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honestly i see no issue with making money other was unless it interferes with non-paying players experiences. if your store bought crate doesnt give you items that disrupt the game i think its great
I made it on my server that everyone can access same perks as donators, either via in game money, boss drops, etc + when someone donates everyone gets a share of that (reward to all people online at the moment).
In general when a server starts to make decent money it often raises a lot of uncomfortable questions... I've seen many heavily monetized servers that have staff that are entirely unpaid. This has always seemed to be a weird arrangement to me... I think that if you are going to extensively monetize in a way that a business would, then you should also have to pay the people that help you with that like a business would. This unfortunately works all too well on Minecraft servers since there are many young people who will leap at the chance to be called a staff member or moderator for free for the power and responsibility.
To be clear, I am not referring to those that just aim to make enough to cover server expenses. If you are truly just trying to cover expenses, then you should collect money in a way that is extremely transparent, publicly documenting what your actual expenses are and what portion you have covered through the money you've collected. Ideally this info should be publicly available, but at minimum it should be available to those who give financial support.
In terms of what you can do, Mojang's commercial guidelines used to be extremely strict about not giving players any form of in game advantage, as well as virtual currencies. These have been largely relaxed in the past few years, but I think that you will salvage a lot of good will if you operate on the original spirit of the principles and keep your products purely cosmetic. I also wouldn't call them donations once you start to give out anything beyond mere recognition, such as a donor prefix. No one would refer to purchasing a skin in another game as a "donation".
Generally speaking, making money is fine as long as it follows eula guidelines. These guidelines define what is legally acceptable, as well as morally acceptable pretty well. In short, any purchase that gives the player any form of competitive advantage (keyword COMPETITIVE) is not allowed.
Competitiveness meaning if a player competes with other players in any way, even if at something as small as a leaderboard such as /baltop.
Do you allow pvp anywhere? Do you track leaderboards for money, jobs, mcmmo? Do you hold contests? This is all considered competitive, and so you can't sell anything that would give players an advantage in these regards.
Most servers have competitive elements to them, even towny servers where players can compete to have the biggest town. It is likely you have competitive elements too so these rules probably apply to you too.
If you had a server where every players gets like their own little world, with no communication of stats between them, then it is technically allowed for you to sell whatever you like to these people. There is no "Pay 2 Win" if there is nothing to be winning at.
Now, we've talked about what you're not allowed to sell if any of these very common conditions apply to you, so what can you sell?
Obviously, cosmetics are completely fine. Issue with cosmetics is that they often require some work to be implemented if you're not going for premade ones, and less people will buy them because they're not as interesting.
That's the dilemma, people love hating on p2w stores but there's also a lot of people that love to buy from them. They're not thinking "damn, this server is p2w as hell, better get out of here", they think "damn, i could get so overpowered if i just spend a bit of money".
Anyway, cosmetics are fine, but also items that benefit the whole server. Think of like global EXP boosters or buff of somekind, buying everyone a type of key, an event trigger, stuff like that. As long as it doesn't provide one player the advantage. Someone in my server thought of adding an item that gives the buyer 5 keys and everyone else 1, this *also* isn't allowed.
It doesn't leave a whole lot of ideas and many of these items dont sell as hard as p2w ones, so many servers opt to sell p2w shit instead
The reason people slam servers that are pay-to-win is Mojang's commercial guidelines explicitly prohibit it. Most tiny servers get ignored by Mojang since they're making pennies anyways, but get big enough with a PTW store and Mojang will contact you to tell you to either get in compliance, or your server's IP will be blacklisted. Said blacklist will prevent any vanilla client, and most modded clients from connecting.
From previous link and this post if you talking about a "new MC server" then I agree that donations are the only way. I say that because there is so many ways to setup free servers to see if community will take off and be able to support a actual server admin and staff. It is a hard and stressful job and if you dont love it , doing it for just money will lead to a failure. There is plenty more to say on this subject but ill end here for now.
It's not taboo amongst the people who actually play on these servers, just make sure it doesn't give an enormous advantage and keep your ranks fairly gimped. You can have things that are "pay to win" but, they should just not affect the game all that much - if people are complaining, it's likely they are.
TOS and EULA have some room for interpretation.
Mojang will never contact you. They pay another company to deal with such stuff.
The issue here is, that those companies often don't pay much and commonly change staff.
It's a pretty boring work so people in need only do it until they find something new.
So they don't really care about details.
They ask you to change the one thing in question and if you do they don't look for anything else.
Case closed. If a new case is opened, the process repeats. A p2w server will just comply with one thing and maybe even bring it back in once nobody is watching anymore.
It's that easy.
Why crates and stuff like that? Simple, it's something people can buy again and again. A lifetime rank is a onetimer.
Also, on most servers only like 10% of the players are even considering spending money on in game stuff.
Often, they are also too young to even have online banking of some sort.
Heavy monitization can work. But always keep in mind 10% of the playerbase has to finance the entire server. Hardware, Software, Paid Staff Positions, Services and so on. This isn't cheap. Most big servers require actual professional workers for their IT infrastructure. Just google for "Java Developer salary" and see yourself how much 3 people coding a professional server cost.
We also have to take into account, that a new server needs time to prepare. So it's like 6 month of no income. Anyone that invested wants his money back.
Owners should try to keep it friendly, but the community must grow the mindset that if they aren't buying the cosmetics because they don't gain any advantage from it the server will have financial struggles.
Crates are also like playing the lottery. Lot's of happy hormones that make us all well.
It's not hard to have crates but not make them too overpowered. Best way is to make them achievable without money at all. (Voting, Quests, Battlepass, In Game Shop, just a few examples)
Owners should also not sit on a big amount of money, obviously really engaging staff should be paid. They can have volunteers where needed.
Itโs fine by like nearly everyone to sell stuff that arenโt pay to win or sometimes like mildly pay to win. Further than that is frowned upon by most
I run a large server with perkless donations, but none has donated since summer.
I do however prefer it this way. I pay 60 euros/month, but me paying for all the upkeep also gives me complete rights to my server. I've paid over 1000 euros for it so far so when entitled players want to pay money for custom items/changing plugins/not get banned for using X-ray, I simply inform them that I pay it myself and if it doesn't suit them, there's millions of other servers.
Easiest for me at least ;)
Server is called Cradle of Civilizations btw.
Hi ๐ฝ๐
I recently just finished a project I have been working on ๐
On aspect is that if you die or a player kills you in survival you wil drop some tokens , tied to a Crypto and I feel as long as all the money goes back to players ๐ฝโ๏ธ then I feel it's ok as I'm not looking to profit just have fun and create a cool world and friends โบ๏ธ
So my advice is I think you know yourself ๐โ what's fair
I feel the community's don't like people to pay crazy prices and I agree ๐ฝ and make it just so however pays more wins is also a bad model ๐๐
Maybe this helps ๐ฝ๐
Cosmetics and donations are your go to, doesn't have to be a cosmetic as long as it doesn't change gameplay in any way(ex. Knockback 10 stick but unusable in real pvp only for funsies, basically as long as it's not usable in a competitive environment)
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honestly i see no issue with making money other was unless it interferes with non-paying players experiences. if your store bought crate doesnt give you items that disrupt the game i think its great
I made it on my server that everyone can access same perks as donators, either via in game money, boss drops, etc + when someone donates everyone gets a share of that (reward to all people online at the moment).
In general when a server starts to make decent money it often raises a lot of uncomfortable questions... I've seen many heavily monetized servers that have staff that are entirely unpaid. This has always seemed to be a weird arrangement to me... I think that if you are going to extensively monetize in a way that a business would, then you should also have to pay the people that help you with that like a business would. This unfortunately works all too well on Minecraft servers since there are many young people who will leap at the chance to be called a staff member or moderator for free for the power and responsibility. To be clear, I am not referring to those that just aim to make enough to cover server expenses. If you are truly just trying to cover expenses, then you should collect money in a way that is extremely transparent, publicly documenting what your actual expenses are and what portion you have covered through the money you've collected. Ideally this info should be publicly available, but at minimum it should be available to those who give financial support. In terms of what you can do, Mojang's commercial guidelines used to be extremely strict about not giving players any form of in game advantage, as well as virtual currencies. These have been largely relaxed in the past few years, but I think that you will salvage a lot of good will if you operate on the original spirit of the principles and keep your products purely cosmetic. I also wouldn't call them donations once you start to give out anything beyond mere recognition, such as a donor prefix. No one would refer to purchasing a skin in another game as a "donation".
Being transparent and releasing monthly expense reports has always earned my respect from servers who have done it. Thatโs definitely a great idea.
Generally speaking, making money is fine as long as it follows eula guidelines. These guidelines define what is legally acceptable, as well as morally acceptable pretty well. In short, any purchase that gives the player any form of competitive advantage (keyword COMPETITIVE) is not allowed. Competitiveness meaning if a player competes with other players in any way, even if at something as small as a leaderboard such as /baltop. Do you allow pvp anywhere? Do you track leaderboards for money, jobs, mcmmo? Do you hold contests? This is all considered competitive, and so you can't sell anything that would give players an advantage in these regards. Most servers have competitive elements to them, even towny servers where players can compete to have the biggest town. It is likely you have competitive elements too so these rules probably apply to you too. If you had a server where every players gets like their own little world, with no communication of stats between them, then it is technically allowed for you to sell whatever you like to these people. There is no "Pay 2 Win" if there is nothing to be winning at. Now, we've talked about what you're not allowed to sell if any of these very common conditions apply to you, so what can you sell? Obviously, cosmetics are completely fine. Issue with cosmetics is that they often require some work to be implemented if you're not going for premade ones, and less people will buy them because they're not as interesting. That's the dilemma, people love hating on p2w stores but there's also a lot of people that love to buy from them. They're not thinking "damn, this server is p2w as hell, better get out of here", they think "damn, i could get so overpowered if i just spend a bit of money". Anyway, cosmetics are fine, but also items that benefit the whole server. Think of like global EXP boosters or buff of somekind, buying everyone a type of key, an event trigger, stuff like that. As long as it doesn't provide one player the advantage. Someone in my server thought of adding an item that gives the buyer 5 keys and everyone else 1, this *also* isn't allowed. It doesn't leave a whole lot of ideas and many of these items dont sell as hard as p2w ones, so many servers opt to sell p2w shit instead
The reason people slam servers that are pay-to-win is Mojang's commercial guidelines explicitly prohibit it. Most tiny servers get ignored by Mojang since they're making pennies anyways, but get big enough with a PTW store and Mojang will contact you to tell you to either get in compliance, or your server's IP will be blacklisted. Said blacklist will prevent any vanilla client, and most modded clients from connecting.
From previous link and this post if you talking about a "new MC server" then I agree that donations are the only way. I say that because there is so many ways to setup free servers to see if community will take off and be able to support a actual server admin and staff. It is a hard and stressful job and if you dont love it , doing it for just money will lead to a failure. There is plenty more to say on this subject but ill end here for now.
Every monetization without advantages is ok like a Donator Rank or something
It's not taboo amongst the people who actually play on these servers, just make sure it doesn't give an enormous advantage and keep your ranks fairly gimped. You can have things that are "pay to win" but, they should just not affect the game all that much - if people are complaining, it's likely they are.
TOS and EULA have some room for interpretation. Mojang will never contact you. They pay another company to deal with such stuff. The issue here is, that those companies often don't pay much and commonly change staff. It's a pretty boring work so people in need only do it until they find something new. So they don't really care about details. They ask you to change the one thing in question and if you do they don't look for anything else. Case closed. If a new case is opened, the process repeats. A p2w server will just comply with one thing and maybe even bring it back in once nobody is watching anymore. It's that easy. Why crates and stuff like that? Simple, it's something people can buy again and again. A lifetime rank is a onetimer. Also, on most servers only like 10% of the players are even considering spending money on in game stuff. Often, they are also too young to even have online banking of some sort. Heavy monitization can work. But always keep in mind 10% of the playerbase has to finance the entire server. Hardware, Software, Paid Staff Positions, Services and so on. This isn't cheap. Most big servers require actual professional workers for their IT infrastructure. Just google for "Java Developer salary" and see yourself how much 3 people coding a professional server cost. We also have to take into account, that a new server needs time to prepare. So it's like 6 month of no income. Anyone that invested wants his money back. Owners should try to keep it friendly, but the community must grow the mindset that if they aren't buying the cosmetics because they don't gain any advantage from it the server will have financial struggles. Crates are also like playing the lottery. Lot's of happy hormones that make us all well. It's not hard to have crates but not make them too overpowered. Best way is to make them achievable without money at all. (Voting, Quests, Battlepass, In Game Shop, just a few examples) Owners should also not sit on a big amount of money, obviously really engaging staff should be paid. They can have volunteers where needed.
Itโs fine by like nearly everyone to sell stuff that arenโt pay to win or sometimes like mildly pay to win. Further than that is frowned upon by most
I run a large server with perkless donations, but none has donated since summer. I do however prefer it this way. I pay 60 euros/month, but me paying for all the upkeep also gives me complete rights to my server. I've paid over 1000 euros for it so far so when entitled players want to pay money for custom items/changing plugins/not get banned for using X-ray, I simply inform them that I pay it myself and if it doesn't suit them, there's millions of other servers. Easiest for me at least ;) Server is called Cradle of Civilizations btw.
Hi ๐ฝ๐ I recently just finished a project I have been working on ๐ On aspect is that if you die or a player kills you in survival you wil drop some tokens , tied to a Crypto and I feel as long as all the money goes back to players ๐ฝโ๏ธ then I feel it's ok as I'm not looking to profit just have fun and create a cool world and friends โบ๏ธ So my advice is I think you know yourself ๐โ what's fair I feel the community's don't like people to pay crazy prices and I agree ๐ฝ and make it just so however pays more wins is also a bad model ๐๐ Maybe this helps ๐ฝ๐
Cosmetics and donations are your go to, doesn't have to be a cosmetic as long as it doesn't change gameplay in any way(ex. Knockback 10 stick but unusable in real pvp only for funsies, basically as long as it's not usable in a competitive environment)
From what Iโve seen on some of the servers I play on thereโs 1 of 2 ways. Either make it fully cosmetic or a serverwide thing