One of the first instructions on how to make a mod was -- first, download this decompiler. Wat?
Firstly, Pay-to-play (which I think you are talking about?) isn't the same as an app store for mods. I'm not sure if you play Minecraft, but there is a very diverse range of mods available, of differing qualities and all hosted on malware infested download sites. That's a real problem that deserves to be looked at.
I'd never advocate that core features of Minecraft be made pay-to-play. Instead, I'm advocating exactly the same model as we see in Android or iOS: the core system is free, and there is a simple way to get extra features onto it. Some of those maybe free, and some may not.
Secondly, the number of bytes doesn't determine the value of anything.
Thirdly, "It's dishonest, and we're the ones allowing it to happen" - who, specifically is the "we" you speak of here? I'm not doing anything to allow it to happen. (I'm not specifically doing anything to stop it, either: I'm simply not involved. I'm genuinely curious who you are talking about).
The value is in scarcity, but it's artificially scarce. It's contrived.
Seriously? On a forum dedicated to startups and development, many who like me do app and game development or lead app and game development teams; you can't figure out who I'm talking to? Seriously?
Couldn't this statement apply to gaming as a whole, too?
Is it that being stopped half way through a game and forced to pay for some gizmo to keep playing is worse than having to pay up front for the whole game? Financially there may be no difference at all, right?
(Not a gamer here)
Seriously? On a forum dedicated to startups and development, many who like me do app and game development or lead app and game development teams; you can't figure out who I'm talking to? Seriously?
HN is hardly a game focused forum. The vast majority of people on here don't have anything to do with games.
It was difficult to tell if your "We" meant "game developers" in general or was somehow more specific to Minecraft mod developers (which is what I didn't understand).
Furnishing developers with a stable, predictable API redefines the ecosystem, and creating an "app store" for mods (et cetera...) could finance it, with ongoing revenue. With Mojang's current attitude I see it being more of a "google play", especially given the ease that mods could be repackaged. Still, better than having kids pull executable code off forums.
If your server requires 1.6.4 and railcraft 1.2.3.4.5.6 well then anyone who connects requires MC 1.6.4 (free, no problem) and ALSO requires railcraft 1.2.3.4.5.6 and mods are stereotypically hosted on the scummiest pr0n-iest adfest drive by download sewers of the internet (sorry, but its true)
So say you want to host a server called "jiggy's minecraft". Simply require a mod to log into your server called jiggy-2014 for the entire year of 2014 and sell it in the in app store for "annual fee". Maybe drop the price by 1 / 12 every month thru the year. Guess the mod name you'll require in 2015, yes your mod will be called jiggy-2015 and be priced at your annual fee.
The mod might even provide something useful to the players. Maybe. This will probably kill/damage the ecosystem, maybe you'll never get to play railcraft, TE, and buildcraft on the same server ever again. That would suck. It is possible "real mods" won't be balkanized and only "subscription mods" will be balkanized.
Unless you mean just using the mod as a key to access the server in which case you'd be better off just charging for passwords to the server because otherwise you have to worry about people using pirate copies of your mod to connect.
I'm guessing the pirate effect wouldn't be an issue because the "pro mod writers" would be about 10x more excited about the topic than "pro server operators" for obvious reasons so the mod store writers wouldn't do anything too dumb... I hope. One rather trivial and easy to implement solution is MC currently has a centralized auth system for MC users that existing servers talk to (I have a server in my basement, and I am made well aware from my kids when the MC auth servers are down), and extending that a tiny bit to auth both MC and mods isn't much work other than a bit more traffic to the auth server, which they can probably afford by skimming off mod sale prices. So you can tell the server all day that you have a copy of mod name jiggy-2011, but when the server turns around and asks the existing centralized MC server if username jiggy has actually paid for mod name jiggy-2011, then ...
But since you mentioned it - Minecraft has a central authorisation system. It would be trivial to sell subscriptions to particular servers through an app store and have Mojang enforce that via the central authorisation.
That are lots and lots of benefits that could come form this, not least locking young kids down to play only on "family friendly" servers (which is pretty much impossible at the moment).
Damn.. I think this is even a better idea than my original one.
Someone on HN must know someone at Mojang? Please tell them to do this!!
But I think Mojang's focus on keeping things cheap (whether it be with the problems monetisation servers - especially now with competition from Minecraft Realms - or the lack of an official way to download and install mods) shows a slight misalignment of priorities.
They should be trying to make playing Minecraft as enjoyable as possible, not as cheap as possible.
But this has nothing to do with monetizing servers, which is the point of the post.
How does this relate to the monetization issue? Well, from a technical perspective Mojang seems to be phoning it in these days, in terms of Minecraft.
The console and mobile versions seem to be getting regular love while the core PC version has been in near-limbo for most of 2014. The plugin API, promised for well over a year (and I suspect over two) is still nowhere to be seen. Notch, creator of the game, isn't even involved with it anymore beyond the occasional "voice from the mountain" posts such as this. While I'm sure they have some talented people touching the code (e.g. Jeb and Dinnerbone), the focus and drive appear to be missing.
So when I hear about the EULA debacle and the half-assed cloud of confusion and conflicting messages coming from Mojang, I'm not surprised. I like the game, but have no idea if anybody's really steering that ship with a particular destination in mind.
Draw your own conclusions.
The 1.8 update, currently in development, has added features, but it has mostly focused on refactoring and cleaning code. For example, they recently rewrote the entire block id system, removing numerical ids and instead using namespaced identifiers. This will allow mods to coexist rather than try to claim the same block ids.
But really this could work so much better if Mojang implemented it.
Again, this is the misconception that game developers can only ever do one thing at a time. True for one or two person developers, not true for Mojang. They can afford lawyers. Developers will have nothing to do with the implementation of this policy. They are working on the modding API, just as before.
Also, this was triggered from the outside. Someone asked for clarification on the policy, Mojang looked over all the feedback and came back with this response. It’s purely reactive, not an initiative.
You are talking nonsense. Plausible sounding nonsense, but still nonsense.
Additionally, the plugin API is clearly a low priority: it was supposed to be released in 2010, then spoken about in 2012, and now the website and github page have been taken down (according to [1]). At the practical level "working on it for over 4 years with signs it might not be shipped" and "it doesn't exist" are pretty close to the same thing. But hopefully my pessimism in this is misplaced and it ships.
I haven't heard anything about Mojang implementing an app store model. Unless I've missed something it seems to me you are talking past me, since that was basically the whole thrust of my comment.
I didn't say anything at all about their statement - my post was an offtopic rant about other problems in the Mincraft ecosystem. Specific to the statement, I think it sounds good but shows misguided priorities: keep it cheap rather than fix problems.
If you could point out specifically which parts of my post you believe are nonsense that might be useful.
I think Mojang has it's priorities slightly wrong here. At the moment much of the interesting stuff in Minecraft is done via mods. But the user experience for that is pretty close to pre-Google search: browse through random forums to find links to dodgy download sites that attempt to push malware or porn to you.
Then when you find a working download, you have to install. Inevitably that means clashes with existing mods, and hours trying different versions of things that some random person on a forum claims work.
FFS, I'm a Java programmer, and I can't work out how to make this shit work most of the time.
In my view Mojang should do the following:
I'd much prefer to spend a dollar on a new mod rather than the horrible, horrible experience it is now.Rant over..