Hello,

As most of you will be aware there has been a lot of talk lately about servers and the EULA. Here is a brief introduction to what has been going on for the past 4 years:

When Minecraft first released multiplayer, servers such as ours begun to spring up mostly with the goal of proving a platform for minecrafters alike to come and play together, with no intentions of turning into a business type infrastructure. For us, our servers started out as a place to play with our family and friends, we did not intend to go public. As Minecraft blew up in early 2010-2011 there was an increased demand for servers and a place to play, as this was never offered by Mojang officially. We opened our doors early 2011 and our player numbers built rapidly, our small server couldn’t handle the pressure and eventually shut off. In order to resume service, we had to upgrade and further build on our server stability. Early on, the server was funded entirely by myself (Fatnoob), and eventually as time went on became increasingly difficult to continue expanding. Luckily, a few members of our community asked if there was any way of supporting us - Thus, we introduced donating for gifts and perks, In return this helped our server grow larger and stay alive a month longer. Without donations our server would have never lived, we would not have been able to increase our capacity, created better experiences for our players and protect ourselves from deadly ddos attacks.

All of these services we provide to make Minecraft and our server community a more exciting and enjoyable place cost money. If such servers were completely free to run we wouldn't need to accept donations, as our intentions have never been to profit from our servers. As a result of the costs and growth which has naturally progressed over these years we have been able to support our sever expenses and development since 2011 thanks to our wonderful community. In 2012 the Cloudsquid network was able to open another server, built to provide a whole new level of new exciting gameplay as a result of bukkit, developers, financial backing and Minecraft as a platform. Without all of these things combined there wouldn't be such servers out there today, as these are above and beyond the typical survival version Minecraft was released on.

What do the changes mean for us?

Officially, nothing has changed. What has been going on in the server community has always been breaking the EULA, except Mojang had always turned their back to the issues. This was to their benefit, as they could clearly see how good server communities like ours were created to express love for their game and to continue providing the Minecraft community with good, clean experiences beyond their box standard game.

As the server community has developed more and more servers have been created, many die early and others are massively successful thanks to youtuber backing. The server scene stopped being an innocent platform to provide multiplayer for Minecraft and begun turning into a whole secondmarket, some servers have taken advantage of this and as a result charge ridiculous prices all with the intentions to profit, they care very little about their communities and are simply a force to make money.

Unfortunately, Mojang has been receiving a heap of help requests in regards to such large donations from these servers and thus have decided to take action. Instead of completely denying all ways for servers to generate funds, Mojang has supplied the community ‘LEGAL’ ways to fund their server, which is a step forward compared to the previous EULA. The downside for us, is that as a result of these ‘Bad Eggs’ it could possibly spark EULA Enforcement for all. If after August 1st Mojang do not decide to enforce their EULA and rather target those who are causing bad in the community, these changes may have a lot less damaging effect, but this is something we simply will watch the development of. As quoted by Notch in his latest blog: “We are not enforcing the EULA any more then before, in fact we just made it more open then it ever was in the past.” - He informs the server community that there will not be enforcement, which means the stance on the shop is no different than it was before everything kicked off, apart from their are legal securities now. These changes are clearly a warning directed at the servers that are damaging the community, not ours.

Mojang has set a date August 1st which will be the deadline to make changes according to the EULA update. All donations current, old and future until this date WILL NOT LOSE THEIR RANK OR PACKAGE THEY PAID FOR. After August first we will comply with the requested changes and make adjustments to our shop.

Will enforcement on EULA effect the servers?

Yes, massively. We heavily rely on incentive driven donations to help support our growing and expanding network, players simply do not donate for nothing in return. As quoted before by server communities “How many out of the millions using Wikipedia have donated to support them for free?” A very small percentage. The reason for lack of donations is that there is no reward incentive, people don't realise what they've lost until it's gone. We can apply this to our position, if the changes are enforced supporting and maintaining the servers is going to be difficult financially. However, like all good and bad changes over the years we are prepared to ride this wave and overcome a difficult time in the Minecraft community, it would be deeply saddening to call an end to our servers we have been running for almost 4 years now.

What we are against

Mojang has suggested offering entry fees for servers, this is something we are massively against. Placing a payment wall forced entry could quite possibly be the worst outcome for us, it is the sole reason we refuse to run heavily modded servers; nobody should have to download or pay anything to gain access to a Minecraft server, beyond the original client. Donations to us will remain purely optional and we will remain an open server until the day we close.

Advertising inside the server and paid promotions - this is another suggestion by Mojang. We will not have advertisements or sponsorships plastered all over the server, when you login to our server they are a place to hang out and play Minecraft not to be pestered by ads clogging up the chat.

Worst case

The worse case for us would be having to make cut backs on our services and development, this includes downgrading or removing voice comms, downgrading our hardware, removing or cutting back ddos protection and slowing development of new projects like our games hub. All of which cost money to keep running, with the changes to donating we simply may not be able to continue running these added bonuses and benefits.

Long term

We hope in the long term we can keep running and maintaining our servers, as we find this highly enjoyable and motivating. If the changes are enforced you can expect many of the smaller communities to die fast and larger networks having huge cutbacks which bottom line affects your game play within those servers. We hope Mojang can move forward from this and give servers more leeway as we provide the community frequent updates, entertainment and joy on their beautiful game which overall increases sales directly to their game; Minecraft.

As of writing this it is not August first, which means further changes could be made or direction based on new information, we want everyone to remain calm and continuing enjoying our services and we'll try our very best to avoid any distributions to your game time.

Thank you all for your love and support over the past 4 years,

Cloudsquid.net team,

P.S - I'm back from a week vacation, hope you are all doing well and enjoying your summer. Some fun events coming soon

I don't really know or understand the legal mumbojumbo but ok.

Finally I found a server I really like and now this happens. I guess the question I should be asking is "what can I do to help in some way?" Donations are a way of keep a good thing around, in a world where everything is about money.  Unfortunately not everyone has the ability to donate, even if they truely want to.I hope all goes well, and I plan on riding this server till the cows come home. I wonder if there was a way to get spondsered.  I would not mind dealing with a couple adds every now and then if it means I can keep my home in Noobstown. My opinion may not be sound but my intentions to protect my (server) home are.

The two biggest changes are ones I really agree with: You can't buy in game money with real money and you can buy special abilities not available to ordinary users.

Yes, I'm being a hypocrite, I've paid for a VIP account and I have bought noobs, but in either case it was because the VIP account abilities are very useful and at the time I bought the noobs, I wasn't making very many and I'm not really into massive farming or mining operations.

But that's the problem. Those who can afford the perks, will have an advantage over those that can't afford them. (Or refuse to spend any money on a "free game".)

I've played supposedly free games that the only way to "win" was to spend money on perks and in game cash. It was nearly impossible to win if you didn't buy that in game cash.

And that's the problem, Minecraft isn't about "winning" it's about having fun making stuff and digging holes. :-)

So for the future, I think having a pledge drive to raise funds is a great idea. The cost of running a server is a known cost for the most part, so asking for donations with goals that unlock different VIP abilities for everyone for the duration of the pledge drive and a week afterwards would be a good carrot.

Also, players should gain VIP abilities based on in game achievements. Win that duel with a skeleton? Get a bonus to your archery ability and unlock a special ability.

And yes, if you're going to grandfather us VIPs in, then existing users should get special upgrades based on their existing achievements.

Well, these are my thoughts on the matter, I await to see how our admins decide to address this change.

i think that a couple of ads here and there won't be all that bad as long as they are creative or comical.
as long as my favorite server is still running, i will watch any ad you throw at me.