Surge of Minecraft

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veoloo

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I have a sales rep who has told me that he knows a ton of people who want minecraft servers and want to start offering them. Has anyone else been noticing a similar phenomenon? Also, does anyone do game server hosting or just website hosting?

I've been thinking about doing some game server hosting if there is demand for it.
 
veoloo said:
I have a sales rep who has told me that he knows a ton of people who want minecraft servers and want to start offering them. Has anyone else been noticing a similar phenomenon? Also, does anyone do game server hosting or just website hosting?

I've been thinking about doing some game server hosting if there is demand for it.
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I've heard it's becoming incredibly profitable with all of the Minecraft junkies out there - but it tends to be a somewhat seasonal business. A lot of people will be leasing Minecraft servers during the summer while school is out, but you'll see your numbers make a sharp drop once schools return to normal session. I've also heard the Minecraft server daemon uses a LOT of resources, despite the 8-bit-like graphics the game sports (although I'm told they're not actually rendered in 8-bit, they're just specifically designed to look that way).
 
Yeah. Since it's such a seasonal business, I think it would make the most sense to wait to open it up until next summer.

It's quite interesting that it's so seasonal, though. I wonder if it is the same way for other game servers.

Thanks for the warning on the resources... I guess we'd have to get a monster machine out to start charging for Minecraft, but there's always next year!
 
Minecraft certainly is an interesting game, especially with the nature and size of the community which drives the online nature of the game forward. This does provide a rather interesting hosting opportunity however with the lack of information in regards to requirements it can hold somewhat of a risk.

Although the RAM and bandwidth to some extent are easy to calculate, the CPU usage can vary massively , additionally the setup solution be it VPS containers or a physical server containing only multiple Minecraft installs controlled instead by custom control panels is rather sketchy and debatable risk/area with costs involved.

Add to that the seasonal nature you have identified it is somewhat of a risk, although as the game is still in BETA (I believe?) it could allow an early means of testing the water and establishing a market presence.

Just my :twocents: after having had this presented to me also :shh:
 
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veoloo said:
It's quite interesting that it's so seasonal, though. I wonder if it is the same way for other game servers.
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It definitely is. Video games are video games, kids play them more during the summer. I do know a lot of people who play Minecraft during the year, but obviously at nights, when school is out for the day. The same goes for Call of Duty Black Ops, Portal 2, or even Winnie The Pooh's Honey-Searching Adventures: East Pittsburgh Edition (fictional).

I'm also curious about the CPU requirements, if anyone knows of some specifics, or a table based on usage.
 
We have hosted a couple of minecraft servers. People tend to use the server for only a couple of months, and this has proven not to be very profitable.

Talking only about personal experiences, Minecraft servers can be very resource hungry and often the people do not really have alot to invest so they buy out cheap servers and cry out because they are not fast enough.

Only good point: since it is a java based game it can be installed on Linux servers :)

It is to use at your own risks, but there is certainly a market for it.
 
HostRadical said:
We have hosted a couple of minecraft servers. People tend to use the server for only a couple of months, and this has proven not to be very profitable.

Talking only about personal experiences, Minecraft servers can be very resource hungry and often the people do not really have alot to invest so they buy out cheap servers and cry out because they are not fast enough.

Only good point: since it is a java based game it can be installed on Linux servers :)

It is to use at your own risks, but there is certainly a market for it.
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You have said the issue in one line with selling this!

often the people do not really have alot to invest so they buy out cheap servers and cry out because they are not fast enough.
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It is not about the 'fast enough' I have had tons of users wan't 2GB of ram for £10 a month....then they run the CPU up like no tomorrow and the effects kill off the other users on that Node.
The loads and usage for these servers are ludicrous and anyone considering doing it should have a good setup for it.

As in powerful servers 8-16 cores, and charging a high price and set it for those servers only, because the CPU usage is a big killer to the other Node users.
They all wan't low cost servers, I would not advise selling this type of service, unless you build servers custom for the game and the usage, because it is really intense.

And it will become reality once you start allowing more than 2 of these servers on your nodes.
And the profits, I agree with the above, they wan't low cost high spec servers, there is not much profit in the budget market.

Budget VPS is a bigger killer than budget hosting, you do the maths. :smash:

IMO, they wan't a game with that amount of usage and users, then pay for it and buy a dedicated box!
 
Or move to a dedicated host with the resources to provide them.

There are alternative server versions out at present for minecraft that are non-java but unfortunately are third party.
 
Dedicated servers or Cloud servers are idealistic for gaming. Both of these solutions are usually well equipped with powerful resources, with extensive network converge to deliver the best outcome and results for the clients. The robustness of these platform is the key factor that make them idealistic for gaming servers...
 
Same here salesreps have told me a lot of people are asking about if they can use the server to run minecraft plus i see it everywhere.
 
Minecraft is getting fairly popular these days, it's important to have them get a Xen based VPS for this as it's rather Java intensive.
 
Minecraft is really popular, but the issue is that they take a lot of resources because it runs on the bloated Java platform. Would be better if it ran natively.
 
Been there done that. It's not as easy as it sounds, and it's not profitable at all.

First off, it's very CPU intensive. You literally have to have the perfect combination of RAM and CPU (like an X5650 w/ 24GB of ram) in order to handle at least a few clients. On that configuration your looking at about 20 1GB clients. However, it can be very profitable if you do it right. Simply provide a 512MB ram VPS and put the letters MC in front of it and you can easily charge $20 for it. $20 x 40 = $800 - the cost of the server and your looking at LEAST $200 profit.

However, your gonna be running into the issue with money VERY often. Many of the MC clients are kids taking their mommies credit cards out of their purses. Your gonna run into the issue of chargebacks and disputes often. However, most of them are good and don't normally cause issues.
 
astroWP said:
Been there done that. It's not as easy as it sounds, and it's not profitable at all.

First off, it's very CPU intensive. You literally have to have the perfect combination of RAM and CPU (like an X5650 w/ 24GB of ram) in order to handle at least a few clients. On that configuration your looking at about 20 1GB clients. However, it can be very profitable if you do it right. Simply provide a 512MB ram VPS and put the letters MC in front of it and you can easily charge $20 for it. $20 x 40 = $800 - the cost of the server and your looking at LEAST $200 profit.

However, your gonna be running into the issue with money VERY often. Many of the MC clients are kids taking their mommies credit cards out of their purses. Your gonna run into the issue of chargebacks and disputes often. However, most of them are good and don't normally cause issues.
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:agree:

Couldn't agree more. It's a money maker right now and we tinkered with the idea of going in but couldn't see the long term potential. After talking to a few providers who were already established in the marketplace, churn rates were off the scale and fraud was very prevelant.

I'll leave it to those who know better and can deal with the headaches. Definitely profitable right now though.
 
I am glad i've stumbled upon this thread. I was considering minecraft hosting and there are lots of useful info in this thread.

What i do not know is how public servers work. I've seen an auction at ebay of a hosting company selling admin access to a public server instead of a server instance

How is this supposed to work?
 
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