As you may know, some time ago we started the experiment with the “Official Community Servers”. During the Covid-19 lockdown, we provided some servers for free, to be run by the community. We marked them as “Official Community Servers”, to indicate that these are special, always-on servers managed by the community. After evaluating your feedback and all the statistics, we, unfortunately, came to the conclusion that it did not work out the way we planned it. We’re still working on some performance issues, and we realized that we gave a wrong impression by marking them with the word “Official”. Additionally, we had quite a few requests from passionate dedicated server hosters, saying they wanted to be part of the program as well, but with their own, private servers.
After having evaluated everything, we came to the conclusion that there is another, better way! So here is a little preview of our future plans.
In the next few weeks, we will transfer the "Official Community Server" program into a "Verified Servers" program. We have many dedicated hosters who host private, well-functioning servers at their own costs. We want to reward these people for their efforts and give them the opportunity to get a blue checkmark as well.
The current "Official Community Servers" will remain online and with the current hosters, but for the time being the blue checkmark will be removed. Alternatively, we will give everyone (who runs a server) the opportunity to apply for the “verified” checkmark. All of you, who have already invested hours in their own servers and gained experience are invited to apply for the “Verified” checkmark once the program starts over the next weeks. Of course, this also includes the servers now marked as "Official Community Servers".
We are still working on how exactly and under which conditions this will be possible. More detailed information will be available soon. So stay tuned!