Laurence M
Endercraft is selling mod items. Not cool. They are selling mod items in Crash Landing...um, how about you fuck right off?
I put 6 months into that damn pack to get the survival balance correct...and then to turn around and wreck any semblance of that, to pretty much use the very difficulty I built into the pack to entice people to spend money like that? No, No, no, and fuck you.
Oh look, they are advertising in the Technic forums. And I have moderator status.
Locked the thread. Pay 2 play is not permitted via forum rules. now, I need a drink. Or a few drinks. Enough to calm down enough to figure out what to do with these guys. Not happy.
Stephen Baynham
Okay, hi
Pay to play in the context of our forums means having to play before connecting.
It's not our responsibility to enforce mojang's eula for them and in fact, we don't just lack a legal requirement to do so, we lack the legal authority to do so.
We do have a right to prevent them from putting crash landing stuff on our site, which we do.  They only advertise their ATB stuff
Laurence M
Yeah well, advertising a server that is violating Mojang's EULA needs not to happen.
Stephen Baynham
Why?
No one's been able to explain why it's our (the community's) job to save microsoft.
Laurence M
Because we really do not want to be encouraging this.
Stephen Baynham
Why not
I'm sure microsoft is capable of taking care of it on their own.
They've got, just, an awful lot of lawyers.
I think it's safe to say that if this server's operating it's because microsoft doesn't think it's worth stopping them.  So I'm not going to put more effort into their EULA than they do.
Laurence M
He is taking work I spent 6 months working on and is using that effort to make money. If you can't see why that isn't cool, IK can't help you.
Stephen Baynham
I don't think that's cool, but I don't think it's necesary to say eula, eula, eula to make that point.
Laurence M
Well, ok then. We should not be encouraging someone who is using other peoples work to make money, ok?
Especially when a lot of those people involved object rather strenously.
Stephen Baynham
If they were doing it on our site, I'd shut them down.  But I'm not going to shut them down on our site for doing things that are allowed on our site because they did other things elsewhere.
Laurence M
Again, we should not be encouraging or condoning this behavior. Ignoring the legal side of things this is very shitty behavior
Stephen Baynham
It's especially silly because, if scorching the earth actually worked, then 90% of these guys' business wouldn't be coming from FTB packs.
Laurence M
And the very least we can do is say "No, you are not using our site to advertise yours"
Stephen Baynham
The point is this- we have terms of service and a code of conduct.  We make a deal with our users that they can use our site if they abide by those terms.  This is a violation of that.
I know it's really popular in minecraft modding to have this rule 0 that "if we don't like you, get fucked", but that's not how we've ever done things.
We have fucking JAC on here, they've DDOS'd us, and they are still allowed on the site.
Laurence M
This isn't about that. This is them using someone else work that they did for free and charging money to use it. Legal or not, that is fucking wrong.
Stephen Baynham
That's exactly what it's about.  You want to kick someone off our site despite the fact that they're using our site in ways that we've told them through are TOS are totally acceptable.  I'm saying that if he kept his garbage off the site, satan could use it.
Laurence M
Again, we should not be condoning that behavior. I'm not saying ban him from the Forums I am saying advertising those type of servers needs to not happen.
Stephen Baynham
Which types of servers?  He's not advertising the crash landing server.  If mojang or the modder or anyone else doesn't like it, they can get the server taken down and then there's no problem.  The idea that the server ad is a problem that we need to solve, especially when these guys have 6 FTB servers and one technic server, is silly.  It doesn't solve any actual problems and it violates the deal we made with our users.
If he was using someone else's name than ours to advertise, that'd be one thing, but he's not.
It's a totally tame advertisement to a server you don't like so why not just get hte server pulled, since we both know getting the ad pulled will do nothing?
Laurence M
Sigh. It isn't a case of like or not like. It is matter of morality. This guy is doing something incredibly shitty and, while it might not accomplish much the very least you can do is say "Hey, you're doing something wrong, until you fix your stupid you can't advertise here, period"
Stephen Baynham
Except that the result of pulling everything except amateur servers from our site is that users who come to our site to find servers will instead of getting servers from a somewhat curated server forum where servers are ordered by activity, players will instead have to follow the servers into a garbage-ad hellscape where servers are ordered by who paid the most.
Laurence M
Uh, quite a lot of big servers get by *without* pulling this bullshit.
Stephen Baynham
No, a few of the largest servers.
And that's it.
I'm aware of like 5 modded servers that don't sell any items or blocks.
And aren't like you know, "I have a day job so I have a 20 person server that I don't really advertise."
Laurence M
So you're condoning this behavior? Because that is what you're doing by letting them advertise? This is not ok.
I am not ok with this.
Stephen Baynham
Just from the pragmatic point of, what's better for users, this is better for users.  What would probably be best for users would be if the servers didn't exist or had a way to go legit.  But Microsoft won't do anything about them, so our responsibility is to provide a safe place for oursers to learn about servers, not to be sin-eaters for the entire minecraft community.
This massive thing cannot be JUST our responsibility.
Laurence M
I'm not saying it should be. If you haven't noticed us content creators are beginning to fight back as best we can. We NEED help, and, ya know, you could help us out a bit.
Stephen Baynham
If you're fighting, then get the server taken down.  You can do that, I can't.
Then there's no ad.
If your method of fighting is to tell us to do it that's not really fighting.
Laurence M
If he can't get advertising anywhere, he can't get users....and there is no server
Stephen Baynham
Dude have you SEEN server lists?
Like have you seen them.
Because those things are big money and they don't get that cash because they're attached to a big fancy launcher, they get them because users SEARCH FOR THEM.
Users want them.
And they're gross and they get malware on your machine if your flash is out of date for a day, and they also take cash from the servers to prominently list the guys with the mot money.
Like that is the alternative to us.
And tha'ts not being driven by the servers, that's being driven by the users.
So the idea that servers are gonna wake up one day and have no ads somehow is riidculous.
Laurence M
Ads are fine. There are ways to monetize your server that don't use other people's content.
Stephen Baynham
No, servers don't make money off server lists, they pay money to server lists.
To be listed more prominently.
The point is that shitty servers will always have an advertising platform because there is a strong demand from the people they're advertising to.  Modders could get the server pulled, but that's kinda of hard and demanding things from us is easy because we're pretty easy to get ahold of, so that's what happens instead.
But they do have an option other than us doing whatever is asked of us, and it'd work better too.
So naw we're not gonna hurt our users over a symbolic gesture.
Laurence M
Sigh. Really? So, you are going to side with the people who are using my work to pressure and abuse people to pay money? This is really your stance?
Be very careful of what you say next....
Stephen Baynham
Are you really pulling a "with us or against us" thing?
Like if I don't pull whatever ads I must be with the guys who DDOS'd us, etc.?
That's some bullshit.  Please consider the possibility that there are more sides to this issue than your feelings and the people hurting them.
Laurence M
It isn't about feelings. People are making money off something I made for free. That is morally bankrupt at the very least and legally questionable. You need to grow a fucking backbone is what you gotta do.
Stephen Baynham
People are making money off something we made for free.  Then we started making money off it.  Then you started making money off it.  That's the nature of this shit, cottage industries spring up around everything that even sort of happens.  Here is our priorities:  1.  IRS, 2. Google, 3.  Our users, 4. Everyone else.  And 1 & 2 are only where they are because they'll fucking end us if we cross them.  If we're boiling shit down into overly simplified versions of what we believe, it sounds like you're saying "Yeah but fuck your users, what about me/the modders/the EULA."  And that shit does not computer because I stopped reading after "fuck your users".
Laurence M
Sigh. There is a difference from where your money is coming from and where shit heads like this are getting their money. You guys aren't getting money directly from the users in exchange for access to mod stuff. People click ads, or donate, or whatever. They can, if they like, not do any of that and get all the content you provide for free. These shit heads are saying "You don't pay us money, you don't get this stuff." If you can't understand why the former is acceptable and the latter is not, I cannot help you
Stephen Baynham
Right, but people have done things like
Buy popular pakcs on the platform
Pay popular packs to include their servers int he default server list
And probably more configurations of money + our technology than I care to think of
The point is that we don't sweat it because we're a barnacle on mojang and they're a barnacle on us, it's the circle of life.
And yeah a lot of those guys are making more money than us.
by a lot
JAC?  Guys who DDOS'd us?  Made us a pretty substantial offer.
We didn't take it, but the point is that they've made more money off us than we ever will.
It's not about whether they deserve it or whatever, it's about whether people benefit from the decisions we make.  Ultimately, JAC's just a distraction.  We fixed the problem that let them DDOS us and proceeded to ignore them