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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!
minecraft allows a server to be downloaded
the game is near impossible to run and play on the same comp(excluding nasa comps)
so people buy/rent servers for REAL MONEY thus the community is built
minecraft is really unique when it comes to the player community no other game is quite like it
if mojang starts enforcing the eual it WILL destroy alot of servers they wont be able to pay their monthly charge gor the servers)
thus hurting the community that mojang let get built
alot are saying this is a good thing killing off the pay to win servers
lets examine pay to win servers
a server that offers ranks to be stronger and kill faster and easier to gain anything in game is a pay to win server(like minigames servers where donating gives you a better chance to win)
now lets look at donating on a regular server say for a diamond package..this is now illegal even tho anyone without donating can get the same items by mining.this is not pay to win and should not be illegal..
also remeber no one is forcing members to donate to ANY server
but its ok to charge to access to servers which in my mind is even worse that would limit members to less servers.
thus hurting the community..
If the whole point of the new eula is to destroy servers mojang should not beat around the bush and say it..
they open realms and all of a sudden they enforce the eula
sounds suspicious
well end of rant good luck minecraftians might as well play in vanilla
Actually, servers need only charge a membership fee to pay for themselves. If you have roughly 30 players that are all chipping in 5 dollars a month, you've covered your costs, and can probably start expanding for a larger playerbase, hence quite a bit more money as costs become comparatively lower. I managed the finances for a garry's mod RP server. We got some fairly generous donations, and many smaller ones that kept our server going for the better part of a year without need for me to pay directly. This also allowed us to expand and even experiment with new gamemodes and ideas. That being said, we didn't disincentive these donations in the least, and showed our appreciation with digital "goods" but nothing that had a significant impact on the game aspects.
The community isn't about the paywalls. I've never been in a conversation where someone was telling me that I just absolutely needed to buy some "donor perk" provided by a server as I could just go to another server that allowed them for everyone, or start my own. That's the other thing, most of the time these people aren't monetizing their own work, they're taking mods released for free by other users and limiting access based on some arbitrary value such as resource exchange efficiency. Frankly, that money should be going to the mod author if anyone. Really, it should be going to Mojang and all related content creators, but instead it's lining pockets, and that's understandable, everyone wants to make a living doing what they love.
"Forcing" no, but twisting people's arms into it? Yeah.
If you have a server that you've played on for a while, and they suddenly start to monetize the bajeezus out of it you and your friends might uproot and go to another server, but if it's done subtly, and in such a way that it feels more convenient for you to pay than leave or create your own community, suddenly it's not so bad.
Once you've invested money, it's harder for you to justify packing up and leaving without some life altering extenuating circumstance, thus securing more money from you in the future in all likelihood.
If it says mojang on it then ok, but I highly doubt it does
Also just wondering, but how exactly is mojang going to figure out if server A is charging for items if server A uses paypal? Also the truth is the only way mojang will know about any server breaking these rules is if players report a server. well guess what mojang you just gave yourself more work, because people will most likely start reporting servers for breaking the rules whether they have or not.
Specially if said person gets banned for breaking the server rules. So then what?
Either way this goes I am sure allot of servers will most likely shut down due to lack of money or motivation to keep the server up.
your not even allowed to do that, in game money aka credits is forbidden
They not ingame credits the credit amount is on a site not ingame so it word work lol.
If it was ingame money then ya that dont work its not though its on a site and it just sends a server command to give people items.
still breaks the EULA when you do so, loophole or not... its illegal, don't you kids understand this?
Well, no, not really.
Just that it kinda destroyed my plan to build a big server.
This EULA is still a load of . I know a server owner that has a baby, and his entire life runs off of donations, and in fact I think over 90% of servers strictly run off donations by selling ranks, permissions, and in-game money. Mojang, if you haven't realized, this is taking thousands of peoples job, and will most likely ruin a lot of lives and put a permanent dent in their lives. Yes this was already made illegal a while ago, but they haven't enforced it for so long that we have become accustomed to it.
What should a happen:
You should make a limit on how much money one can spend on a perk such as 100$, cause even I believe that a 500$ rank is absolutely ridiculous. Also, if your doing this for the kids who steal their parents credit card, thats there fault, Not yours! There is a such thing as charge back on donations, but it will most likely get you banned.
Servers that are going to fall due to this:
Mineplex
Hypixel
Skydoesminecraft
Gontroller
GotPvp
GTAMC
ArkhamNetwork
Mineage Pvp
CraftGasm
Just several servers out of thousands that will fall...
Without these servers, I will not play minecraft and neither will millions.
Mojang... I thought you were a good company, but you went to far.
Exactly. There was no such thing as 'large servers' in the dawn of Minecraft's multiplayer compatibility. People were hosting; to share their experience with others.
Those owners should have thought about the consequences of relying on such an unstable method of gaining profit. Also, they should've read the EULA before they got into the server hosting 'business'. There is no one else to blame but the owners and their ignorance.
Indeed, that's the problem of the parents. However, you are not seeing the other side of the issue. The angered parents blame Mojang for the occurrence, and server owners get to slip away from a possible refund.
You are overreacting the impact of this. Servers will just have to find an alternative, better method of funding their server. It will also distinguish between the servers that are only in it for the money, and the servers that actually care about their community. I wouldn't be surprised if some servers down, those will be the weak ones. Those who are strong will simply adapt.
So, a company is suddenly bad for enforcing there rules that they have every right to impose? The EULA has always been there, servers should have taken it into consideration, and then proceed with hosting. Otherwise, they are ignorant and will get what they deserve.
1. its mojang who should re-direct the parents to the server.
2. How am I over reacting on the impact? You obviously don't understand the cost of a server. The server I play on has a 900$ monthly bill, and thats a small bill. Servers such as mineplex have a several thousand dollar monthly bill. The strong ones cannot adapt cause there is really no where to adapt to. Servers will start falling left and right when this is enforced, and you'll see that i'm not overreacting.
This problem would have been avoided altogether if servers simply followed the EULA. Mojang should not be involved in a problem they did not cause; they shouldn't waste their time locating the server.
I understand the cost of the servers. Why did the server owners decide to host a big server that they couldn't legally sustain themselves? There is plenty of room to adapt, you simply refuse to accept it. Servers wouldn't be having this problem if they followed the EULA from the beginning.
Subscription model. Want to play? Pay a little upfront, done.
NOTE: If anyone has actual figures I'd be happy to do the math on those in a later post.
A quick look shows Mineplex with about 12k players online for the US server right now. Rarely is your entire player base online at once and the cap is considerably higher so lets say the active player base for Mineplex is 20,000. Someone earlier in the thread was throwing around $10k as a monthly server bill though they didn't specify which, but it's pretty high so lets go with that (I don't think even 4chan costs that much and it's a far larger beast than any MC server).
$10,000 / 20.000 players = 50 cents per player. Yep, 50 cents to play all month long. You can find 50 cents laying on the ground. The cheapest stuff in vending machines usually costs more. If you have an actual job that's nothing even at minimum wage. Totaled over 12 months that's $6 for the entire year. A better deal than many Steam games and you probably get a lot more play time out of it.
So the server bill is paid, EULA not a problem and everything is a little more fair for all players as a bonus. Companies, games and websites do this all the time and it works. That's why you're overreacting.
Exactly my point. I'd totally be willing to pay up to $10 a month if I was playing on a server I enjoyed with an inviting community.
And that actually helps the larger servers more, because a lower cost of admission will still draw in players far more players. I think the only issue here is if server providers start taking this as an opportunity to hike up the price.
Also: People who're calculating figures for minimum charge: Don't forget, that the people who suddenly see a paywall dropped on them, are going to LEAVE. I would, if I logged in to a server and found out that "You must pay $0.xx to play on this server. Please send money to xxx, and you will be whitelisted promptly". Even a one-time fee, that's simply something I would not be willing to do. Pay-to-play does not work as well as moderate greasing of donation wheels with reasonable perks.
Granted, DIAMOND SWORDS OF OPZORS are a bit overkill. But there should be some small-but-meaningful notice taken and reward given to donators. And I do take note that Mojang specifically carved out room for features to be cut off for any other purpose than making money. Granted, charging money for a certain privilege would probably violate, but if there's a reasonable way to achieve a feature other than sending money in, who's to say that it's for making money? I feel like there have been overreactions on both sides of this argument, but the people who are for REASONABLE kits are more accurate about human nature than those who say that servers will survive off of donations. For that matter, what about those people with existing packages that bought them while Mojang was being lax in enforcement? Do they get to keep their perks and profit unfairly? Really, I feel like this is a major overreach...But the part where nothing was done about the abusive servers was also bad. I still think a self-policing community is a good way to go, but I'm probably being too optimistic. For that matter, Mojang could simply put a notice on its support sites, along the lines of: "We do not police private servers. If your child has used your credit card to purchase something on a server, that you would rather not have had them purchase, it is unfortunately out of our control to refund money. We advise you speak to the server's staff on the matter."
And while I'm on the subject, perhaps a parental controls module would be advisable?
Bukkit is an independent open source project by the Bukkit team, just because you use Minecraft by Mojang to connect to a Bukkit server, it does not mean Mojang can tell Bukkit servers how to run their servers.
Let me put it this way, let’s say you use internet explorer by Microsoft, Just because you use Internet Explorer, Microsoft cannot tell google to shut down, because google is owned by google.
Minecraft is by Mojang and Bukkit is by Bukkit, Because Bukkit does not use any code from mine craft you are not required to follow the rules set forth by Mojang.
##This only applies to Bukkit servers, Vanilla servers are by Mojang and are thus bound by the EULA you agreed upon prior to download or launch of application.##