>The top servers are paying tens of thousands a month in hosting.
Are you just speculating? This seems extremely high. I've hosted a couple Minecraft servers and even with a mild constant population (~30) it wasn't even breaking 100/mo.
>DDOS protection is pretty much essential to any server over a certain size, which increases costs significantly.
I've had many dedicated servers in my day, and this has never been the case. Not sure where you're getting this data from.
To point 1, Minecraft chews memory and processor for breakfast. I understand that some of the larger server have thousands of players logged in simultaneously over huge areas in a minecraft world, so I can imagine 4-5 digit hosting bills.
To point 2, you're hosting a server with lots of attention, one that is DDoS friendly, and you've got the eyes of lots of young technical people. In the world of one-click DDoS, I don't doubt it can pose an issue quickly.
My point with #2 is that DDoS protection is included with most dedicated server plans. It doesn't cost "significantly extra" as this guy claims- at least I've never seen that.
Well, we'll just have to rely on our experience then. I haven't dealt with dedicated servers plans, but my impression of "DDoS" protection in that regard is that your traffic will get blackholed if it's bad enough.
Vendors like Cloudflare, Akamai and Prolexic sell plans where all your traffic is routed through their networks first, filtered based on various DDoS-detecting algorithms, then sent to you. $$$$
