The Minecraft EULA has brought a controversial wave of backlash throughout the Minecraft community, particularly from the loudest voices; server players (so… Everyone?) and owners. Is Mojang’s new EULA playing catch-up with other profiteering game publishers? Is it trying to verge its player base towards an apparently unsuccessful Realms? Is it an attempt to clear their hands of anything to do with children using their parents credit cards? Or is it simply doing what’s best for the Minecraft community, and shedding out the shady and massively grossing servers. Either way, this new change in the Mojang EULA and their attitude towards monetisation will have an impact on all multiplayer servers. We’ll take a look at what’s to come and how the Empire will be managing the changes.
June 5, 2014 – The news is leaked
The news of a new Minecraft EULA policy was released in a particularly unprofessional manner, with a Mojang employee’s skype conversation with server owners being leaked, a half-opinion and half-truth tangent, leading to a spectacle of several days of chaos in the community.
June 12, 2014 – RE: New Minecraft EULA
A blog post was then released on the Mojang website, which officially brought forth the following updates to the Minecraft EULA, to be followed as of August 1st.
- You are allowed to charge players to access your server
- You are allowed to accept donations
- You are allowed to provide in-game advertising or sponsorship opportunities
- You are allowed to sell in-game items so long as they don’t affect gameplay
- You cannot charge real-world cash for in-game currency
- Do not pretend to be Mojang
What does this mean for Empire Minecraft and other servers?
This new change means that server monitisation has to change to be in accordance with the Minecraft EULA. In other words, the way we collect funds to pay for costs, websites, and other necessities will have to change – as the current “perks” are being disallowed. Some things you’ll see transitioning around the Minecraft community are so-forth mentioned below:
- The “upgrades” that are offered to you will have extra thought into them that they do not provide an unfair advantage, and adding more cosmetic perks. Things like pets, coloured names will be fine.
- Gameplay can not be altered by purchasing for real money- so you may not purchase blocks such as TNT, or abilities such as flying
- Sales in effect until Full Compliance are being held to raise funds for the income-drop that server owners will soon experience, taking advantage of a “grandfather” clause which allows purchased items to shift over to post Compliance.
- You can not divide parts into paid/not paid.
- You won’t be allowed to trade IRL money for in-game money.
On Empire Minecraft we’ve found a balance between trying our best to reasonably meet Minecraft EULA as well as continue to offer priority to the server, customer fairness and experience.
- To make up for two of the most popular perks, vouchers are being offered which will then be trusted into the new “supporter system”.
- Things such as Daily Rupee Bonus increases and Extra Residences will be removed.
- Restricted Access to Utopia Wild/Nether/End will be removed.
- Restricted Claiming of plots on Utopia will be removed.
- Max players on Utopia will be reduced to 5. Supporters bypass this limit.
- Utopia will give a special login bonus per day.
- Instead of ranks, Cosmetics which provides some cool features, and Supporter which includes some more practical benefits will be offered, transpiring from Iron, Gold and combined for Diamond. These include some new and old perks to cater for the Minecraft EULA.
- The ability to earn things like Residences from voting/killing mobs (Tokens) and from the old vouchers which can be obtained through trading with other players.
Overall, the Minecraft EULA change is still pending, and we are still yet to see how Mojang will enforce it, as well as how the community will evolve.
We were not able to make the August 1st deadline, but we do have a solid plan to be in compliance and we are working on it as quick as possible. Until we are in full compliance, things like Vouchers and Rupees will still be up for sale, but will be removed when the rest of the changes are ready.