Hi Galactic Survivalists,
Today, we want to talk about a topic that is already controversially discussed in the community: Server-Monetarization aka Perks and Donation-Bundles, which are sold by a few server owners.
We know that renting a server from a company or hosting a server on your own means paying fees and having to take care of anything related 24/7 – without being paid. Because of that we are OK if you charge a standard fee from players using your servers and if you are accepting donations.
We don’t and we won’t limit you artificially in your very personal idea on how to keep your server community happy and how you want to fund your server. That’s what makes the difference between just having standard servers available and having a great multiplayer community with lots of virtual universes to play in!
But we also want to make sure that everyone in our growing community is sharing the same attitude and having the same understanding of what is possible and what not, concerning selling stuff as a so called “3rd Party”- and the resulting liabilities.
For this, we have set up three simple rules that all server owners have to follow:
1. CHANGE WHAT YOU WANT
You are allowed to change, remove, enable or disable any gameplay element or feature in any way that fits you or your team’s idea on how your server world should work for your players. This applies to all features, blocks, options, settings that are in the game by default.
2. BUT DON’T RESELL REMOVED FEATURES
You are NOT allowed to sell such removed or disabled gameplay elements, etc. back to a paying part of your server community.
3. HAVE A DISCLAIMER
If you modify the game in any way and sell perks, timesavers or bundles, you need to make a clear statement about who you are and that you are not associated with Eleon Game Studios. This is necessary to avoid misconceptions about whom to contact, who is running the server and who is selling the stuff and is receiving funds.
Please add such a disclaimer to your web / store page and in blog posts in which you are referring to your store or paid bundles related to the game.
CLOSING STATEMENT: These rules are in place as of today. They may change in the course of the development due to new or changed features.
PLEASE NOTE: Even when selling digital stuff or when accepting donations, these transactions need to apply to your locale and national business rules, tax and other legal stuff. In your own interest, make sure your store applies to these rules and profits are detailed in whatever forms and formalities you are facing locally.
About Timesavers, Perks or Paid Bundles in general:
These are very common in the games industry nowadays, ranging from upcoming giants like Star Citizen to blockbusters like Assassin’s Creed - and we are OK with it from a business point of view. But from the gameplay point of view no player should have any disadvantages if he is not willing to pay for any offered bundle or whatever.
If your server community does not like what you are offering or in which way, you may need to discuss this with your players – as they are always free to join any other server with only a few clicks.
With the three rules above, we hope to make sure, that our multiplayer community and all server owners have a clear understanding of how they can act – which is in everyone’s interest.
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Alpha 2.1 Teaser
Last but not least, we would like to share with you a short teaser for the upcoming Alpha 2.1 release:
https://youtu.be/Q6ByuzKnTqE
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Yours,
Empyrion Dev Team