wrong, I love doing what I do, I'd do anything for my players. And it makes me happy to provide them with an amazing server and I now have an amazing toolset for the rest of my life. But don't say it's easy. If being a server owner is easy for anyone, they are simply not doing as good of a job as they should be.
In short, the obligations of a server owner FAR exceed that of a full time job. That statement is just insulting...
That's a real nice site you got there and I can see the hard work put into it. I server even seen a server like yours be for I have heard of them just never have to time to look around haha. Like this topic I have read at lest 10 of the last 10 pages I been here for hours and its 3am I going to bed now after looking at your site. Maybe one day if this EULA is not a problem maybe one day my server will look just like yours hehe. It requires time though and money like you have said we need a way to fund that though as it can't come out of my pocketbook I am maxed out what I can pay per month already.
I'd love to see a 12 year old do what I do. I'll bet you on it.
And as far as stealing other people's hard work, all the content I made for my server, I created myself - making us the only Minecraft server in the world with an Autumn Forest made completely from actual leaves - and we're vanilla, so no mods, whatsoever.
And here's the funny thing. Our server has more features added to the game than what Minecraft currently even offers. Many of which I've custom written myself. And Mojang can say whatever the hell they want, but I wrote every piece of code for each plugin I've ever made. What I have made is unique, and original, thus replacing their half assed content.
And under Fair Use, I have taken the tools Mojang's provided and created something completely unique.
Let's use analogies to understand.
If you make a painting in Photoshop, does Adobe own your artwork?
If you make an image or sculpture in Minecraft, does Mojang own your artwork?
If you make an MMORPG that completely changes the way the game is played, that, my friend, is Fair Use under the following:
- Benefit to the public may be fair use. A commercial motive doesn't disqualify from claim to a fair use. A use that benefits the public can qualify as a fair use, even if it makes money for the user.
- The purpose and character of the intended use of the material involved is to create something new, and does not copy aspects of the current game of Minecraft.
- The material is not being used in a way that impairs the market.
I've spent 6 months pumping out content, developing and building upon the server and treating it as a game of its own. Minecraft doesn't have an economy. Minecraft doesn't have professions, or detailed quests that offer multiple outcomes for different stories. Minecraft is boring. It is because I have spent countless hours developing an MMORPG out of the empty shell of a game it is that our player base wants anything to do with it.
Violating the EULA is illegal.
Gaming, history, science and technology enthusiast. Don't mind my cynicism.
I put more time each day into the server than they do sitting at work, in total. For 3 months, I consistently put 18 hours / day, Monday - Sunday. And that's work I've done. It's not their crap, it's mine. They didn't work tirelessly for 3 months under those conditions, I did. And apologies for my rant and very unhappy behavior. Our main goal is to support our server to share this amazing thing we've created with the tools Mojang provided for us. That being said, our server is not "Minecraft - the Game" ... It has evolved into something completely different, and that needs to be addressed, in my opinion.
What might that be no one has posted any real stream of revenue yet if you found one I know everyone here wants to hear it.
Yeah, we've got a work around, as well. It just irks me, y'know. They're basically trying to devalue the contributions of the community and their actual influence on Minecraft. But I really do think you can get away with fair use if you basically take the game, use it as an Engine to create an entire new game... Fair Use. I think both sides of the fence have a lot of valid points. Too bad a lot of the children are... children. Otherwise there might be grounds for a class action! Yay! Errybody gets $5 dorrah compensation!
definitely not disagreeing with you on some of that.
That is why I was hoping Mojang would just make it a requirement that all server owners identify themselves as servers, so it can't possibly be mistaken for Mojang. And make a requirement to have server owners offer a 30 full refund if the donator is not happy with the purchase, that gives parents more than enough time to react to it.
Personally, I've never had an instance of any of my players asking for a refund. So I'd love to see some actual numbers, while a part of parents might be oblivious to the actual transaction which in most cases will come from Enjin or Buycraft* I'd love to see how much damage we're dealing with. Cause I think Mojang is making it out to be a much bigger problem than it actually is. In my 3 years of offering donation methods, I've never had a single player or parent request a refund.
And parents sueing Mojang over it? I've never heard such a story, and I don't think there ever will be. As stated a million times in this thread, they are not liable for the purchases that has been made, it's always been against the EULA, officially taking away their responsibility to deal with it.
and please don't make it sound like every server owner out there has donation packages for thousands of dollars. We don't. Even though running a server is incredibly expensive. The majority of us don't make donations for much more than what will keep the server alive.
I'm not posting anything public. Don't want it to get leaked or anything.
Additionally, the amount of donations we do get, is very rarely more than $20. If we even get donations.
Of course they are. But you don't just pay for RAM when you buy a server. Yes a RAM is extremely important, the most important factor when paying for a server.
But bandwidth, stability, uptime, CPU, SSD, RAMDISK or HDD. All those combined, if you want better hardware to create a lagfree good experience, it's expensive.. Especially when you have players from all over the world. You can't just get a local host and say, oh it works fine for me with 4GB on a smaller server. It might not be good enough if someone is joining from the other side of the world if you didn't pay up the extra for a good bandwidth.
and this is just in my case. But I run over 100 plugins on my server to provide the custom quality content we have on our server.
Like Derpy mentioned earlier, we actually have more features on our server than the entirety of Minecraft. That's a lot of work, a lot of features and a lot of hardware requirements to run smoothly....
I love how this has become a survival of the wittest. Haha.