Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
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Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
Hi,
Here is an interesting one for ya all. I have learned today that a particular server cluster actually charges money for hosting zandronum. For example, we are going to call this guy "Jeff". Jeff pays this particular server host $120 a year to just host ONE zandronum server, that probably does not use much ram at all.
So i figured id ask everyone here to tell us, is this ok?
In my opinion, this is very dirty business and possibly a scam since well, other server hosts offer this stuff for free.
I would not mind also if a dev can chime in to let us know if they are also violating anything on the licenses zandronum uses.
Feel free to discuss this as, this thread exists because of this but please for the love of god, keep it civil.
EDIT: While other hosts do it for free is a pretty bad argument, this one is not: Its price gouging..... alot
Here is an interesting one for ya all. I have learned today that a particular server cluster actually charges money for hosting zandronum. For example, we are going to call this guy "Jeff". Jeff pays this particular server host $120 a year to just host ONE zandronum server, that probably does not use much ram at all.
So i figured id ask everyone here to tell us, is this ok?
In my opinion, this is very dirty business and possibly a scam since well, other server hosts offer this stuff for free.
I would not mind also if a dev can chime in to let us know if they are also violating anything on the licenses zandronum uses.
Feel free to discuss this as, this thread exists because of this but please for the love of god, keep it civil.
EDIT: While other hosts do it for free is a pretty bad argument, this one is not: Its price gouging..... alot
Last edited by mifu on Sat Mar 10, 2018 6:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
I personally Disagree, Nobody should have to pay for "ZANDRONUM" hosting. They should be paying for KVM Sessions in which they have access to a vps in which they share resources and they can do w/e they want as long as they are not using too many resources and pay monthly/semi-anually/yearly for that. You should not have to charge for a single Zandronum server. Zandronum servers for the most part do not use nearly enough ram or cpu to warrant any sort of payment. 120$ is an insane price to pay even yearly for Zandronum.
Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
lol Mifu, just tell us who it is
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
For this specific *cough* instance, it's completely disgusting what they're doing. It's a form of exploitation if what's been said is true. $120 is even more than some of the more popular clusters.
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
https://www.patreon.com/tspg
Its worth mentioning VGP is doing the same thing, asking for donations to pay for infrastructure. I am sure running a bare-metal dedicated machine is expensive... I would never fault TSPG for asking for support to keep things going. We are not as advanced as TSPG and script everything by hand. We are not looking to make a profit, only support those with less free time and technical skill who wish to run a game; for fun and for the love of GNU/Linux. And not just Zandronum, anything classic FPS. Feel free to contact me or miles directly if you have any questions.
Its worth mentioning VGP is doing the same thing, asking for donations to pay for infrastructure. I am sure running a bare-metal dedicated machine is expensive... I would never fault TSPG for asking for support to keep things going. We are not as advanced as TSPG and script everything by hand. We are not looking to make a profit, only support those with less free time and technical skill who wish to run a game; for fun and for the love of GNU/Linux. And not just Zandronum, anything classic FPS. Feel free to contact me or miles directly if you have any questions.
Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
yeah you can cut the bullshit right there. you don't get to use an optional patreon that barely has $32 per month to justify what the OP is talking about. i don't know who you're trying to represent but you're on thin ice for this.
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
Looks like your going to find out now.
Thanks for replying. I do notice that you do have a patreon which is cool. But i need to be frank, the report I had received about this is that VGP is forcing atleast one person to pay $120 a year. For a patreon, its assumed that its optional for people to send money. The report I got however is alot different. You have a person forced to pay $120 a year currently to host 1 server.Mluminoth wrote: ↑Sun Mar 11, 2018 7:17 amhttps://www.patreon.com/tspg
Its worth mentioning VGP is doing the same thing, asking for donations to pay for infrastructure. I am sure running a bare-metal dedicated machine is expensive... I would never fault TSPG for asking for support to keep things going. We are not as advanced as TSPG and script everything by hand. We are not looking to make a profit, only support those with less free time and technical skill who wish to run a game; for fun and for the love of GNU/Linux. And not just Zandronum, anything classic FPS. Feel free to contact me or miles directly if you have any questions.
So, it would be cool to get a explanation, perhaps find out whats happening so we can get to the bottom of this.
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
You can buy a $120 a year linode powerful enough to run a cluster of 10-15 servers on all 3 multiplayer Doom ports, just saying
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
This is a reasonable idea in theory, and something I could definately understand, as bills need to be paid for this, and that money has to come from somewhere. But as with every reasonable idea, someone has to EA it up and go far beyond reasonable. $120 at a locked subscription rate (I'm assuming) for a single yearly server on a relatively primitave game is a tad outrageous to me.
Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
what i propose is that any servers wishing to directly charge people for their services should meet first with zandronum staff so as to be vetted first before being allowed to host a commercial cluster on our master server. i was a co-founder for a professional gameserver hosting company that operated a pretty significant list of games (especially half-life and early source) and while doing this i encountered a ton of comments from customers as well as seeing with my own eyes how many shady people charge money for gameserver hosting and how badly it's handled. at best you'll see companies that are actually just a couple friends with terrible service and bad downtimes. at worst you'll see companies that directly attempt to scam their users or involve harmful content (like custom software that infects its users with adware).
while we may not have had to deal with these companies yet, i think this is a good time to step on the brakes and consider how we as a community would want this handled if this situation was indeed worst case scenario. before the pitchforks come out we don't know all the details. but that's one of the reasons i'm bringing this up; we would love to know all the details going forward when a cluster wants to charge its users money. this is relatively unprecedented as people in the past have either hosted clusters through professional server hosts in which they manage zandronum servers directly, or they befriend those that have these services and donate to help offload the financial burden.
we need to have policies in place that safeguard our community from bad actors. it does reflect badly, collectively, on us as a community to allow said bad actors to act with impunity. and at the end of the day the master server is a privilege; its not a right.
while we may not have had to deal with these companies yet, i think this is a good time to step on the brakes and consider how we as a community would want this handled if this situation was indeed worst case scenario. before the pitchforks come out we don't know all the details. but that's one of the reasons i'm bringing this up; we would love to know all the details going forward when a cluster wants to charge its users money. this is relatively unprecedented as people in the past have either hosted clusters through professional server hosts in which they manage zandronum servers directly, or they befriend those that have these services and donate to help offload the financial burden.
we need to have policies in place that safeguard our community from bad actors. it does reflect badly, collectively, on us as a community to allow said bad actors to act with impunity. and at the end of the day the master server is a privilege; its not a right.
Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
Unless you're hosting MM8BDM, you could run a lot more than 45 Doom servers on 32 GB of RAM.
(Source: we're hosting 133 Zan servers, a Minecraft server, Terraria, a couple Source engine servers - 39GB of RAM used.)
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
Oh wow VGP being duplicitous and scummy? Who would have seen that coming, but I suspect Miles is not above doing something like this really. Nothing but dog fuckers over there anyway
I think whoever pays into it deserved getting fleece by Ferengi like practices to begin with, because anyone familiar with doom knows there's MANY free options available to them. Shit you can host a server from your home connection if for no other alternative.
I think whoever pays into it deserved getting fleece by Ferengi like practices to begin with, because anyone familiar with doom knows there's MANY free options available to them. Shit you can host a server from your home connection if for no other alternative.
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
I agree if someone were to know about the free services, but the person doing this is taking advantage of the payer's lack of knowledge of modern hosting solutions that are free. Pretty sure it's a form of extortion, too.Mobius wrote: ↑Sun Mar 11, 2018 7:13 pmI think whoever pays into it deserved getting fleece by Ferengi like practices to begin with, because anyone familiar with doom knows there's MANY free options available to them. Shit you can host a server from your home connection if for no other alternative.
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
I'm curious as to how licensing handles a situation like this. What's the legal ramifications of such a service if anyone with real knowledge can answer my inquiry.
Not because of the moral implications. I am just concerned about Doom being open just enough for mods but not open enough for profit.
Not because of the moral implications. I am just concerned about Doom being open just enough for mods but not open enough for profit.
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
To answer the question in the OP, Yes, you should be able to have somebody pay you for hosting. How much? I think it completely depends on context, and thus I don't like the idea of settling on any sort of explicit monetary amount.
I think that in this particular instance, preying on somebody's ignorance is pretty scummy. If this is a server that could have been hosted on TSPG, and the mark simply wasn't aware about his alternatives, that's awful. However, I can certainly see a situation where somebody might pay somebody else to host a server. Perhaps they prefer a specific server cluster to TSPG on a location basis. Perhaps the other cluster simply performs better and has less lag. Perhaps they want to run a set of WAD's or PK3's that TSPG has banned. Perhaps they don't want to maintain the server, and just want to pay somebody else for the trouble. Those are reasonable things.
However, you have to price it accordingly. You are not GameServers, and can't reasonably charge GameServers prices unless you have GameServers infrastructure, support, and guarantees of service. Also, it wasn't clear if this is what was happening, but taking $120 for an entire year's worth of service of a single server up front is also kind of ridiculous. A lot can change in a year, and even a server that's popular right now could be sitting there, abandoned and with no players, a year from now.
I think that in this particular instance, preying on somebody's ignorance is pretty scummy. If this is a server that could have been hosted on TSPG, and the mark simply wasn't aware about his alternatives, that's awful. However, I can certainly see a situation where somebody might pay somebody else to host a server. Perhaps they prefer a specific server cluster to TSPG on a location basis. Perhaps the other cluster simply performs better and has less lag. Perhaps they want to run a set of WAD's or PK3's that TSPG has banned. Perhaps they don't want to maintain the server, and just want to pay somebody else for the trouble. Those are reasonable things.
However, you have to price it accordingly. You are not GameServers, and can't reasonably charge GameServers prices unless you have GameServers infrastructure, support, and guarantees of service. Also, it wasn't clear if this is what was happening, but taking $120 for an entire year's worth of service of a single server up front is also kind of ridiculous. A lot can change in a year, and even a server that's popular right now could be sitting there, abandoned and with no players, a year from now.
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
from my own experience i know that there's nothing illegal about paid servers for games that offer dedicated server solutions that do not require special authservs for connecting and cd key validation. it wouldn't be illegal for zandronum simply because the person is not paying for a zandronum service. even if it was a policy its not a legally enforceable one, because the customer is paying for the server equipment and service, not anything relating to zandronum itself.Mobius wrote: ↑Sun Mar 11, 2018 7:36 pmI'm curious as to how licensing handles a situation like this. What's the legal ramifications of such a service if anyone with real knowledge can answer my inquiry.
Not because of the moral implications. I am just concerned about Doom being open just enough for mods but not open enough for profit.
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
Alrighty then at least it can be narrowed down to scummy price gouging.nax wrote: ↑Sun Mar 11, 2018 9:11 pmfrom my own experience i know that there's nothing illegal about paid servers for games that offer dedicated server solutions that do not require special authservs for connecting and cd key validation. it wouldn't be illegal for zandronum simply because the person is not paying for a zandronum service. even if it was a policy its not a legally enforceable one, because the customer is paying for the server equipment and service, not anything relating to zandronum itself.Mobius wrote: ↑Sun Mar 11, 2018 7:36 pmI'm curious as to how licensing handles a situation like this. What's the legal ramifications of such a service if anyone with real knowledge can answer my inquiry.
Not because of the moral implications. I am just concerned about Doom being open just enough for mods but not open enough for profit.
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Re: Should server hosts charge for zandronum hosting?
I have servers through VGP, and VGP Miles has been nothing but awesome to deal with. He assists with a lot of setup, config, and keeping it all running for me. I know very little about game server stuff so anytime I have a question, change, or issue, I just let him know and he's on it usually within a few moments. He's helped me learn quite a bit of stuff for RCON, Linux zandro commands, etc, too.
VGP also hosts servers on east and west coast, and he gave me the option, so my DOOM FBG servers I have an average of like 30ping or so off the east coast where I'm close to.
We worked out a very nominal monthly fee for these services and support, and as they are providing the backend, infrastructure, isp, servers, and realtime support for any little thing that I might need on the fly... I couldn't be happier. Definetley do not feel like I'm needlessly spending or getting ripped off. Will also mention I'm very busy and don't have much time to mess with all of it myself. The little freetime I do have these days, I just want to jump on the server and play with other folks.
just my 2 cents. Some of us don't mind contributing for such a level of service.
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VGP also hosts servers on east and west coast, and he gave me the option, so my DOOM FBG servers I have an average of like 30ping or so off the east coast where I'm close to.
We worked out a very nominal monthly fee for these services and support, and as they are providing the backend, infrastructure, isp, servers, and realtime support for any little thing that I might need on the fly... I couldn't be happier. Definetley do not feel like I'm needlessly spending or getting ripped off. Will also mention I'm very busy and don't have much time to mess with all of it myself. The little freetime I do have these days, I just want to jump on the server and play with other folks.
just my 2 cents. Some of us don't mind contributing for such a level of service.
-Buckshot_Strunk