
Literally worse than EA - itafroma
http://notch.net/2014/06/literally-worse-than-ea/
======
nl
Oh wow. Minecraft. I have an 8yo boy, so I spend a lot more time thinking
about this than I would like.

I think Mojang has it's priorities slightly wrong here. At the moment much of
the interesting stuff in Minecraft is done via mods. But the user experience
for that is pretty close to pre-Google search: browse through random forums to
find links to dodgy download sites that attempt to push malware or porn to
you.

Then when you find a working download, you have to install. Inevitably that
means clashes with existing mods, and hours trying different versions of
things that some random person on a forum claims work.

FFS, I'm a Java programmer, and I can't work out how to make this shit work
most of the time.

In my view Mojang should do the following:

    
    
      Build a working, stable official Mod API, which at least attempts to make it possible to determine if different mods will work together
    
      Implement an in-game app store, and let mod authors sell their mods. 
    

I'd much prefer to spend a dollar on a new mod rather than the horrible,
horrible experience it is now.

Rant over..

~~~
Lrigikithumer
What does a mod API have to do with the monetisation of servers? Not saying
you're incorrect but it doesn't really seem relevant to the story posted.

~~~
grrowl
I think the common theme is Minecraft's ecosystem. Mojang addresses a problem
(EULA-breaking monetization within the ecosystem) by changing the rules to
address the problem. What they should do is circumvent the immediate problem
by redefining the ecosystem itself.

Furnishing developers with a stable, predictable API redefines the ecosystem,
and creating an "app store" for mods (et cetera...) could finance it, with
ongoing revenue. With Mojang's current attitude I see it being more of a
"google play", especially given the ease that mods could be repackaged. Still,
better than having kids pull executable code off forums.

~~~
jiggy2011
I don't see how an app store model would necessarily help people monetise
running servers.

~~~
VLM
I don't think you've played minecraft and done modding.

If your server requires 1.6.4 and railcraft 1.2.3.4.5.6 well then anyone who
connects requires MC 1.6.4 (free, no problem) and ALSO requires railcraft
1.2.3.4.5.6 and mods are stereotypically hosted on the scummiest pr0n-iest
adfest drive by download sewers of the internet (sorry, but its true)

So say you want to host a server called "jiggy's minecraft". Simply require a
mod to log into your server called jiggy-2014 for the entire year of 2014 and
sell it in the in app store for "annual fee". Maybe drop the price by 1 / 12
every month thru the year. Guess the mod name you'll require in 2015, yes your
mod will be called jiggy-2015 and be priced at your annual fee.

The mod might even provide something useful to the players. Maybe. This will
probably kill/damage the ecosystem, maybe you'll never get to play railcraft,
TE, and buildcraft on the same server ever again. That would suck. It is
possible "real mods" won't be balkanized and only "subscription mods" will be
balkanized.

~~~
jiggy2011
Wouldn't it be more profitable to simply develop and sell mods rather than
running servers since your costs will be lower?

Unless you mean just using the mod as a key to access the server in which case
you'd be better off just charging for passwords to the server because
otherwise you have to worry about people using pirate copies of your mod to
connect.

~~~
VLM
Most of the people running servers are doing it as a desire to be the part of
the ecosystem who runs servers. They aren't interested in making money off the
ecosystem as much as becoming a part of the ecosystem, and as server ops have
been since the first days of IRC and the earliest dialup BBSes decades ago,
there's more than a little power trip involved. If they wanted money they'd
spend time on mturk and easily make more, unless they somehow go pro and make
it into the really big leagues. Much like pro sports.

I'm guessing the pirate effect wouldn't be an issue because the "pro mod
writers" would be about 10x more excited about the topic than "pro server
operators" for obvious reasons so the mod store writers wouldn't do anything
too dumb... I hope. One rather trivial and easy to implement solution is MC
currently has a centralized auth system for MC users that existing servers
talk to (I have a server in my basement, and I am made well aware from my kids
when the MC auth servers are down), and extending that a tiny bit to auth both
MC and mods isn't much work other than a bit more traffic to the auth server,
which they can probably afford by skimming off mod sale prices. So you can
tell the server all day that you have a copy of mod name jiggy-2011, but when
the server turns around and asks the existing centralized MC server if
username jiggy has actually paid for mod name jiggy-2011, then ...

~~~
jiggy2011
Do you mean the people providing servers, or the people who are operating
them?

------
davidbanham
Hosting game servers is hard, expensive work. Hosting Minecraft servers is
even tougher since the hardware requirements are pretty steep and the main
userbase doesn't have much money to kick into the pot.

Minefold was a YC company that tried to make a go of monetising Minecraft
hosting in the Right Way. They were smart guys and built a great platform, but
they're not around any more. I believe it's because it was just too hard to
get Minecraft users to pay anything for their servers.

We looked into ways to incorporate advertising into Minecraft in a player-
friendly way. Mojang weren't interested in helping, but it wasn't the
technical barrier that stopped us. It was inability to find buyers for the ad
slots given the perceived demographic of the game.

Online multiplayer doesn't happen well without servers to mediate the
experience. Those servers cost money. This remains a massive unsolved problem
in the gaming industry.

~~~
espadrine
> _inability to find buyers for the ad slots given the perceived demographic_

I would love for you to expand on that. Is there an age range that no buyers
in the ad business are interested in? What aspect of the demographic was toxic
to them? How do they measure how effective a demographic is?

~~~
davidbanham
The perception amongst the buyers we spoke to was that Minecraft was for 9 to
13 year old kids. The only people they were familiar with interacting with the
title were their own children and their friends.

Advertising to kids is ethically problematic and often has strict legal
restrictions. I'm not aware of any of the large video exchanges operating in
the space at all. None of our existing buyers were interested. If advertising
to kids was a path we even wanted to go down, we'd need to broach a whole new
market.

~~~
bitJericho
A lot of older folks I imagine would just setup their own server and port
forwarding. There's a million guides out there for that.

------
throwaway_yy2Di

        "The EULA for Minecraft says you can’t make money of
        Minecraft. If you make mods, they have to be free."
    

I don't understand the legal theory behind this. Is this contract law? If a
programmer wrote a third-party mod without buying the software (say by reading
an API description), would they still be bound to its terms?

Also, does restricting modification like this infringe on "first sale" rights?

~~~
belorn
A court held that when a defendant purchased old copies of National Geographic
magazine, tore out articles, and bound them together for sale with articles
relating to a common subject matter, it had infringed on the owner’s exclusive
right to prepare derivative works. Nat’l Geographic Soc’y v. Classiﬁed
Geographic, Inc., 27 F. Supp. 655 (D. Mass. 1939).

Even if you do not do any copying, you can still infringe under copyright law.
The theory is that the copyright owner has exclusively power to decide who
should compile, adapt or arrange a copyrighted work.

I recommend further reading at:
[http://digitalcommons.law.wne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...](http://digitalcommons.law.wne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1046&context=facschol)

~~~
drdeca
I would have thought that right of first sale should guarantee the right to do
that. I guess not?

------
spain
Following the link on that page to the "translated" version of the new EULA,
their reasoning seems to still be "we don’t want our players to be exploited
or to have a frustrating time unless they pay." [0] I find a lot of things
wrong with this mentality, mostly in that it assumes that the servers that
charge for gameplay have some kind of monopoly over the servers. If you don't
want to pay for gameplay, just visit another server. _You don 't have to put
up with them._ Heck, if you really wanted to you could host your own. The
bottom line is you don't _need_ to pay anyone, they're not exploiting you. If
you're getting frustrated because they're charging you then that's your own
dumb fault for visiting that server and putting up with it. If you want to
pay, go ahead, support the server hosts. All of this is under the false
assumption that people are being forced into paying, which simply isn't true.

[0] [https://mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-
monetisation/](https://mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation/)

~~~
Tyr42
One of the problems with that is that people have friends. That can cause some
stickiness in server choice.

~~~
spain
That's still their problem, not the servers.

------
awjr
Yes Minecraft is awesome, however the selling of addons is just one more
revenue stream to keep a server alive and the user base engaged. There has to
be perceived value in having the addon to make the user experience better.

I think this sums up the sentiment from a server's point of view:
[http://sterlingplays.com/](http://sterlingplays.com/)

~~~
networked
If the players come to those server networks looking for the custom gameplay
experiences they provide and every network stands to lose a lot of money from
the EULA change what prevents them from hiring developers to replace Minecraft
with a custom client? I mean this as a genuine question.

~~~
Negitivefrags
You are falling in to the very trap that this entire article is about.

Nobody is losing money from this EULA change. The EULA already forbade this
and always did. The EULA is only more liberal than it was before. If they were
willing to flout it before than there is no reason they shouldn't be willing
to continue to flout it now.

~~~
networked
In the post that awjr links to above the author claims that a Mojang employee
has interpreted the previous EULA for them as allowing this ("I personally
discussed our rank system with a member of your business team at Minecon last
year and he confirmed we were in compliance with the EULA. The only rule was
to not sell Mojang IP [...]"), although it does not make it clear as to how
official their discussion was.

With my question I didn't mean to imply that I have an opinion on this matter
either way. I'm mostly wondering if the big server networks could try to cut
out Mojang based on their shared (I assume) interpretation of how to the EULA
has changed over time, whether it be right or wrong.

Edit: clarified last sentence.

------
delucain
Maybe this is a little off-topic, and I don't want to sound like an ungrateful
player of minecraft. I actually really love the game and have put more hours
into it than just about any other game but a few key titles like the Diablo,
Elder Scrolls, and Fallout series. But, can someone explain to me how a game
that has grossed roughly half a billion dollars (based on estimates I've read
for all platforms) is still so feature bare compared to other games in its
financial ballpark? I am honestly curious, because it doesn't sound like Notch
is cruising the Caribbean in a 175' yacht or anything.

~~~
watwut
It is strategy, they want to use money to finance other future projects.
According to one interview I have read, money from Minecraft are used to pay
bills and development of other games until they luck out again and have
another hit.

Developing games is risky and there are no guarantees of success. So, the
successful projects have to pay for unsuccessful ones.

~~~
wldcordeiro
Just to add to your last sentence, successful projects have to pay for
projects not yet ready to release as well as unsuccessful ones (whether due to
them flopping or lack of critical mass.)

------
soup10
Seems like reasonable player-friendly rules, I think minecraft has a ton of
servers and sub-communities though so it will probably be quite hard to
police. The idea of individual server ops creating mini-businesses seems a
little odd. They could probably do more to streamline the multiplayer
experience for players and server-ops.

------
SteveC
As someone who actually runs a Minecraft server and has developed several mini
games and around 50 plugins, I'd like to clarify a few things to people who
aren't involved in Minecraft.

* Minecraft is pretty expensive to host. The top servers are paying tens of thousands a month in hosting. Only a few servers make enough to cover wages. Most just barely scrape by. DDOS protection is pretty much essential to any server over a certain size, which increases costs significantly.

* Most Minecraft servers are no longer vanilla Minecraft servers. The Minecraft server software is pretty bad in both functionality and performance. Most servers use Craftbukkit or Spigot, which has a plugin API (Spigot is a patched version of Craftbukkit with mostly performance fixes). Craftbukkit is open source, but is a legally gray area as it contains the decompiled code from the Mojang server. There is an API for writing plugins called Bukkit which is totally separate from the craftbukkit server implementation.

* The large servers have tried to work with Mojang to get a set of rules they can work with. Mojang listened to them and actually added clauses prohibiting some of the things they said they needed to even have a chance of this working for them.

* While Mojang claim their EULA never allowed servers to make money, their first one actually did. They've also granted written permission to some servers. Last year they had a panel at Minecon were top server owners actually talked about how their server makes money. Despite what their EULA says, Mojang has been basically telling servers it was fine to monetize up until now.

* Their new terms force servers to remove perks that have already been sold to players. Many server owners are objecting to this as it forces them to "steal" things that players have bought.

* Bungeecord is a proxy system that allows players to switch between multiple servers without logging out. The Minecraft clients multiplayer server list support has barely improved since Alpha. Mojang's new EULA treats a bungeecord proxy as a single server. This means that although they allow owners to charge players to access a server, it's pretty much impossible to do without inconveniencing players.

* The Minecraft network protocol is not patented. A number of open source server implementations exist which do no use any Mojang code. Since these changes have been announced these projects have become much more active with disgruntled developers starting to contribute. It is believed that the EULA cannot legally be enforced on these servers, although one Mojang developer made a statement to the contrary.

* No final draft for the new EULA has actually be made available, but a date for compliance has already been set. 1st August 2014.

* Mojang released their Realms hosting service worldwide just before making these changes, prompting many to accuse them of trying to eliminate the competition. However, they could simply stop releasing their server software if that was their intention, so most people don't believe this to be true.

~~~
arrrg
So it’s expensive and hard. So what? Doesn’t mean scummy play to win bullshit
is something to be proud of, especially when targeting children.

I mean, what Mojang now permits I consider just barely ethically acceptable.
Do know that these pay to win schemes are extremely disgusting and that you
are far from behaving ethically if you use them. If you can live with that …

The legal discussion is kind of boring to me in that context, since it seems
so obvious that the behaviour of many server owners is so disgusting. I’m
happy that Mojang is trying to crack down on that and I hope they don’t fail.
Maybe they will, but that doesn’t change anything about how wrong these pay to
win schemes are.

~~~
unethical_ban
So what? So it's incredibly hard to even enforce what Mojang says they're
targeting, and in trying to do so, they're spooking a ton of legitimate
developers and server owners.

The real question is how children are spending hundreds of dollars online
without parental consent.

~~~
techtalsky
No, that's not really "the real question". Kids are smart. The know how to get
what they want and parents can't be everywhere at any moment. SOME percentage
of kids are going to figure out how to pay for goods with very little
understanding of their relative value. Preying on kids in this position skirts
the borders of what's ethical. I'm not saying all server owners are guilty of
this, but Mojang has their position for a reason and it's not just the profit
motive.

~~~
spain
If kids outwit their parents and spend their money then that's the parents
fault, not the servers. True, the parents can't always be everywhere which is
why they need to _teach_ children to act responsibly. If that kid keeps
continuously taking money out of your bank account when you're not looking and
blowing it on Minecraft then the _parent is doing something wrong._ If there
was no Minecraft they'd spend the money on something else. I don't see why
server hosts should be punished because some parents failed to bring their
children up properly.

~~~
ovulator
That's ridiculous.

Some ten year old kid wants a $300 item on a Minecraft server. The kid has
been told he can't use his parent's credit card without permission, he knows
he can't, but guess what: even good kids break the rules, and he knows his
parents have the money. He just saw them write a $5,000 check for his private
tuition! (they want to raise him right) That $5,000 check though left them
with $200 in the bank for the rest of the month...

I'm not for or against server monitization, but trying to blame the parents is
ridiculous. Kids are not exact molds that their parents have shaped.

~~~
Mikeb85
Then take away that kids computer and all technology, and ground them for a
month.

These problems were solved by previous generations, when did parents become
such pussies?

When my generation was growing up (and I'm only 29), if we acted up we were
expecting a beating at home... And we didn't get our own computer, TV and iPad
or console...

~~~
x0x0
My generation did not have the ability to spend $300 on my parents' credit
cards by pressing buttons on my walkman in exchange for prettier outfits for
my fake characters.

------
shadowmint
One price for all player teirs seem pretty reasonable in my oppinion.

The freemium business model is really only viable if you can hook the few so
called 'high payer' users and everyone else gets a rubbish experience.

Notch is notoriously anti '"free to play" ... with in app purchases', and
keeping that away from minecraft will ultimately benefit the players.

There's been some pretty heavy vitriol from seever hosts about this, but
honestly, when you play in someone elses playground, its their way or the
highway. Thats what you get.

------
asiekierka
What about functionality added by mods which are not directly made for
Minecraft?

Spout used that loophole (where Spout was a voxel mod API and SpoutCraft was a
Minecraft implementation of it) to allow selling mods.

~~~
amaranth
Since Spout never really existed as a working Minecraft server and SpoutCraft
was a vanilla client mod I'll assume you mean they were doing selling while
being vanilla mods. In that case, the most likely reason they got away with it
isn't because it was a loophole but because it was so under the radar Mojang
didn't notice or care.

------
wtbob
They still don't get it.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with server owners offering improved
gameplay in return for financial support. Minecraft allows griefing
(destruction of another player's work); there is nothing wrong with a server
owner enabling an anti-griefing mod (incidentally, not offered by Mojang:
literally the only thing which makes public servers tolerable is 100% not
Mojang's work) only for paying players, but not for non-paying players. The
alternatives would be to offer it to everyone—meaning that folks could cause
trouble with the anti-griefing features, requiring admin time (and hence
money)—or to not allow the general public on, meaning that prospective players
would be unable to evaluate the server, or to turn off anti-griefing and leave
the server public, meaning that everyone would have to have hidden bases and
live in perpetual fear of griefers.

That doesn't sound like an improvement.

Skyblock is a style of gameplay made possible by modmakers (not by Mojang);
there is nothing wrong with offering additional starting resources in exchange
for financial support.

Mojang have made approximately half a billion dollars from Minecraft; society
has rewarded them well. How 'bout they start giving back, rather than seeking
to exploit their monopoly position?

(No, I don't run a public server, but I do play on them, and it sickens me to
see their business model destroyed by a monopolist)

------
devicenull
So, the question becomes who is going to enforce these rules? If you have
these rules in your EULA, but you aren't enforcing them, you might as well not
have them.

Are they going to start suing people? I can't see a whole lot of alternatives
here.

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davidgerard
Herobrine isn't real? BAAAAASTAAAAAAA

