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Minefold Launches Minecraft Game Hosting Service

Posted by Soulskill on from the still-waiting-on-minceraft-hosting dept.

itwbennett writes "If you drew the short straw among your Minecraft-playing friends and ended up running the game server, this news is for you. A YCombinator-funded startup called Minefold will handle all the server admin tasks for just $5 a month. 'Minefold isn't the first firm to offer servers dedicated to game hosting (see for example gameservers.com) but as far as I know they're the first to structure things so each player pays his own way,' writes Peter Smith. 'In other words, if I want to set up a Call of Duty 4 server at Gameservers I can, but it'll cost me (for example) $15.95/month for a 16 player server. So I pay Gameservers and I get my buddies all to send me a few bucks to defray the costs. It's a messy system. Using the Minefold model, everyone would pay $5/month to play wherever they want. On my server today, on someone else's server tomorrow and on their own server the day after that.'"

20 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. ASTROTURF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is the worst astroturf I have seen on Slashdot in years.
    Boo!

    1. Re:ASTROTURF by Winckle · · Score: 2

      Minecraft can be pretty grouchy on the RAM it uses.

    2. Re:ASTROTURF by Canazza · · Score: 2

      It also has shit netcode

      They've recently hired the guys who made the Bukkit server plugin to work on the multiplayer, so here's hoping it gets alot better quickly.

      --
      It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
    3. Re:ASTROTURF by omglolbah · · Score: 2

      A medium sized server eats 2 gigs of ram easy... if you have a lot of players expect anywhere from 2 to 6 gigs of ram depending on the size of the world.

      Network-wise it eats bandwidth like a fat kid on cake.. (I love mah cake!)

      It is extremely sensitive to latency.. to the point that anything above 100ms makes it extremely dangerous to fight mobs like creepers as they will have blown up by the time you have hit it a second time with your sword.. So in MP it is almost always a 'bow and arrow' thing unless you have a local server.

      When placing blocks any latency will cause you to "fall" through the block you placed if you are above it, until the game catches up and you're on top of the block again... Quite scary at times when building far up ;)

    4. Re:ASTROTURF by omglolbah · · Score: 2

      256 types of blocks (unless it is an 'anvil' map which has a 4096 limit of block-types).

      The world is segmented into chunks 16x16x256 blocks which are grouped into "region" files.
      They are stored zipped but seems to be stored in raw structures when running the game.

      Each block does not only have a type, but a damage/data value. There is probably also quite a bit of overhead...

      The game is overall lacking from optimization and just 'work' on getting things streamlined only a tiny bit better.
      Focus seems to be on new features and not stability or optimization so we'll see how that evolves.

    5. Re:ASTROTURF by Teancum · · Score: 2

      I'll agree that Minecraft does need a whole bunch of optimization for multiplayer applications.

      Two areas that kill Minecraft are the mob interactions (something true for most MMO games), but also the world generation routines that are designed primarily for a single player game but ported over to a multi-player environment. This is also the reason why mounted mobs aren't in Minecraft (especially a mounted dragon) because even a one or two player server would croak in a real hurry if you were flying and generated several new chunks of world data every second.

      Then again, who says that ordinary players ought to be able to create new world chunks simply by walking or moving around?

      The network messages are also far from optimized and is one area that could be tweaked to significantly improve both bandwidth and CPU usage.

      As for the Bukkit devs, one of the major areas of focus that they have been hired on to perform is to produce the API libraries for mods with the goal of unifying the multiplayer and solo mod APIs (or even have a formal API in the first place that makes sense). It seems that goal is sort of going to be contrary to efficient network protocols, but I might be mistaken and could even streamline the solo player version as well. Having a staff of developers rather than two guys who are just sort of slugging it through is going to be interesting. I expect to see more cleanup of the code, but fewer major feature changes... and fewer bugs on major releases.

  2. Clear Advertising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can I post advertisements here too?

  3. NOT ASTROTURF by kermyt · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A new payment model is most certainly news I am interested in hearing about. I am that guy that draws the short straw and ends up running the servers. This Is an innovative payment structure... now lets just see if it catches on.

    1. Re:NOT ASTROTURF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      astroturf you like is still astroturf. dumbass.

    2. Re:NOT ASTROTURF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      We live in a basement, so we're not sure what grass roots actually look like.

    3. Re:NOT ASTROTURF by Spykk · · Score: 2

      Except it isn't really a new payment model. Paying a monthly fee to play on someone else's server has been around since the first pay to play MUDs.

    4. Re:NOT ASTROTURF by justforgetme · · Score: 2

      Confrontation just makes it worse. Ignore them and they will go away.

      The model is something that should have arrived a long time ago actually. I can see this becoming quite popular for one only reason: it's a modest subscription for the ability to play many multiplayer games (all games they support and you have off course). It is convenience and service in a cheap(ish) packet.

      --
      -- no sig today
  4. I don't see the point by flimflammer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Giant advertisement notwithstanding, this whole thing seems a bit pointless to me. First of all, I can't for the life of me find out what the individual specs are for the servers. It certainly matters for Minecraft. Second, you can get a decent enough server for $6-8 a month. Good enough to cover 1-5 players, with the details of the hosting plan plainly laid out before you.

    They only support the stock server which in many ways is inefficient and frustrating. They do mention their intent to support bucket, but that's not available now.

    If the prices were tweaked and they elaborated a little more on the kind of hardware they're offering you for your server, I think this could be an interesting addition to the many many companies already offering minecraft hosting. But right now it just does not seem to interest me.

    1. Re:I don't see the point by omglolbah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A server without bukkit is mostly useless for anything but 100% trusted players... Which there are few...

      Being able to control griefing and do rollbacks alone is a critical feature of bukkit that NEEDS to be there for a pay server..

  5. I died a little inside reading the post by Turnerj · · Score: 2

    I like my advertising subtle.

  6. Doesn't add up. by GuruBuckaroo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So let me get this straight: I can pay gameservers.com $14.95 for a 16-player server, or my group can pay a total of $80 to Minefold for the same thing. This is what passes for innovative these days?

    --
    Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
    1. Re:Doesn't add up. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      But you get a server FOR minecraft...
      Those other hosting services host all kinds of stuff. It's not for minecraft only. Minecraft only services are way better than anything else when it comes to the awesomeness that is minecraft. You won't want to use some generic hosting for minecraft. It's just wrong to do so.. You need a minecraft server and a minecraft pc and a minecraft chair and a minecraft tablet and a minecraft house! It's meta! You simply must buy minecraft only hosting services or you're doing it WRONG!

      (They built a service to cater to the better idiot that got built. It's genius. It's going to rake in the cash. You watch. Wish i'd thought of it. Maybe i'll start selling the minecraft chair. )

    2. Re:Doesn't add up. by osu-neko · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So let me get this straight: I can pay gameservers.com $14.95 for a 16-player server, or my group can pay a total of $80 to Minefold for the same thing. This is what passes for innovative these days?

      If you and your friends have several different servers (more likely when they expand this to include more titles), it doesn't take long for this to actually be cheaper.

      --
      "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
    3. Re:Doesn't add up. by Anrego · · Score: 2

      Funny thing is, without support for popular plugins, it's not even a good minecraft host!

      Unless you are playing with a circle of 100% trusted friends (and even then, being able to do a rollback when someone makes a mistake is good) .. this is going to be mostly useless (in addition to being an insane ripoff).

    4. Re:Doesn't add up. by elsurexiste · · Score: 2

      This. Somehow, WoW had a similar arrangement: you paid for whichever server you were running and you played with your friends. Yet, this is innovative?

      --
      I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!