Mar 5, 2025
I thought it would be best if I respond this blog post written by Fix, the owner of EarthMC. Iām going to respond to every point he made and will try to make this as clear and concise as possible.
Yes, I understand that EarthMC and other for-profit Minecraft servers need to make money to stay alive. However, the method of receiving that profit should be done ethically and have best interest of the player-base in mind. Despite the crates on this server giving only cosmetic items, these can easily be converted to gold. Assuming a player buys 15 mystery crates for ā¬19.99 and sells each crate for a below-average market rate of 40 gold per crate, this player can easily receive ā9.3 stacks of gold. This is without a doubt, a pay-to-win mechanic and makes the overall server experience worse for the player-base as it obviously gives paying players a gameplay advantage. It can also be interpreted that this mechanic breaks rule 2.10 shown here.
Now hereās my take in regards to items that are purely cosmetic. Limiting these items only to players who pay with real money is 100% fine. My reasoning is the fact that these items are cosmetic and do not affect gameplay. When the ability is given for these cosmetic items to be sold, they no longer become cosmetic and DO start to affect gameplay. It is simple as that. At first glance it does sound pretty cool that any player, paying or not, can purchase cosmetics in a free market; but the downsides of this may have not been apparently obvious and were ignored. There are other methods that can be implemented for players to receive cosmetic items without paying real money. In the context of a Minecraft server, letting crates loose shouldnāt be one of them.
All of what Iāve stated so far completely disregards the issue of gambling that I brought up in my video, which was not responded to what-so-ever in Fix's blog post. So Iām going to state this:
There is absolutely no excuse for not displaying the odds of receiving items from cosmetic crates upfront.
Players who decide to give money to EarthMC and other servers, at the very least, deserve to know the odds of what they are getting for their money. Despite these crates being cosmetic, there is no doubt that these crates are still gambling, which is paying for something that gives you an uncertain outcome. While buying cosmetic crates is obviously on a much lower level than gambling at a slot machine at an IRL casino, the principle is still the same. At the very least, the odds of each item you could receive should be shown before the purchase is made. There are many servers that have arguably much worse pay-to-win aspects than EarthMC, but still show the odds on their crates.
I have played EarthMC since 2017. I would argue that I do consider myself āa part of the server.ā A Minecraft Earth map is a really cool concept for a Minecraft server which is what led me to it in the first place and is why I have invested hundreds of hours of legitimate gameplay into EarthMC. In fact, a significant portion of EarthMCās player-base has joined because of my original video despite me putting the server in a negative light.
The reason I make duping videos is because 1. They are extremely fun for people to watch and for me to make, but 2. Effectively bring in the point to players that paying for in-game items, crates, or gambling is a poor decision. The act of duping and distributing items is a fun and effective way to bring in this point not only to players, but also to server owners in the hopes they can make their method of monetization more consumer-friendly. Directly messaging the server owner with a single complaint doesnāt work, Iāve tried that with other servers. Yes, I do make ad-revenue off of the views from my videos. Use an ad-blocker. If I donāt enjoy making YouTube videos and spreading a message, I simply wonāt do it.
In regards to my previous demands, at this point, all we ask is that you do at least something. Please donāt just do nothing. The policy changes listed below would be an ideal circumstance, but is understandable if not all of them can be implemented exactly as listed.
Something that Fix and I can probably both agree on is that none of us humans are perfect, but everyone has a chance to change the best we can. I just want to spread my opinion about sketchy server practices in an entertaining, and therefore, effective way + try to best to create some sort of change.
- SalC1
Feb 26, 2025
I'm releasing this message to the public for transparency sake. Also to prove that this is coming from SalC1 directly.
Just wanted to give you a heads up. We have lots of stashes and we're ready to give gold/other items out at a moment's notice. Therefore we would like to present you the option for us to stop before we continue to distribute more items on your server. If you vow to enact these policy changes, we will stop the distributions indefinitely.
1. Clearly display the odds of each item a player will win from a mystery crate on your web store.
2. Display a clear warning on the web store that the crates you are selling are a form of gambling and that parents must approve the purchase of all in-game items.
3. Disable the ability for crates to be transacted between players as items, thus solving the problem of players selling these crates for gold, which makes them pay-to-win items. This can be done by running a command or using a GUI to open crates.
4. Remove the ability to have double ender chest storage for paid players.
5. Expedite the patching of bugs and issues on your server that have been reported to the EarthMC Github Issue Tracker. For instance, if this specific issue was looked at and patched swiftly by simply updating this plugin to the latest version, we would've never been able to dupe on your server in the first place: https://github.com/EarthMC/Issue-Tracker/issues/1915
With great love,
- SalC1
