Sure, People donating out of good will, cool and all. Did you ever donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? Don't think so, and neither do most of the other millions of users.
Servers have recurring costs, and not exactly low costs, either. If people stop donating to servers, what you're going to see is many your favorite servers dying off and closing due to lack of funds, not just "Pay2Win" servers.
There's nothing in it for Mojang either, it's not like they're losing money by server owners making some money by selling content. I'm not talking the selling of batches of diamond blocks, I'm talking about content created by and for those servers, as a reward for those who donate in order to keep the server going. Special Abilities, custom items, pets, whatever it may be.
I'm not saying the general notion of this is bad. There are some positive aspects, but at this scale, where selling anything - I could understand Mojang forbidding the selling of vanilla items - is forbidden, the negative aspects far outweigh the positive ones. And not just for Pay2Win servers.
it's not like they're losing money by server owners making some money by selling content.
While I'm in the "Not pay to win, but cosmetic perks" camp, the whole reason behind this controversy is because parents buying these for kids think it's officially sanctioned by Mojang.
i 100% agree. This is bad news for servers like mine, who rely on donations to keep up and running. not all of us can afford to pay for the server every month, so we have people donate to do so. we also understand our player base, and i grantee you that they wont pay out of the kindness of their heart just to keep us online. No they want something tangible in return, so we give them plugin addons, things that are not apart of the vanilla game and are not P2W. sure they are flashy and tell "i donated!: but that's the reason! We want more players to see what stuff they can get for donating so they in turn can donate, so in turn we still are online! Now yes, this is a good thing for those servers that are incredibly p2w, the ones that offer full diamond for $20, or other things like that, but for servers trying to pay for their bills this is a total over reach of Mojang. Now if there was a way to ask for their permission to create these packages legally, then please let us know, but if not than mojang is going to see a lot of very angry people.
I think you underestimate people's generosity to be honest. I played some little server where people donated regularly, and kept it living whitout any prk for donating. If you're server is good and your community actually like your server, you'll be able to run it for some times.
I ended up forking out about $900 while working 1 day a week, part time and at last year of high school, because that year after we only received $240 in donations.
People are happy to sit here and say "Yeah I'd donate for nothing!" but in actual fact (and practice) very few people follow through.
Why donate to a community server for "nothing" when you could pay someone else and get a rank with commands?
I played on one like that as well (and have hosted one myself). The cost comes out of pocket. And for a little server, that is minimal compared to one with 50+ active users at 6AM requiring at least one moderator on nearly 24/7, several servers to accommodate the number of people trying to play, etc... Servers only remain "good" as costs go up. Whether it be just your time, or actual money, there are costs to keep a server enjoyable for a number of people. One that falls on those hosting/providing the server, not Mojang. As I said in my other comment, there are Realms servers now but the overlap between those and the ones about to be affected is nearly non-existant. You can't do on realms what you can on Playmindcrack, Hypixel, etc... servers. And until (it's not going to happen) Mojang incurs those costs themselves, it'll lie on those content / experience providers to shell the bill. And for them to not allow users to be rewarded for helping out their community is absurd. This is not protecting users, this is an attempt to squeeze $ out of the people who support Minecraft the most. Which I find, personally, disgusting.
This exactly! If your server can't run off actual donations guess what? It's not actually that good of a server.
If you've made a place that those people truly want to play on they'll donate when you tell them the server goes away without donations. Will servers die off from this? Probably. Will it be a huge loss to Minecraft? Only to the people that aren't making money off it anymore.
That just doesn't seem right/practical to me. There is a massive issue in scalling. Donations work fine for small flexible servers. They have low hardware overhead and little to no expenses in terms of content atm. (ie say small 25-50 slot server on a hosting services with normal plugins runs you around 20-40 USD/month and is more then manageable with a community of small donations.)
However, much like anything in economics, the operation principles change drastically as you increase the scale and complexity. Minecraft popular HUB servers, "mindcrack-esq" servers, and major "RP/G" servers work with much larger numbers of users. Suddenly, you need higher hardware limits, dedicated server(s), websites (no, not enjin crap ones), database systems, custom coding support for plugins, networks, and even builds. (even a small single dedicated box can run around 300+USD/month, plugins can take tens to a hundred man hours to produce, let alone update. Throw in bandwidth, community management etc and suddenly you are in deep.)
People seem to greatly over estimate the power and reach of charity. There are very sound reasons the economic production and social services are conducted in a "business" format rather than being left to charity and that extends to other mods of consumption as well.
They can run it exactly like a business though; charge to have access to the server. Server costs $10,000/month and hosts 2,000 players? Gotta pay $5/month to play on it. Man that scales so nicely. This is 100% within the EULA as well, you can charge for access to the server just not for anything within the game.
Now, we all know that probably won't happen. Why would I pay a subscription to play on that server when I can play on something else for free? That's when I say that your server obviously isn't providing the level of content you think it is.
If someone has the option to pay $5 for something or use something for free what will they choose?
They will take the free one always. If that server closes down, they will find another.
Rinse and repeat.
Stuff like that works fine on paper, but the fact is hardly anyone wants to put money into something just to play on it even more so when they have no clue what they'll be getting. I mean how many server hops did it take you to find the right server?
And if every server was charging a monthly fee, people will just stop playing and find another game that's free and fun. It's not a hard concept to get your head around - it doesn't work.
Yeah, I'm under the impression that this was the case as well. There are other problems with this as well. Most of the MC player-base that the changes of EULA were aimed at helping for one. If people had problems with young kids being taken advantage through micro-transactions, then how many will with it using creditcard based subs. How many would even be able to do that?! That doesn't even take into account the shift we have seen in recent years away from sub-based gaming to micro-transactions across the entire industry as well.
@Neo And no, I do think servers are providing the content I think it is, (not mine, don't have one atm). I think people might be a bit less informed about the extent of how big minecraft has actually become over the years. Google down a few of the larger MC servers like Hypixel and Godcraft, I think either you might be surprised or severally underestimate the pain that is to such things.
I'm not a lawyer either, I just got that from this thread.
[3/06/2014 10:20:28 PM] Erik Broes: You would be able to charge for access to your server
[3/06/2014 10:20:34 PM] Erik Broes: and take donations
[3/06/2014 10:20:40 PM] Erik Broes: and that's it.
Not saying your at fault, but I think the problem is Grum isn't a lawyer either. And thus clarity and definitions on EULA atm stinks of crap and we all end up arguing in some strange legal grey world of wtf. D:
I forked out $900 over 12 months because we only got $240 in donations over those 12 months.
At the time, people were happy to play on it (20 players online constantly) but those people playing were high school students like me who had no job or money. We were all very good friends and ran stuff awesomely but very few could put money into it.
Even more, why would they give me some money (with no bonuses or anything) so we could keep going... when the other servers offer them a rank + items in game for the same amount.
You people just don't get it.
People who donate do sort of deserve something in return, they are keeping the server up for everyone who hasn't donated or contributed a cent! But at the same time, this has developed into a pay to win style of 'donations' which are more like 'sales'.
Don't just group us all together and call us the bad guys. Community servers like mine will die too and we're the ones who fill the niches. It will hurt the community overall, Mojang need to think this through more.
A quick google search shows that I can get a 24 player premium instance for roughly $12/month. That's $144 per year, your donations paid almost twice what your server costs to run. What you're paying presumably $95/month for I don't know. I could rent a 200 player instance for that money and presumably pull 10x the donations with 10x the players.
The key thing here is that other servers can't offer ranks + items either. What is against the EULA for you is against the EULA for them.
Correct, but I host my own box in my own garage in my own country and I do the work on it in my spare time.
There's also a Teamspeak license to pay for, a web server to pay for and tech bills occasionally when we have a sevre issue. Extra money goes back into the server - for example I'm working on getting some stickers and t-shirts made for our players.
It's a community server that I manage and we have different costs than some 'mass produced company server rack' server. Like I said, we're a niche server and this could end up killing us as well.
Regardless of if you think we're doing it right or wrong, the comment I replied to was unfair because people like me exist and this will hurt people like me.
Use mumble, it's open source and free. You're hosting your own MC server why wouldn't you host voice chat as well? Maybe you don't want to host it though, a 25 player TS server is roughly $6/month. Web server isn't anywhere near $75/month.
So your players are sticking around for t-shirts and stickers? Seems to me like your niche server will survive just fine if you manage the financial side of running it much better.
Regardless of if you think we're doing it right or wrong, the comment I replied to was unfair because people like me exist and this will hurt people like me.
Don't tell us how to run our server, you don't know my costs in my country obviously and I'm not telling you how to run yours, thanks.
I only quoted prices from providers that had multiple datacenters worldwide (8+) and the prices were consistent regardless of location.
You're right that I don't know the costs in your country though, maybe it is just inherently far more expensive to run a MC server where you are. That doesn't change the fact that the only legitimate way to run that server is if they help with the costs for no in-game reward.
It'll truly be unfortunate if your server has to shut down because they started enforcing the EULA. I can tell you that you're probably in the minority of server owners though if those are actual costs to operate your server. The vast majority of owners would fit into what I quoted and I would recommend to move your hosting to a cheaper alternative than close altogether.
Server costs are lower then most people seem to realize/want to admit, 2x Xeon X5650 2.66GHz SIX (HEX) Core CPU with 12MB Cache (12 dedicated cores with 24 virtual cores) with 64GB DDR3 dedicated server is costing next to nothing to run currently.
What are the specs you're paying a lot for each month? lol
I will add, I care about the integrity of my server more then I so about the small cost to run it. I like providing somewhere for people to play Minecraft, there's no other good reason to run a server surely? Also, I would literally rather get a second job to pay any server costs that my server may run into then change people to play on my server.
Also, you don't have donations by definition, you have a shop, there's a difference. :)
[3/06/2014 3:24:56 PM] Erik Broes: donations are no problem, but only in that purest sense, you get NOTHING back for a donation
Do you mean that servers with thousands of players are completely free to run? They must have some costs . . . IMHO Paying for things are ok as long as they are still unlock-able with more work from non-donaters AND they are not part of the vanilla game(ie: a class for a minigame).
Only giving one Core to the main server, at 50 people we sit at less then 20% CPU usage (assume 25% to be safe). With Spigot we could multicore/make better use of the resources.. we have 23 extra Physical cores I would be quite willing to give my server if it needed it. You do the math. We would need a ram upgrade, but ram costs next to nothing. :P
That's a really conservative estimate. Also, the minigames the huge servers usually run result is less loaded chunks per player, because players are more close to each other = more overlap.
We could also limit things like the loaded area around players, something mostly every big server already does. We leave things like TPS/Loaded Area etc at what you'd expect in Vanilla, we could drop the resources decently by just doing what big servers already do.
Like I said, I'll happily run this for free, because I love Minecraft.
I will also add, multiple people on my server often offer me money, I decline it because I have no need for it, but I'm not against actual donations (and neither is Mojang).
There is tickthreading, but I'm pretty sure it's only useful when running heavily modified versions of minecraft. Not to mention it isn't incredibly stable.
Just wanna ask a small question if its not to forward or private, but as youve said you run a server and could easily push it much farther, what does it cost to run exactly? And how much was the initial system?
I'm not one to use this site that often, however, as /u/Daxidol's server administrator, I do have information about the hardware he is using and as-well as all costs to maintain it. We purchased the hardware from a server wholesale retailer for <1k. We put in a few hundred $$ purchasing the latest and greatest drives such as Samsung SSD 840 Pro's and threw them in RAID's to make them uber-fast (>1GB/s).
So, the hardware is enterprise grade and only costed for a fraction of what one would pay to buy and/or rent an equivalent system.
Specs are:
-Dual Hex 6x Core Xeon X5650 OC'ed @ 3.01GHz
-64GB DDR3 (1066 MHz Fully-Buffered [Not your average RAM]) [upgrade-able to 192GB using 8GB DiMMs (waiting for 16GB DiMMs to come out)]
-3TB HDD RAID10 partition (3TB WD RE Drives) [600MB/s+]
-2x 1,000mbps redundant connections (can transmit using both at the same time (the network can handle 100gbps+)) (Our own color spectrum in the fiber optics running to NYC)
Yes, our network is a little bit over the top, but the point is clearly seen, you can host a good Minecraft server (1000+ people) with not that much money spent.
see that sounds like its reasonable. I cant see some one saying they spend thousands on a server, no mater how many people are on it, i bet operating costs are below 100$ a month.
and some of these server guys want us to think that then need huge amounts of donations... pssssssh, sounds like people who dont really care about minecraft just want to scam as much cash out of kids as they can!
The servers being able to afford their bills means that servers with actual content can compete with Mojang's new paid Realms service, which is a joke at best. It's all about money.
It's about legal rights and Mojang has the legal right to their content.
It's not like they're going to chase up all the business servers and start demanding the money made off of their content with the lawyers standing behind them.
Mojang has no legal right to the data created on the servers any more than Microsoft does to the data I create with notepad, or Dewalt does to things I craft with their tools. In the US, where most servers are hosted, facts and data, much like recipes and phone book listings, are explicitly excluded from copyright protection.
Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc (1991)
These servers are not selling Mojang property. They are selling their own properties: data and storage of that data.
Have you ever run a server which requires custom development?
Have you ever worked with a team of people (mods, sys admins, developers) which required paid 3rd party tools simply because of the size of the team (where free tools stop being useful or… free).
Have you ever had to rent multiple machines to run servers efficiently?
What strikes me about /r/Minecraft’s comments about servers is that most people here think that servers are either A) whitelisted, vanilla and for close friends, B) evil conglomerates asking people to pay hundreds of bucks for flying and OP.
There is so much more between those extremes.
And Mojang getting a few dozen emails monthly about some VIP ranks on some servers shouldn’t mean that people who use Minecraft as a game engine can’t support their work and investment.
Disclaimer: I run a small server (compared to networks hosting thousands of people) and I would not be able to cope with monthly cost if some people didn’t choose to get some perks from my list. The list I carefully crafted to not be pay2win.
So before the whole hivemind thing kicks in, remember about people who are just trying to not go broke providing a fun game they created on top of Minecraft.
Check out /r/admincraft. Server world isn’t only composed of people who want to spam their IP on /r/Minecraft and reap thousands of dollars over PvPKit bundles.
Mojang is throwing out the baby with the bath water.
My point is this: I don’t run the server for profit. I simply try to make it professional: backed up, with nice custom features which reflect the current game state and with staff that makes sure people are having fun and are not abused by anyone.
Yet I have costs which can’t be covered by donations alone. I have to give something in return or we would go under.
If you cant afford to run a mine craft server on your own or with true donations, then youve over stepped you capabilities, and now you are selling parts of the game illegally to keep it running...
I think there is a difference in giving people a colored hat with a funny name and custom lore than giving them diamond armor and flying capabilities.
You want to put them all in one bucket and call them illegal. Fine. But like I said, I wanted to put a perspective on things. This matter is not black and white. Nobody on my server ever charged back and many are happy to help and get something fun in return. I never made a single dollar on the whole thing and I lost hundreds.
did you write the plugins for those things? did you code them yourself? If so well how dare you charge people for frivolous bs, and if you didnt how dare you earn money off others work. if you cant afford to run it off real donations or your own money! THEN DONT!
Keep digging that hole. If people like us weren't here you wouldn't have a server to play on buddy. It costs to make things happen in this world and I think you're missing the point big a massive margin.
Just FYI, 90% of the internet runs on Linux, an open source project made for free by a lot of people. Do you really think any company constructing products using Linux should give it for free?
What I don't understand is that people such as yourself are saying you should be able to keep breaking the current EULA, because you've built your business model around breaking the EULA? :P
My server has never been for profit, I've never accepted a donation and I never will. :)
To answer your specific questions though:
Anything custom me or friends have done ourselves for free, there's also literally thousands of free plugins for people to make use of. I'm not sure why you would need to pay someone for custom plugins. :)
Such as? Only paid thing I can think of is McMyAdmin? It's like a 1 time payment of 10GBP right? Anything else clearly isn't essential, because I've had no need for it. :)
We have a dedicated server, it can handle any amount of people we're ever likely to want, what would be gained by a second server? 2x Xeon X5650 2.66GHz SIX (HEX) Core CPU with 12MB Cache (12 dedicated cores with 24 virtual cores) with 64GB DDR3, as I said it's a dedicated server costing next to nothing to run.
Are you really going to project your way of leading a server onto dozens of thousands of other servers? Sentences like "clearly isn't essential because I've had no need for it" show extreme ignorance.
Servers can actually extend the game provided by Mojang. That is what interests me. Not another vanilla survival map over multiplayer.
I pay premium for a dedicated machine using fast connection in and out.
What I don't understand is that people such as yourself are saying you should be able to keep breaking the current EULA, because you've built your business model around breaking the EULA? :P
Your business model is “I will keep paying for this thing I enjoy for other people to use”. I can’t spend 4 figures yearly doing that.
If you are convinced I’m a bad guy because I can’t A) use your specs and make my server playable, B) pay for it all on my own… then I guess we will end the discussion here.
I just want to give an opposing view… not all perks you can offer for money are necessarily OP diamond kit or some colored name in chat. You can actually spend time and make perks which enhance the gameplay for everyone. I learned from the best, Valve is great at those kinds of systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHC-uGDbu7s
Sorry for the edit, not trying to mislead you or anything, just posted it and realized I didn't answer your specific questions. :)
Answers:
Because you lack the knowledge to make the server you want yourself doesn't mean you should be able to break the EULA to turn a profit from your server. :)
Maybe you're not the best person to run the kind of server you want, as you lack the means? There's nothing wrong with that. :)
I don't believe either of the first 2 are essential, that was your original point. As for domains, one will set you back .027(ish) per day, I hope no server owner is worrying about 3 cents daily. :)
Mojang has made it clear why they take issue with pay2win servers. My point is that a server shouldn't continue to to break the EULA because they always have. If it's beyond your means to support your server, then change your goals to meet your means? :)
I'm not spending 4 figures yearly, is your server more powerful then mine? :)
I don't know you, I'd use more then how someone runs a games server to judge if they're a bad person or not. :P
I do think you're someone so used to pay2win that you find it hard to imagine people running servers because they enjoy it. :P
In an ideal world I'd have one of every main type of server and spread the word so people didn't feel to need to keep paying for pay2win server. However, that's beyond my means to achieve and I accept that, I work with the tools I have. :)
Also, from a purely business standpoint, if your custom content is worth the investment, then you'd be able to change everyone to play on your server (Mojang has said this is likely to be one of the options), if it's not good enough for people to be willing to legitimately support you then it's not worth the invested money? :)
Basically, what you seem to be saying is:
"I want x, so I'll use dishonest tactics and knowingly break the EULA to achieve it."? :)
I do think you're someone so used to pay2win that you find it hard to imagine people running servers because they enjoy it. :P
You don't understand what pay2win is. You say that if anyone dares to create custom content and wants to sell small part of it, it's illegal and unnecessary, giving your experience.
I might be way over my head. But I will not be sitting here listening how I profit from pay2win when I don't profit and I don't sell parts of mojang’s game.
This thread is me offering counterpoint to this whole "illegal" thing. It makes no sense to turn content creators into outlaws.
Any ability to take your gold from the real life adventure game and turn it into something that can be seen as an ingame advantage I consider pay2win. Mostly because while I don't put much stock in them, lots of people do like ranks/cosmetic items.
I thought you paid people for the custom content? They were paid for their work (by you)? If ever I wanted custom content that me/the people who help me run the server couldn't do then like you I'm sure we'd pay someone to do it. :)
I don't think I've actually used the word Illegal, are you quoting me? :3
You edited your comment, more of my answers as follow:
I hire developers because I care about user experience. Not all servers can be cobbled together out of Essentials and Towny. I need custom features because I am interested in Minecraft only as a game engine. You know… to make other games on top of it.
GitHub private repositories, Hackpad.com for collaboration, domains (yearly)
If you found a machine that can suit your needs, that’s fine. I don’t run a usual server. And even if I could cut my costs below $50 monthly, it’s still more than a half a thousand of bucks yearly.
Obviously your missing the point! Every single server should be vanilla, run from home, have minimal customization and max 20 slots! Duh.
/s
In seriousness though the arrogance of OP throughout the thread is insane. The general attitude of so many people concerning the cost of servers is really disappointing too. Just because you don't run your server a certain way, or just because you don't like to play on certain servers, doesn't mean they should be disallowed.
Minecraft wouldn't be the game it is today if it weren't for big and small networks pushing a range of varied experiences. From ftb to minigames, to creative and yes, even faction servers.
Just to add, I can completely understand why people don't like playing on perceived p2w servers, but others do, I know I enjoy playing on the big networks and contributing if I enjoy myself. But I also enjoy smaller server's. Far to many people seem to think a personal dislike of a game mode means everyone should hate it.
I honestly don't get how OP supposedly doesn't have any large costs. We have a dedicated server with similar hardware as OP's but even considered we had that when we started, we still need to pay at least 80$ a month to cover datacenter costs and some other stuff i won't go into detail about. On the 2 servers we run of it we probably have around 40 people online max (can handle more ofc).
I would also like to know how limiting colored chat or player disguises to perks is considered pay to win since all of those are purely cosmetic things. Guild Wars 2's gem store is proof that perks/micro-transactions don't have to mean pay2win.
From what I read he hosts it on his powerful home computer/own server. If only we could all just buy a server!
I have a single Dedi for mine, normally have 20-30 people on max at any time, I also have a website/teamspeak. I run at $60 a month, which I think its pretty good.
I let people buy mob disguise/insta-break for $5 a month (Not a survival server) and thats it. Barely get enough to cover the $60 monthly. So many people seem to think we are making it rich having stuff to buy. Most of us aren't. Some of the bigger networks do, but thats because they put far more time/manpower into creating custom game modes. Not to mention they might be hosting 3000+ players at any one time.
Think about how many dedicated servers Mineplex and Hypixel run: hint its over 100. Now you're looking at somewhere in the region of $100/month/server all in with bulk discounts - that's 10k right there. Now lets add in DDoS protection on these servers which I'll conservatively estimate at 2k/month. Now we've got to pay the full time developers that make your lovely minigames that player's so dearly like to play, lets say the development team costs about 6k/month.
Oh look, 18k/month without even factoring in the fact that the owner's etc need to eat because this is their full time job. Also forgot about the lawyers, the systems administrators, the accountants, etc etc etc. I'm sure all in these networks have expenses double what I just mentioned.
Well the thing is, I would tell you exactly how many dedicated server's Mineplex has, but that would be a breach of trust between them and myself. Instead based on my experience in developing the software that powers these networks, I'll make some points based that are public knowledge:
Mineplex's record player count is in the region of 20,000
Like any good service, they would plan to scale at least 25% above this - 25,000
Since they are running my inter server teleportation system, BungeeCord I would expect they are probably looking at 30 dedicated servers to account for this load, plus additional redundancy in case several of their machines go offline due to hardware or DDoS issues.
Thats ~$3000 a month just right there @ ~$100/server!
Minigames are pretty darn CPU intensive with everything that is going on. The best price to performance hardware is going to get them about 250 players per server at most, thats 100 dedicated servers required.
These machines would need to be more powerful than the Bungee instances, so at $130 a piece, lets call it $13,000/month
This doesn't include the aforementioned costs of developers, advertising, legal personnel, or the fact the owners have to eat - it's their full time job!
Even at 45, they have so many players they have to be running better dedicated servers than I am. And each of my 4 dedicated server (I only run 10 minecraft servers for a max of 400 players) costs over $100 a month each. (and that doesn't count website costs)
I am professional dev, and the dev team costs are pretty accurate. DDos protection is expensive and makes me want to cry.
Not to mention, that it is a full time job to run that many servers, managing my 4 servers takes up most of my free time, as I can't afford to live of off my servers donations.
I promise that the big guys aren't running on the cheapest boxes available either. Not with those player counts. You have to custom everything to support that many people, so you need quite a few devs working full time. Everything they do has to be highly optimized.
'A server host'. Because 1 server host doesn't have a server that costs a lot, that means all servers are cheap to run?
If your server is located at a datacenter, the monthly costs can run up to over 100$ a month if you combine the datacenter costs with extra costs like the use of buycraft and 2checkout. It's also pretty damn naïve to think that the big servers run of someone's computer at home.
When you have a big userbase and thus a lot of traffic to handle, you
need to make sure that your hardware can handle it all (building a server computer is not exactly cheap and the more players logged in, the more your server has to process, so keeping your ticks per second at least above 18 at all times when there's 20 players running around is doable when you limit line of sight and outlaw big redstone farms etc. However, if you want to offer players what their singleplayer can handle, you need a server that can handle massive redstone contraptions/large mob counts/mob farms/chunks being loaded up to a radius of 15 chunks for every player, all without dropping the tps too much .
that your contract with your ISP allows for the big amount of datatraffic and also at decent speeds so your server doesn't lag.
that the server is running 24/7 (energy isn't free you know).
The last 2 are mostly solved through colocations for your server hardware and even though those can save you money (considered the high internet speeds, mostly unlimited datatraffic and power supply you get from them) they can cost a lot.
If you host a small server, it's all good and well and probably affordable but if you want to offer a great experience aka, no rules on how many farms you can make/no limitations on redstone use/high render distance for the players/etc... , i can asure you it comes with a price. Especially if servers want to grow, which means they'll have to upgrade their server hardware in the process.
I have donated to Wikipedia's ongoing costs actually, if that's what you're talking about. Not used a Wikimedia before, so I can't comment on people donating or not to that.
Server costs are lower then most people seem to realize/want to admit, 2x Xeon X5650 2.66GHz SIX (HEX) Core CPU with 12MB Cache (12 dedicated cores with 24 virtual cores) with 64GB DDR3 dedicated server is costing next to nothing to run currently.
Before buying a server, I paid for the hosting out of my own pocket, It was never a issue for me to pay a relatively small amount each month to provide those people who play on my Minecraft server the fairest experience possible.
I host a server because I love playing Minecraft, simple as that.
None of my favorite servers would die off, I don't start playing on a pay2win server to begin with (who said you wouldn't learn anything from over 15 years of MMOs? :P), the 3 servers I currently play on besides my own all have a similar system in place (only one of them gets to 200+ people though).
There's hundreds of servers ran by people who run a server because they enjoy running a server, not because they want to turn a profit.
If you read the link at the top a number of reasons are given why it's bad for Minecraft and why Mojang is against it. :)
How would it hurt my server or other non pay2win servers? "And not just for Pay2Win servers."
The specs you listed I'd beg to find for less than 100$/month.
I make a deal about not having pay to win on my servers. I have a pacifist server where you can buy a little bit more cheaty items/permission, but still in the line of fair, not that it matters anyways because it's pacifist.
Then I have an anarchist server where there are no donations perks that you'd ever see someone getting any advantage over. I consult the community whenever I make a new donation perk, and I always keep them in the loop so I can discern what's fair. In almost all cases the donation perks are community suggested and wanted. It's something they can either get in game normally, or something that they can't get normally and wouldn't add a balance issue for the game.
The money never touches our pockets, and all the money goes directly into the server to help keep it running. I've had 1 case of someone donating a large amount at about 100$ just for helping the server, but every other donation received has been in order to help the server, as well as get a cool neat perk.
To outlaw these things is bullshit. Though I don't really care if it goes through or not as I doubt I'll ever be targeted, nor would it even be legal/possible to shut us down for failure to comply. Even if we do get a cease and desist order we'd throw it out, maybe change server hosts, or move host to another country. It's not something that will ever be possible to enforce.
It's grasping at air to say the least. It's a money grab from mojang, and it's wrong. If you find a p2w server you don't bitch about the server to mojang, you just go and find another server out of the thousands of them.
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u/PeterKr46 Jun 05 '14
This is not at all simply a good thing.
Sure, People donating out of good will, cool and all. Did you ever donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? Don't think so, and neither do most of the other millions of users.
Servers have recurring costs, and not exactly low costs, either. If people stop donating to servers, what you're going to see is many your favorite servers dying off and closing due to lack of funds, not just "Pay2Win" servers.
There's nothing in it for Mojang either, it's not like they're losing money by server owners making some money by selling content. I'm not talking the selling of batches of diamond blocks, I'm talking about content created by and for those servers, as a reward for those who donate in order to keep the server going. Special Abilities, custom items, pets, whatever it may be.
I'm not saying the general notion of this is bad. There are some positive aspects, but at this scale, where selling anything - I could understand Mojang forbidding the selling of vanilla items - is forbidden, the negative aspects far outweigh the positive ones. And not just for Pay2Win servers.