Recently, Mojang have been rumored to finally be enforcing their Minecraft server EULA, which states that Minecraft servers cannot sell items which provide an advantage over others. This policy makes perfect moral sense, but I'd like to explain why it does not make economical sense.

Pretty much since the beginning of Minecraft servers 'donating' has been a must to keep servers going, it wasn't long before people discovered that large profits can be made off of these. It is ridiculously easy to monetize Minecraft as it is so diverse, meaning people have been able to make a lot of money, and Mojang are eager to put an end to this to make it more fair to their players.

However, we feel that Mojang are going about this in the completely wrong way. Mojang announced their new EULA terms, which outlined the following:

Servers cannot sell perks on their server store which allow a 'donating' player to have an advantage over a non-'donating' player. This means no in-game currency can be sold, no items like tools can be sold, no diamonds can be sold, no power-ups can be sold, etc.

Instead of selling these items server owners can opt to sell "cosmetic" items. This includes particles, colored names, decorative armor/items, etc.

What this basically means for servers is:

Most of the income a server receieves if it is not EULA complaint will be lost. Servers cost thousands upon thousands to host, with advertisement, server managers, developers, dedicated server hosting, ddos protection, builds, community managers, etc. It is unlikely to be possible to make all of this money from selling cosmetic-only items unless you have a playerbase the size of Hypixel's.

In order to stay competitive, and in order to provide something players will actually want to purchase, servers will need to increase their development costs to make brand new cosmetic ideas. Growing development costs in the face of more than half of your income disappearing is not a viable combination.

There are ways to enforce a EULA that benefits both server owners and Minecraft players at the same time, for example:

Mojang could limit the amount that Minecraft servers can make per year.

Mojang could limit the amount of money that any individual perk costs.

Mojang could enforce policies such as anything available for purchase should also be obtainable through normal playing.

Mojang could change the way perks are advertised, such as disallowing putting items in a players inventory and then asking them to donate to 'unlock' it.

I would like to call for Mojang to have a conversation with its server owners, to agree upon a EULA that allows servers to continue to run without worrying if we can even stay online. Many servers adopted the EULA when it first came but soon had to abandon it, servers with player-bases as big as 1,000 could not afford to keep their servers going without backtracking on the EULA.

Please sign this petition if you would like Mojang to reconsider the terms of the EULA, we are not asking them to drop it, but to make the terms more workable for both sides.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/47bt3r/mojang_are_starting_to_crack_down_on_servers/