Monetization and commercial use

[Bewick]

Hello,

I was searching information about the commercial use of the Onset server and found in the EULA that any commercial usage of the software to gain profit is prohibited (part 2.1 and 3(a)). Then again, later in the document it reads at 3.5(d) : "[the Host] may at no time whatsoever run the Host Server for profit or commercial purposes outside of our monetization rules https://playonset.com/monetization (...)" so that was great news for me although, the link given is dead: it redirects to an Nginx error 404 page.

Can someone advise on these monetization rules or provide a document specifying them?

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to help.

[Logic_]

The document was supposed to be up before or at launch tbh, but I have no idea why it is not yet. In short, I do have some idea and it's that you can't host anything that is a Pay 2 Win, or Pay 2 Play.

[Bewick]

The document was supposed to be up before or at launch tbh, but I have no idea why it is not yet. In short, I do have some idea and it's that you can't host anything that is a Pay 2 Win, or Pay 2 Play.

Thank you for sharing your opinion.
Do you think it would be okay to offer cosmetic enhancements to players for real money?

Hope game administrators will see this post and reply to my initial question to settle this.

[Logic_]

It's not my opinion but in fact the knowledge I have from the documentation, and yes, you can sell cosmetic enhancements because those do NOT count into P2W or pay to play systems.

[Bewick]

It's not my opinion but in fact the knowledge I have from the documentation, and yes, you can sell cosmetic enhancements because those do NOT count into P2W or pay to play systems.

Oh okay, thank you for this information Logic_. You did not make it clear that it was a fact so I thought it was only your opinion.
Sorry about that and thanks again.

[Logic_]

No worries

[fade]

I'm not an advocate for P2W, but why are server owners not allowed to make their own decisions on monetization? Servers cost money and Blue Mountain is definitely not paying for them.

[Logic_]

It's simply because that it affects how the game is perceived by others. The goal of every company is to make sure that their image is good and therefore, monetization plays a huge role in how things work around.

[Bewick]

I'm not an advocate for P2W, but why are server owners not allowed to make their own decisions on monetization? Servers cost money and Blue Mountain is definitely not paying for them.

It's Blue Mountain's property, therefore you must agree to whatever they say if you want to use it. That's how most things are in our world and it seems quite fair to me.

[GuSo]

I guess he will reconsider it, no use for community owners to give it a go at this game if you cant make a packet of cigarettes on it, this is not fortnite where 10 year olds ask their fathers for skins, we are not 14 year olds; time is money my friend.

[Logic_]

I guess he will reconsider it, no use for community owners to give it a go at this game if you cant make a packet of cigarettes on it, this is not fortnite where 10 year olds ask their fathers for skins, we are not 14 year olds; time is money my friend.

What do you sugges then? The game doesn't restrict you from putting donation perks, but all it does is not giving you a PAY 2 WIN choice. But I would like to still hear from what you guys think about it.

[GuSo]

I read it as you can only let people purchase skins, my mistake. I myself think letting people pay for ingame cash is a greedy way of doing business, I am out of this discussion again

[Bewick]

For anyone looking for precise information about monetization, you can read the rules that have now been made available online at https://playonset.com/monetization.

[nemesis_567]

Here is my take on this matter:

This game currently only appeals to developers because it's a sandbox for them, nothing else.
For the project to work you need developers to be willing to put their time into this to kickstart a few servers and bring in new players.
Since you are not actively advertising the framework because there's not much appealing content to advertise to players you're relying on developers to both make their servers and advertise them, but guess what, good developers have jobs and lives and generally are used to having an hour value of reference meaning they need to justify the time/money put into this, regardless of how much they love the idea.

If you prevent devs from monetizing their server in whichever way they see fit, meaning subscriptions, in server purchases or whatever else besides 'donations', you're killing the potential of this product, because:
- Many great devs mostly don't waste time on rockstar Multiplayer games because they can't monetize it in any legal way(sa-mp, fivem etc...).
- Making it different is giving the devs, who paid for the game the choice of monetizing their servers, in any legal way they see fit, thus making money off your content, even if you take a cut from that money, where justified.
- Servers, Development, Maintenance, Advertising and whatever else makes a game better, costs money.

As such I'd love to see a relaxed approach to this. Once the server quality improves, result of the investment of developers, both in time and money, advertising this properly will be a lot easier.

I just read the document above and you seem to be excluding a lot of scenarios.

Examples not allowed but severally compromising:
When someone wants to build an MMORPG, where usually you have packages that grant progression benefits, funding continuous content development.
When someone wants to give players the ability to purchase a custom weapon/vehicle unique to purchased packages.
Ability to purchase a VIP currency to be exchangeable by in game benefits.


Please note that one server having this in no way means other servers will follow suit.

You can also safeguard the framework progression by removing any limitations on how to monetize it, and applying a comission to all accountable profit made on the game. You may consider centralizing a payment gateway for the game, much like in app purchases API, where players pay you, you take comission and pay the devs.

[Logic_]

Go and read the damned monetization guide, it allows P2W-like criteria for developers but to a very small extent. Don't forget that the game is depdendant on servers and P2W servers can essentially kill the game. You can do P2W monetization on those GTA mods you mentioned openly.

[nemesis_567]

I'm talking about legal monetization, no one will invest real money if we're talking about clandestine monetization. I've read the documents and edited my response to reflect the particularities of it.

[Logic_]

I'm talking about legal monetization, no one will invest real money if we're talking about clandestine monetization. I've read the documents and edited my response to reflect the particularities of it.

Okay.

I looked thorugh the threads and discussion on the forums and Discord regarding monetization, and people said that the "strict" monetization is actually killing the game -- which I personally couldn't assess how true it might be so I doubt yours is.

The most brought up concerns were that experienced devs would not look into such project unless there was a beneficial gain for them, which again is something that might be a huge "de facto" factor. You can monetize the servers however you like it on many other multiplayers and we can go the same route and allow it, and there will be servers exploiting it to make huge profits and harming the game's image in one way but game servers' reputation isn't something we have to take care of.

On another note, since the "official" listing is not a paid premium like how it originally was intended to be to provide colored and emoji hostnames, I think we can work this around this by introducing a central payment gateway (example Robux in Roblox) just like you mentioned but the team is so small right now and it'd require a proper framework and moderation in place in my humble opinion.

[nemesis_567]

Yes, there would be costs to maintainning the central payment gateway, but it would make sure servers are able to properly make money, while making sure part of that money is directly injected towards onset developers, possibly funding further development. It would also make it easier to handle server monetization, and make sure everyone is rewarded in good proportion. As it is, you allow monetization but are not securing investment in the game itself, which is critical as Onset is the core which needs to be more actively developed and invested on than any specific server.