Owing to interesting events last night, the Minecraft EULA - in particular, where it pertains to multiplayer servers - has become a very hot topic. So what's all the fuss about? Why is this even a thing right now? Bebopvox gives a pretty solid breakdown of the situation, both from the perspective of Mojang, and the community at large.
PLEASE NOTE:
Some key points about the situation, in TL;DR format:
Has the EULA changed? - No, not yet
Is Mojang shutting down servers? - No
Are there talks about finding a middle ground with server owners and Mojang? - Yes
I wish we could get information in proper written format instead of videos.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Minecraft Forum is the sewer of the Minecraft community.
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People who intentionally desecrate a language are no different than griefers who tear things down because they are too immature and undisciplined to create, so instead they destroy out of jealousy.
I wish we could get information in proper written format instead of videos.
Agreed. I'm tired of videos for "news".
The EULA never changed, Mojang just made it more obvious that you shouldn't make money with their work by forcing people to pay to use items, or by distributing their files with AdFly or things of the sort. Donations to keeping servers up and donations/AdFly links for modifications to the game are, in theory, still acceptable. But as the community has demonstrated, they did a terrible mistake by assuming good faith.
1. Some server sell packages, as much as $10,000 for something on the server. No, I don't know the details. Yes, they do sell those packages.
2. Some people have found that their children have gotten ahold of credit cards, and complained to Mojang about this, not aware that Mojang is not the server person.
3. Mojang has gotten upset at the bad image from the bad apples.
4. Mojang wants to stop the bad apples, the high-priced servers, etc.
On the other side:
1. Quality server support -- staff, handling minigames, operating servers for hundreds if not thousands of people -- is very time consuming.
2. In exchange for the time of the support staff, some servers want to be able to pay -- the very simple idea is that if you are putting in what is effectively work, you should be compensated for it.
3. DDoS protection is expensive. The internet has become a mafia with a protection racket. If you are popular, you will need to spend money to stay up.
The result is simple: Quality, popular, and well-staffed servers cost money -- real money -- to operate, and have to be able to operate as a business, to bring in money to stay in operation.
Somewhere, there is a "fair, middle ground" between the bad apples, and letting good ones operate.
Where is that line? Unknown.
What is the distinction between a good apple and a bad apple? Unknown.
What is Mojang's current plan, according to this video? To figure out what they are willing to let server operators do for money, and what they are not willing to let server operators do for money, and then update the EULA to indicate this.
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
I've said this before and I'll repeat it here cause it's buried elsewhere, Mojang, while they shouldn't really be concerning themselves over what goes on servers, are now aware of the problem. Okay, before anyone makes the joke of "hurr hurr, I'm from PMC, givez me OP," my suggestion would be for a small team of volunteer members that hop on the servers to see if they are one of the many rotten ones and send a report to the host to shut it down at which point the owner of the server gets their account suspended temporarily or even permanently...
Okay, it sounded a lot better in my head and was just my suggestion. Mojang can't necessarily go around and check every server for breach of the rules while also still trying to work on the game. As for the EULA, they should just clarify what is okay and if those that really put the time, effort, and dedication to running a server (ie Hypixel or Mineplex) then a small deal could be worked out that satisfies the needs of both sides.
These very inferiorist things the servers have been doing for quite a long time was awful and gave the wrong people wrong things. It basically abused the inferiors who don't want to earn their stuff so they can ****-wave, instead they just throw money so they can. Good thing this is going to be stopped.
@Avskygod0:
Inferiorist? What? I seriously don't understand your point or position.
In other news, as we look at the EULA, it seems that they take contrary positions, at least from my reading.
The one major rule is that you must not distribute anything we‘ve made. By “distribute anything we‘ve made” what we mean is “give copies of the game away, make commercial use of, try to make money from, or let other people get access to our game and its parts in a way that is unfair or unreasonable”.
I parsed that as (give copies of the game away, make commercial use of, try to make money from, or let other people get access to our game and its parts) in a way that is unfair or unreasonable. I'm probably not doing it the way a certain person that started this debate is, either.
However, based on my reading, one key point stands out: UNFAIR OR UNREASONABLE. It's not unfair to give someone a small perk for giving a server money. It's unreasonable for anything to cost $10,000, yes, but MOST PERKS fall in these lines.
Thing is, then they add a bullet point list, for "clarification", that confuses things.
So the one major rule is that (unless we specifically agree it – such as in brand and asset usage guidelines) you must not:
give copies of our Game to anyone else;
make commercial use of anything we‘ve made;
try to make money from anything we‘ve made; or
let other people get access to anything we‘ve made in a way that is unfair or unreasonable
Now they've thrown semicolons at it and completely changed the way it's read. But I personally feel that really, there's a way to solve this quandary.
Q: Are servers trying to make money, i.e. charge ridiculous prices for items and perks that are clearly meant to make profit?
A: Most of these servers are simply attempting to recognize those who have supported them.
It's almost like saying that a charity can't acknowledge the donators it gets. Frankly, if I found out that was to be stopped, it might impact my donation, despite the fact that the effect was unchanged.
Now, the problem here, is the sharks that have the ridiculous purchases.
I think there ought to be, as Jetra suggested, a team of volunteers that go and look for overpriced BS around the servers, and then, report that to a central database, which is linked both to Mojang, AND THE COMMUNITY AT LARGE (MCForums, PMC, etc.). The sites would then be able to add warnings to servers suspected of being money pits, or extortionate. For instance, the servers where you HAVE to buy something to use certain normal items that are integral parts of Minecraftian life. That means the items CANNOT be earned by playing, not that there is an option to buy them immediately and a reasonable way to get them without having to pay. For instance, a server where there's a month wait for lava buckets and fire, or you can buy it for $4.99, as a hypothetical.
Title tags are most likely reasonable unless they're exorbitantly expensive or don't stack. (Expiring tags, I personally don't like, but the rest of the world has varying opinions on that.)
THAT, would be reasonable.
What I heard Erik saying was NOT reasonable. Granted, it was his opinion, but his opinion, he should know, has much weight and thus if there's no official opinion, he shouldn't be throwing his personal opinion out there.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Weird Things Mods Say When Booting
[Client thread/INFO] [TConstruct]: Natura, what are we going to do tomorrow night?
[Client thread/INFO] [Natura]: TConstruct, we're going to take over the world!
[Client thread/INFO] [inpure|core]: Beating Minecraft's resource loading system with a shovel. Please stand by...
[Client thread/INFO] [MagicBees]: Replacing stupid-block with 'Here, have some delicious textures' ItemBlock. This is 100% normal.
Balance-breaking is not how many communities work. Sure, there are the hoarders that don't share, but most of the donators I've known spread their wealth. In general, everybody does, for that matter. I can't vouch for the factions/PvP servers, since I don't paly them myself, but I'm willing to bet that within the factions, people do share.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Weird Things Mods Say When Booting
[Client thread/INFO] [TConstruct]: Natura, what are we going to do tomorrow night?
[Client thread/INFO] [Natura]: TConstruct, we're going to take over the world!
[Client thread/INFO] [inpure|core]: Beating Minecraft's resource loading system with a shovel. Please stand by...
[Client thread/INFO] [MagicBees]: Replacing stupid-block with 'Here, have some delicious textures' ItemBlock. This is 100% normal.
If I correctly understood everything, that means that modders won't be able to use adf.ly links or any kind of direct money systems when we want to download their hard work. So that means a lot of modders will stop working since now their work will be done for free and we will loose a lot of the best mods for Minecraft, we will also loose 90% of the servers that are currently online, lucky for me, it won't affect me since I run my own 100% private family server and I have no intentions to violate any terms and never ever would have sold stuff in game for real life money.
Point 1: Yes, but still, they do get a reward for their work from adf.ly that they won't get otherwise.
Points 3 and 4: Doomsaying he may be, but there AREN'T any statistics and he's probably right enough in that most servers give perks for donations.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Weird Things Mods Say When Booting
[Client thread/INFO] [TConstruct]: Natura, what are we going to do tomorrow night?
[Client thread/INFO] [Natura]: TConstruct, we're going to take over the world!
[Client thread/INFO] [inpure|core]: Beating Minecraft's resource loading system with a shovel. Please stand by...
[Client thread/INFO] [MagicBees]: Replacing stupid-block with 'Here, have some delicious textures' ItemBlock. This is 100% normal.
I honestly see nothing wrong with what Mojang is doing. They are simply saying that they are taking a look at the situation to see what they can do to help with it. Nothing is set in stone yet, for all we know it could be some great change that will make everyone happy, or it could screw us all over. Either way, we should not speculate. Speculation only leads to lost friendships and hate anew.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Ever had something (or somebody) on your railroad that you did not want there?
The new enforcing of the EULA seems to only effect servers that sell vanilla items. Servers that sell their own coded kits and ranks, such as Minigame servers, should be fine.
lol, shame on jeb's mess, this is obviously his doing, notch wouldnt mess with this, lol. theres no servers that sell anything for 10k, peeps arent going to pay that much for any virtual item, they would have to be backstupid to do so, lol.
the minecraft gaming community admins itself, peeps dont like a server or admins of a server, it gets hit by griefer teams, lol.
peeps do what they can to support their servers, to support 100 slot servers or larger, it takes alot of hardware power and ram to run all that, and theres a good share of peeps that cant run those 100+ slot servers on their own. they get help from some donaters in their player bases. for a good stable 20 slot server, you need 3 gb's minimum cause the server depending on whats used for plugins ranges around 340-700+ MB ram. thats with no players.
mojang would be killing hundreds of servers and possibly minecraft itself by trying to enforce anything like this.this late in the game
Why has no one mentioned anything about Minecraft Realms?
This idea popped into my head when I was watching the video. Mojang should work on a player API that they have been talking about and make it Realms compatible. Then modders can make there mods for servers instead of having to make modded servers, thus more people would use mods on servers. Server owners can then still have there nice anti-grief/World-Gaurd/chat plug-ins to keep their servers nice and clean. Mojang can then easily keep track of who has servers and could monitor the donations made to servers (to an extent of course).
Owing to interesting events last night, the Minecraft EULA - in particular, where it pertains to multiplayer servers - has become a very hot topic. So what's all the fuss about? Why is this even a thing right now? Bebopvox gives a pretty solid breakdown of the situation, both from the perspective of Mojang, and the community at large.
PLEASE NOTE:
Some key points about the situation, in TL;DR format:
.
Minecraft Forum is the sewer of the Minecraft community.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
People who intentionally desecrate a language are no different than griefers who tear things down because they are too immature and undisciplined to create, so instead they destroy out of jealousy.
Agreed. I'm tired of videos for "news".
The EULA never changed, Mojang just made it more obvious that you shouldn't make money with their work by forcing people to pay to use items, or by distributing their files with AdFly or things of the sort. Donations to keeping servers up and donations/AdFly links for modifications to the game are, in theory, still acceptable. But as the community has demonstrated, they did a terrible mistake by assuming good faith.
EDIT: "You can charge for hosting servers, but not for gameplay features." https://twitter.com/...869769301409792
EDIT2: "We get a LOT of support errands from parents of kids that bought items for hundreds of dollars, wanting their money back."
https://twitter.com/notch/status/475213194072686592
My fan fiction of the game: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1957118-programmer-my-first-fan-fiction/#entry24096758
1. Some server sell packages, as much as $10,000 for something on the server. No, I don't know the details. Yes, they do sell those packages.
2. Some people have found that their children have gotten ahold of credit cards, and complained to Mojang about this, not aware that Mojang is not the server person.
3. Mojang has gotten upset at the bad image from the bad apples.
4. Mojang wants to stop the bad apples, the high-priced servers, etc.
On the other side:
1. Quality server support -- staff, handling minigames, operating servers for hundreds if not thousands of people -- is very time consuming.
2. In exchange for the time of the support staff, some servers want to be able to pay -- the very simple idea is that if you are putting in what is effectively work, you should be compensated for it.
3. DDoS protection is expensive. The internet has become a mafia with a protection racket. If you are popular, you will need to spend money to stay up.
The result is simple: Quality, popular, and well-staffed servers cost money -- real money -- to operate, and have to be able to operate as a business, to bring in money to stay in operation.
Somewhere, there is a "fair, middle ground" between the bad apples, and letting good ones operate.
Where is that line? Unknown.
What is the distinction between a good apple and a bad apple? Unknown.
What is Mojang's current plan, according to this video? To figure out what they are willing to let server operators do for money, and what they are not willing to let server operators do for money, and then update the EULA to indicate this.
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Okay, it sounded a lot better in my head and was just my suggestion. Mojang can't necessarily go around and check every server for breach of the rules while also still trying to work on the game. As for the EULA, they should just clarify what is okay and if those that really put the time, effort, and dedication to running a server (ie Hypixel or Mineplex) then a small deal could be worked out that satisfies the needs of both sides.
Just my two cents...don't hurt me.
Click them or they will click you
Inferiorist? What? I seriously don't understand your point or position.
In other news, as we look at the EULA, it seems that they take contrary positions, at least from my reading.
The one major rule is that you must not distribute anything we‘ve made. By “distribute anything we‘ve made” what we mean is “give copies of the game away, make commercial use of, try to make money from, or let other people get access to our game and its parts in a way that is unfair or unreasonable”.
I parsed that as (give copies of the game away, make commercial use of, try to make money from, or let other people get access to our game and its parts) in a way that is unfair or unreasonable. I'm probably not doing it the way a certain person that started this debate is, either.
However, based on my reading, one key point stands out: UNFAIR OR UNREASONABLE. It's not unfair to give someone a small perk for giving a server money. It's unreasonable for anything to cost $10,000, yes, but MOST PERKS fall in these lines.
Thing is, then they add a bullet point list, for "clarification", that confuses things.
So the one major rule is that (unless we specifically agree it – such as in brand and asset usage guidelines) you must not:
Q: Are servers trying to make money, i.e. charge ridiculous prices for items and perks that are clearly meant to make profit?
A: Most of these servers are simply attempting to recognize those who have supported them.
It's almost like saying that a charity can't acknowledge the donators it gets. Frankly, if I found out that was to be stopped, it might impact my donation, despite the fact that the effect was unchanged.
Now, the problem here, is the sharks that have the ridiculous purchases.
I think there ought to be, as Jetra suggested, a team of volunteers that go and look for overpriced BS around the servers, and then, report that to a central database, which is linked both to Mojang, AND THE COMMUNITY AT LARGE (MCForums, PMC, etc.). The sites would then be able to add warnings to servers suspected of being money pits, or extortionate. For instance, the servers where you HAVE to buy something to use certain normal items that are integral parts of Minecraftian life. That means the items CANNOT be earned by playing, not that there is an option to buy them immediately and a reasonable way to get them without having to pay. For instance, a server where there's a month wait for lava buckets and fire, or you can buy it for $4.99, as a hypothetical.
Title tags are most likely reasonable unless they're exorbitantly expensive or don't stack. (Expiring tags, I personally don't like, but the rest of the world has varying opinions on that.)
THAT, would be reasonable.
What I heard Erik saying was NOT reasonable. Granted, it was his opinion, but his opinion, he should know, has much weight and thus if there's no official opinion, he shouldn't be throwing his personal opinion out there.
[Client thread/INFO] [Natura]: TConstruct, we're going to take over the world!
[Client thread/INFO] [Natura]: TConstruct, we're going to take over the world!
Check out my PocketMine plugins!
Points 3 and 4: Doomsaying he may be, but there AREN'T any statistics and he's probably right enough in that most servers give perks for donations.
[Client thread/INFO] [Natura]: TConstruct, we're going to take over the world!
just dont sell items
I agree.
This is really confusing.
the minecraft gaming community admins itself, peeps dont like a server or admins of a server, it gets hit by griefer teams, lol.
peeps do what they can to support their servers, to support 100 slot servers or larger, it takes alot of hardware power and ram to run all that, and theres a good share of peeps that cant run those 100+ slot servers on their own. they get help from some donaters in their player bases. for a good stable 20 slot server, you need 3 gb's minimum cause the server depending on whats used for plugins ranges around 340-700+ MB ram. thats with no players.
mojang would be killing hundreds of servers and possibly minecraft itself by trying to enforce anything like this.this late in the game
This idea popped into my head when I was watching the video. Mojang should work on a player API that they have been talking about and make it Realms compatible. Then modders can make there mods for servers instead of having to make modded servers, thus more people would use mods on servers. Server owners can then still have there nice anti-grief/World-Gaurd/chat plug-ins to keep their servers nice and clean. Mojang can then easily keep track of who has servers and could monitor the donations made to servers (to an extent of course).