Quote from Owen »
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!
Well anyway there is no way this is going to get passed or be regulated.
In the story I described the server owners had to give the money back, and they shut down like a week later.If mojang get's to regulate what people can donate for, it will be the death of multiplayer.
Well there are always gunna be those groups of people on servers who complain even the slightest thing is an advantage to donors.
It is very unclear what is an advantage or not. I understand items like over powered diamond or tools is. But some servers give away spawners, individual diamonds and such.
Commands via bukkit plugins prob are immune to the EULA cause they are not made by mojang.
I prob worded it wrong lol. It be the death of faction pvp servers mostly. Although fun, they are mostly all pay to win.
The only types of servers that wont be affected much would probably be skyblock servers and creative servers.
I am mostly annoyed cause the skyblock server I play on, the server is thinking taking away all of the donor items (spawners, horse eggs and villager eggs---villagers are obtainable without them, same with horses) in fear he is going to be sued..
True, but I still have mixed feelings about this. There are extreme cases where this would be good. (seen a server where only donors can place and break bedrock- you can imagine how bad that might be.) But on servers where lets say you donate $10 and only get 1 set of diamond armor some diamonds and a spawner (not a reoccurring kit) that is something I am okay with, and would not like to be made 'illegal' with the EULA.
Diamonds and a spawner seems very unfair already(especially the spawner part).
Mojang seemed to emphasize on player-base fairness if there FAQ of the EULA so *shrugs*
And can we setup a donation thing someone donates then EVERYONE has perms to the kit? An d i own an op prison server and most op prison servers have buy able ranks... (suffix with warp perms)
Spawners are not that overpowered. It takes a while to go 0-30 with a single spawner. Diamonds are pretty easily obtainable. This small disagreement right here is going to be where all the confusion comes in on what is unfair, and what is not. For the most part it is VERY subjective. Full protection 4 diamond armor may be an unfair donor item in a pvp based server, but in a server like skyblocks or a friendly vanilla server with no pvp and just building then it seems fair.
My question though is what about modpack servers? (tekkit, voltz, etc...) Are they excluded from these rules or do they have to follow them?
basically big youtubers with their own servers are immune to this.
If no one follows it, it is not like mojang will sue everybody.....right?
That has never been confirmed as far as I'm aware of. It's just hearsay by some server staff people and not Mojang themselves.
Realistically, they will not be able to sue everyone. They may target big servers first or servers with the most complaints or most extraordinary complaints, then work down if they choose.
Can someone answer this with there opinion?
I wonder though, does this mean that you cant charge on a server for access to things like worldedit, which is a third party mod? Where does one end and the other begin.
I don't charge people to use stuff when I do have a server running, but If you have to pay for something, you are LESS likely to do things to grief that something. If you attach monetary value to something, people treat it as valuable. It costs them resources to use it so they are somewhat more likely to want to protect their investment.
if you spent a lot of money for a 325-I would you not want to keep others or yourself from messing it up, compared to the hundred dollar junker you got from the guy down the street? It's all in the perceived value.
both cars have roughly the same amount of steel, plastic,rubber, and other materials in them but the perceived value sets them apart.
I could see charging for access to the server as perfectly fine. Would you grief something you are paying to use, YOU being YOU, and not your mother or father paying for?
This is where I'm going to get some hate messages
I can even see charging for EXTENDED third party features such as worldedit, because that in itself is an amazing griefer's holy grail, and it takes a level of ability to use it without cratering huge parts of worlds. "Whoops that DID seem like a awfully huge number of selected blocks..."..
If you put us through the trouble of restoring, repairing, or rolling back things you did with this feature, that's time and trouble, which has an amount of value in ticks and/or downtime. This affects your other users. It's time taken from them while you fix the damage. It's work taken from them if you cant fix the damage and have to reset your map.
I know that you can have trusted and default groups with permissions, so I guess it's moot in a way, but where does the border of monitization fully lie?
In a way, this could get really messy. Personally, I would have taken a hands off approach to it.
I sell you a car. What you do with it after it leaves the dealership is your business.
rather than:
I sell you this car. You can only drive in the left lane at 50 MPH and only use the passenger door to get in and out. Also, you may NOT access the trunk or engine for any reason. You also may not translate the owners manual from the obfuscated instructions to your own language for any reason.
Which takes more energy to deal with? Besides, Once an idea gets out, you can't stop it. This was such a HUGE idea... Good luck to you.
The game is already being modded and changed by third parties as it stands, so just keep your product innovated with rich new features that keep your community true to it. Let's not go the way of the RIAA and musicians who sit on old songs milking them for an eternity while creating noting really new to sell.
For that matter, have you seen what has happened as of late. There aren't a huge number of mods for anything beyond 1.7.4. If you follow what has happened with the MCP and forge, you know why. Modder friendliness is evaporating if you are on the outside. Try finding a mini-map that works beyond 1.7.4 Most other mods have stopped being developed past 1.7.2. The times they are a changin' I think the golden age of open modding is here if not slowly passing.
Just my opinion and nothing more. Sorry for the long post, but there just is so much to say.
I laughed...mostly because I get the feeling that most of the people upset about the clarifications on this in the EULA fall into this category.
2. This means every major minecraft server is going to be shut down.
3. This is going to cause a major uprising and basically be the SOPA thing from last year.
REVOLT MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS!