Opticraft Community
Discussion forum => Legacy => Archives => General Discussion => Topic started by: LIEKABOWSE on June 12, 2014, 11:51:33 pm
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Please include all and only discussion about the recent changes in this thread so the general discussion board doesn't get blown up with the same topics.
https://mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation/
Now we've probably all heard of it at this point (at least anyone who ever browses mojang's home page or /r/minecraft)
Now basically nothing in that topic affects us but one point:
You cannot charge real-world cash for in-game currency
I'm not sure what we're going to do with that donation perk.. But yeah. Leave your comments and questions in the replies only please.
Thanks, liek
Edit: here's a TL;DR politely given by Dinnerbone:
@Dinnerbone:
2014-06-12 18:04:57 UTC
Ingame currency to unlock gameplay stuff is fine. Real money to unlock gameplay stuff is not fine, nor money to buy the ingame currency.
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Who donates for money these days anyways? I think we could use a donation perk, and hell, maybe it can just replace money. How about we bring the creative discussion and have a donation perk in order to get to the creative world, idk. It would fit within their rules as well. Plug in the words Creative Server into the quote.
Ingame currency to Unlock Creative World is fine. Real money to unlock Creative World is not fine, nor money to buy the ingame currency.
Now however, since it doesn't fit that well, you know how the first rule: You are allowed to charge players to access your server. Huhhh, Creative Server different thing than smp.opticraft.net kinda like classic? There you go, it would be okay and under the rules.
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Edit: here's a TL;DR politely given by Dinnerbone:
@Dinnerbone:
2014-06-12 18:04:57 UTC
Ingame currency to unlock gameplay stuff is fine. Real money to unlock gameplay stuff is not fine, nor money to buy the ingame currency.
so haven't read the new eula or anything but it seems from this that the concern is more so they don't want people going "you need to spend $5 to unlock dirt" where as with us anyone can use dirt (or any other example block) but if you spend money you can get large quantities of it without effort. we don't exactly restrict access to certain blocks unless you pay, which is what it seems like they wanna prevent.
Also and probably the more prevalent point is that we don't actually charge you for anything. It's a donation, not a price tag. you can get in-game currency right now for free and use it to acquire any block you please and the in-game currency isn't actually required in any way to play on the server. however should you choose to donate to the server (not required) you can choose to receive a "thank you reward" of in-game cash or various other options.
donate or not the server offers the same vanilla minecraft experience to anyone who chooses to play on it, all donating does is speed up the grind
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You aren't paying for money on opticraft. You are making a charitable donation and also getting some in game currency, its a loophole. World of Warcraft private servers and other games use this same loophole to avoid being shut down. This doesn't effect us at all.
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You aren't paying for money on opticraft. You are making a charitable donation and also getting some in game currency, its a loophole. World of Warcraft private servers and other games use this same loophole to avoid being shut down. This doesn't effect us at all.
"You are allowed to accept donations
You are allowed to accept donations from players. You can thank them publicly or in-game, but can’t give preferential treatment for donating. You are not allowed to restrict gameplay features in an attempt to make money." Thats from the post that was linked.
"Donations can only be received without giving anything in the game, everything else is a purchase. Using the correct term is important." From SeargeDP, a dev at Mojang.
This definitely affects us.
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Hmm, are they trying to squeeze out private servers to funnel more people into their own servers?
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Nothing is being restricted though, you can still play the whole game without donating. Sure you cant have mob disguises and such but as far as I know mojang doesn't have any control over the plug-ins. If you had to donate for permissions to break blocks or something of that source. I could be wrong but I still seriously doubt this will have anything impact on us.
Hmm, are they trying to squeeze out private servers to funnel more people into their own servers?
It definitely seems that way, but blizzard tried the same thing with private WoW servers and those are still going strong as ever.
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You aren't paying for money on opticraft. You are making a charitable donation and also getting some in game currency, its a loophole. World of Warcraft private servers and other games use this same loophole to avoid being shut down. This doesn't effect us at all.
But that's the loophole they are trying to shut down...
You cannot charge real-world cash for in-game currency
We don’t mind in-game currencies which are earned through playing, but you are not allowed to sell them for real-world cash. Remember – if the stuff you sell affects gameplay, we’re not cool with it.
Also I agree they are trying to funnel into their own server system... with the new realms changes and additions it looks like mojang wants to start selling servers. I believe realms cost 13$ a month. You don't get access to server files though.
Also I like how prissy notch is being on twitter concering a game he ditched years ago, lol.
https://twitter.com/notch/status/476474677851062272
Mojang is messing with a system that shouldnt concern them.
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, regardless of how much people are willing to spend.
So what if they start saying you can't restrict access at all, no whitelists, and no banning. "We decide who to ban"
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Nothing is being restricted though, you can still play the whole game without donating. Sure you cant have mob disguises and such but as far as I know mojang doesn't have any control over the plug-ins. If you had to donate for permissions to break blocks or something of that source. I could be wrong but I still seriously doubt this will have anything impact on us.
Hmm, are they trying to squeeze out private servers to funnel more people into their own servers?
It definitely seems that way, but blizzard tried the same thing with private WoW servers and those are still going strong as ever.
That's the thing, they do have control over it all. Purely aesthetic things like our hat command or mob disguises are fine in their eyes, but things like paying for in game money they dont like at all. The whole point is they dont want people making money off of their game, and it makes sense in a way. The problem is that most servers use that money to pay huge server costs which is partly due to how horribly optimized minecraft actually is. It requires much more power to run server wise than it really should. If mojang goes through and actually starts enforcing this they will easily lose at least 50% of their private servers due to them not having enough money to support themselves. All in all, its a great way to kill their own game.
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I doubt they'll be able to police this change. They might shut down the first few servers, but at the end of the day, Mojang is a small indie dev, and their staff have better things to do.
I don't see a reason to change. If they decide to shut down every single account associated with a server that has donations, they might as well have killed Minecraft anyway, as far as I'm concerned.
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I love this part..
"You are not allowed to restrict gameplay features in an attempt to make money."
"You are allowed to charge players to access your server"
Umm.. ok Mojang, pretty sure not being able to join a server is the biggest restriction you can make.
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I love this part..
"You are not allowed to restrict gameplay features in an attempt to make money."
"You are allowed to charge players to access your server"
Umm.. ok Mojang, pretty sure not being able to join a server is the biggest restriction you can make.
That's a good way to drain the lake and show the fish their amazing ocean.
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The problem here is that Mojang doesn't understand the difference between normal servers and pay-to-win servers.
Mojang has a huge negative opinion on servers that has a pay-to-win mentality, and in a way I agree with it, but it doesn't understand that normal servers and small servers don't enforce a pay-to-win mentality, but rather just add an option so that they can hold their server up. None of these servers ever restrict a player to bare-bone items.
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The problem here is that Mojang doesn't understand the difference between normal servers and pay-to-win servers.
Mojang has a huge negative opinion on servers that has a pay-to-win mentality, and in a way I agree with it, but it doesn't understand that normal servers and small servers don't enforce a pay-to-win mentality, but rather just add an option so that they can hold their server up. None of these servers ever restrict a player to bare-bone items.
We its extremely unlikely that they would ever go after small servers like us. They are interested in the huge servers that could potentially make thousands of dollars on top of paying for their server.
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Come on...they killed classic and are now making their first step to killing multiplayer.
Anyways, what are we going to do about it? I see there are three broad/general actions:
1. Remain unchanged, hopefully Mojang doesn't screw us up. Pretty likely because we aren't popular anymore.
2. Loophole. If we were to do this it would have to be insanely clever with absolutely no flaws, but then again falls under the "under the radar" section since we aren't popular anymore (again).
3. Remove donations entirely. This would really be a last resort to when Mojang finds out we are being super super illegal with our system.
Furthermore, what is the consequence for doing such a thing?
Seriously, I liked it way more when it was as simple as not distributing .jars.
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Come on...they killed classic and are now making their first step to killing multiplayer.
Anyways, what are we going to do about it? I see there are three broad/general actions:
1. Remain unchanged, hopefully Mojang doesn't screw us up. Pretty likely because we aren't popular anymore.
2. Loophole. If we were to do this it would have to be insanely clever with absolutely no flaws, but then again falls under the "under the radar" section since we aren't popular anymore (again).
3. Remove donations entirely. This would really be a last resort to when Mojang finds out we are being super super illegal with our system.
Furthermore, what is the consequence for doing such a thing?
Seriously, I liked it way more when it was as simple as not distributing .jars.
The consequence would just be a seize and desist order.
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http://notch.net/2014/06/literally-worse-than-ea/
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http://notch.net/2014/06/literally-worse-than-ea/
I found a typo:
"These rules we’re posted in non-legal..."
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Just the standard b/s https://mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation-the-follow-up-qa/
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How should servers deal with users who have already spent hard currency on features that affect gameplay?
Users may keep the perks they’ve paid for on the condition that the same perks are available to other players on the server (directly or purchasable using soft currency). It’s up to the server host to decide how to compensate users for previous transactions.
So what they're saying is if someone has donated for about 20 homes on opti... everyone is entitled to 20 homes...
(I think?)
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How should servers deal with users who have already spent hard currency on features that affect gameplay?
Users may keep the perks they’ve paid for on the condition that the same perks are available to other players on the server (directly or purchasable using soft currency). It’s up to the server host to decide how to compensate users for previous transactions.
So what they're saying is if someone has donated for about 20 homes on opti... everyone is entitled to 20 homes...
(I think?)
No. They said you can not charge for gameplay features, not plugins. This includes in game money, though none of our other donations should be affected I'm correct.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but that is my understanding.
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How should servers deal with users who have already spent hard currency on features that affect gameplay?
Users may keep the perks they’ve paid for on the condition that the same perks are available to other players on the server (directly or purchasable using soft currency). It’s up to the server host to decide how to compensate users for previous transactions.
So what they're saying is if someone has donated for about 20 homes on opti... everyone is entitled to 20 homes...
(I think?)
No. They said you can not charge for gameplay features, not plugins. This includes in game money, though none of our other donations should be affected I'm correct.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but that is my understanding.
Homes would count, since they give an advantage. Homes, money, tp, and xp would be affected. You could still have your two regular homes, but the rest of the homes wouldnt be allowed unless everyone was given the same amount.
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How should servers deal with users who have already spent hard currency on features that affect gameplay?
Users may keep the perks they’ve paid for on the condition that the same perks are available to other players on the server (directly or purchasable using soft currency). It’s up to the server host to decide how to compensate users for previous transactions.
So what they're saying is if someone has donated for about 20 homes on opti... everyone is entitled to 20 homes...
(I think?)
No. They said you can not charge for gameplay features, not plugins. This includes in game money, though none of our other donations should be affected I'm correct.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but that is my understanding.
Homes would count, since they give an advantage. Homes, money, tp, and xp would be affected. You could still have your two regular homes, but the rest of the homes wouldnt be allowed unless everyone was given the same amount.
This is kind of hard for Opticraft based on the way the multiple homes donation reward works. The overall outcome needs to be that every player has to have the same amount of homes, so that no player has the advantage. The options here are either to set everyone's back to a certain amount (I'm sure donators wouldn't like this) or, to set every players homes to that of the player with the most homes (which in Opticrafts case, could be infinite because of the way the donation works)
Both of these options would seem outright unfair, and that rule added by Mojang leaves everyone in a predicament.
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How should servers deal with users who have already spent hard currency on features that affect gameplay?
Users may keep the perks they’ve paid for on the condition that the same perks are available to other players on the server (directly or purchasable using soft currency). It’s up to the server host to decide how to compensate users for previous transactions.
So what they're saying is if someone has donated for about 20 homes on opti... everyone is entitled to 20 homes...
(I think?)
No. They said you can not charge for gameplay features, not plugins. This includes in game money, though none of our other donations should be affected I'm correct.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but that is my understanding.
Homes would count, since they give an advantage. Homes, money, tp, and xp would be affected. You could still have your two regular homes, but the rest of the homes wouldnt be allowed unless everyone was given the same amount.
This is kind of hard for Opticraft based on the way the multiple homes donation reward works. The overall outcome needs to be that every player has to have the same amount of homes, so that no player has the advantage. The options here are either to set everyone's back to a certain amount (I'm sure donators wouldn't like this) or, to set every players homes to that of the player with the most homes (which in Opticrafts case, could be infinite because of the way the donation works)
Both of these options would seem outright unfair, and that rule added by Mojang leaves everyone in a predicament.
No we would just stop selling the donation package. Everyone would keep the number of homes they currently have, as long as they cant trace it back to a donation of any kind it is fine.
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Just as some players earn the right to be trusted you could say that some have earned the right to have more homes than others.
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How should servers deal with users who have already spent hard currency on features that affect gameplay?
Users may keep the perks they’ve paid for on the condition that the same perks are available to other players on the server (directly or purchasable using soft currency). It’s up to the server host to decide how to compensate users for previous transactions.
So what they're saying is if someone has donated for about 20 homes on opti... everyone is entitled to 20 homes...
(I think?)
No. They said you can not charge for gameplay features, not plugins. This includes in game money, though none of our other donations should be affected I'm correct.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but that is my understanding.
Homes would count, since they give an advantage. Homes, money, tp, and xp would be affected. You could still have your two regular homes, but the rest of the homes wouldnt be allowed unless everyone was given the same amount.
This is kind of hard for Opticraft based on the way the multiple homes donation reward works. The overall outcome needs to be that every player has to have the same amount of homes, so that no player has the advantage. The options here are either to set everyone's back to a certain amount (I'm sure donators wouldn't like this) or, to set every players homes to that of the player with the most homes (which in Opticrafts case, could be infinite because of the way the donation works)
Both of these options would seem outright unfair, and that rule added by Mojang leaves everyone in a predicament.
No we would just stop selling the donation package. Everyone would keep the number of homes they currently have, as long as they cant trace it back to a donation of any kind it is fine.
I'm sure you're right in the sense we're a small server, and they probably won't give a crap who has more homes than others, but what if they do? They'll see Bob has 15 homes and John only has 2, and John will explain it's due to an old donation reward.
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How should servers deal with users who have already spent hard currency on features that affect gameplay?
Users may keep the perks they’ve paid for on the condition that the same perks are available to other players on the server (directly or purchasable using soft currency). It’s up to the server host to decide how to compensate users for previous transactions.
So what they're saying is if someone has donated for about 20 homes on opti... everyone is entitled to 20 homes...
(I think?)
No. They said you can not charge for gameplay features, not plugins. This includes in game money, though none of our other donations should be affected I'm correct.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but that is my understanding.
Homes would count, since they give an advantage. Homes, money, tp, and xp would be affected. You could still have your two regular homes, but the rest of the homes wouldnt be allowed unless everyone was given the same amount.
This is kind of hard for Opticraft based on the way the multiple homes donation reward works. The overall outcome needs to be that every player has to have the same amount of homes, so that no player has the advantage. The options here are either to set everyone's back to a certain amount (I'm sure donators wouldn't like this) or, to set every players homes to that of the player with the most homes (which in Opticrafts case, could be infinite because of the way the donation works)
Both of these options would seem outright unfair, and that rule added by Mojang leaves everyone in a predicament.
No we would just stop selling the donation package. Everyone would keep the number of homes they currently have, as long as they cant trace it back to a donation of any kind it is fine.
I'm sure you're right in the sense we're a small server, and they probably won't give a crap who has more homes than others, but what if they do? They'll see Bob has 15 homes and John only has 2, and John will explain it's due to an old donation reward.
That's possible but really they would never have the manpower to join a server and start asking players about homes and stuff. The most they would do is check the donations page or something. Especially on a small server like this.
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I donated about a year ago for a title. Is a title considered an advantage since technically it enhances my usernames appearance? Also as much as I know I donated out of the kindness of my heart, I also donated in the intent that I would get benefit ingame (I know it's more minor than houses or ingame money) but what I think is unfair is that now according to EULA someone who wants the same title feature only has to work their butt off ingame for soft currency while I had to work my butt off in real life for hard currency which as noted by mojang soft currency has no effect out of the game and obviously anyone who doesn't have ties or an understanding of minecraft would find this soft currency useless and less desirable so basically I should have waited till Eula was in effect before getting this title benefit. Now I apologize for sounding selfish because I adore Opticraft and I don't regret helping Optical keep it running. I write in saying that this is less unfair to me than it is to Optical who needs this money so we can continue our enjoyment of the server.
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I donated about a year ago for a title. Is a title considered an advantage since technically it enhances my usernames appearance?
It isn't.
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The current problem is that all of our best sellers are not allowed. Homes, money, tp, and experience all are in violation.
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People buy experience?
Can you do a big promotion for people to buy homes/money/etc now before the EULA kicks in? Last chance! Get it before its gone! Buy now!
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People buy experience?
Can you do a big promotion for people to buy homes/money/etc now before the EULA kicks in? Last chance! Get it before its gone! Buy now!
Quote from Notch
Someone saw that the EULA says you can’t charge for these things, and asked one of the people working at Mojang about it. That person said that yes, it is indeed against the rules, and then everything exploded. A lot of people got the impression that we’re changing the EULA somehow to only now disallow these things, but they were never allowed.
Edit: Nevermind this is from mojang
Do server hosts have a grace period to implement changes to their servers?
Yes. All servers must comply with the EULA by August 1st, 2014.
Also in response to the discussion of homes here is what mojang said:
How should servers deal with users who have already spent hard currency on features that affect gameplay?
Users may keep the perks they’ve paid for on the condition that the same perks are available to other players on the server (directly or purchasable using soft currency). It’s up to the server host to decide how to compensate users for previous transactions.
The fact that mojang is allowing servers 'subscription fees' but not access to "multiple plots... or ingame features" is such crap. They also stated that ranks will be allowed to be sold so long as they don't give users an advantage.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CbQhQ_By9o
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CbQhQ_By9o
lol you beat me to it
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Gavin, they allow you to charge for access to your server because it's your hardware, not their game that you are charging for access.
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Gavin, they allow you to charge for access to your server because it's your hardware, not their game that you are charging for access.
I didn't think of that, makes sense