Minecraft has several thousand servers online at any given time, and earlier Notch expressed his feelings towards the primary way those servers stay alive - donations. He said on his Twitter, "Servers selling ("rewards for donations" is selling) items are turning the game into a F2P game. I absolutely HATE F2P, with a passion. Well, I guess hate is a bit of a strong word. I dislike it about as much as I dislike popcorn stuck between teeth." When asked how servers were supposed to make money otherwise, he responded "That's like asking how drug dealers are supposed to feed their family if you outlaw selling drugs."
Free to Play is a fairly new game model in the video game industry, popularized by games like Team Fortress 2. Free to Play means that while the base game is free, many features (sometimes ones needed to beat/finish the game) cost additional money. These are especially popular on smartphones.
This statement, coupled with Mojang game developer Erik Broes saying in a private leaked Skype chat "We'll ask nicely and then send really mean lawyers :)" has outraged the Minecraft community. It's highly unlikely Mojang will take serious action against server owners for asking for donations, but as usual the Minecraft community loves to blow things out proportion.
But why is asking for donations an issue? Minecraft's EULA (the thing that you agree to when you buy Minecraft) states that you cannot "try to make money from anything we‘ve made." While Mojang could in fact demand that servers stop asking for donations on a legal basis, it would be incredibly difficult to enforce due to the huge amount of servers. In the words of Captain Barbosa, "the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules."
Erik especially is being attacked, while stating repeatedly that his statement is his own opinion and not Mojang's as a whole. Mojang has yet to release an official statement/opinion about the EULA concerning server donations, this is simply two developers at Mojang stating their own opinions. Nothing has changed, at least for now.
Free to Play is a fairly new game model in the video game industry, popularized by games like Team Fortress 2. Free to Play means that while the base game is free, many features (sometimes ones needed to beat/finish the game) cost additional money. These are especially popular on smartphones.
This statement, coupled with Mojang game developer Erik Broes saying in a private leaked Skype chat "We'll ask nicely and then send really mean lawyers :)" has outraged the Minecraft community. It's highly unlikely Mojang will take serious action against server owners for asking for donations, but as usual the Minecraft community loves to blow things out proportion.
But why is asking for donations an issue? Minecraft's EULA (the thing that you agree to when you buy Minecraft) states that you cannot "try to make money from anything we‘ve made." While Mojang could in fact demand that servers stop asking for donations on a legal basis, it would be incredibly difficult to enforce due to the huge amount of servers. In the words of Captain Barbosa, "the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules."
Erik especially is being attacked, while stating repeatedly that his statement is his own opinion and not Mojang's as a whole. Mojang has yet to release an official statement/opinion about the EULA concerning server donations, this is simply two developers at Mojang stating their own opinions. Nothing has changed, at least for now.