Minefold Launches Minecraft Game Hosting Service

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.'"

ASTROTURF

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Clear Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I post advertisements here too?

NOT ASTROTURF

[kermyt]

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.

Re:NOT ASTROTURF

[ProgrammerJulia]

There are several problems with it. To begin with, no one wants to pay to play on a server he doesn't know. On top of that, if this is meant for everybody providing payments towards the server, this won't work too well because microtransactions aren't there yet. PayPal, credit cards etc will eat up tons from the transactions. Unless, of course, they make xbox360/ps3 like "wallet" and you can only top it up with like 20 dollars minimum. I still don't see the point.

Re:NOT ASTROTURF

[Anonymous Coward]

astroturf you like is still astroturf. dumbass.

I don't see the point

[flimflammer]

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.

Doesn't add up.

[GuruBuckaroo]

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?

Re:Doesn't add up.

[osu-neko]

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.

Re:I don't see the point

[omglolbah]

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..