Tips for staying compliant with the Minecraft EULA

If you want to run a successful Minecraft server then it is essential that you establish funding for your community to cover server costs and of course this is why Buycraft exists.

For some time now Mojang’s EULA, Brand and Commercial guidelines have been in place and are an essential read for anyone who has, or will be creating a server store. The most important parts for Buycraft store owners are the “Brand and assets guidelines” and “Commercial usage guidelines”.

You can find our page about the EULA here: https://www.buycraft.net/features/eula

...and all of Mojang’s terms linked here: https://account.mojang.com/terms

These guidelines do not however limit your ability to run a successful store with Buycraft. There are several simple ways to monetise your server without breaking the rules.

Cosmetic items: These can be a whole range of things like pets, particles, name colours (not capes!) that can be exciting and give social status to players in the lobby/hub of your server. The scope of things that fall under this category is so huge and varied which is great because it should allow you to find something that nobody else does which will in turn bring more players to your server.

To do this in Buycraft packages is relatively easy depending on the plugins that you are using. You can either use the commands to change something for a player, or give the player permissions to use commands themselves. So long as the command can be executed directly from the server console, it can be added to a package in Buycraft.

Server wide boosters: These can be used to give an increased in-game reward to all players like more in-game currency (soft currency) earned during a short period of time for playing mini games. You have to make sure that you are not selling the soft currency directly though, see “Commercial usage guidelines” and that the soft currency can only be used to purchase cosmetic features.

Of course the rewards don’t have to be currency, for example it could also be the ability to run faster or jump higher, really any effect you can think of/mod/make so long as it affects all players at the same time.

Charge for access: This is where you charge all players for access to your server, for example a VIP private access server.

This can be done easily with Buycraft, all you need to do is use the whitelist command “whitelist add {uuid/name}” and make sure that the command’s setting “Require online = No”. This would allow a single charge for lifetime entry, or you could set the package to expire after 30 days and set an expiry command to “whitelist remove {uuid/name}” to give the option to purchase 30 days access.

Donations: It’s always nice to know that the players enjoy the server you make so you could have a donation package which allows them to show appreciation, for no reward of course.

If you want to set up a donation package then you just need to click the option “Enable the customer to pay how much they want - the price above will be the minimum.” and this will allow the player to choose the amount they would like to donate.

These suggestions should give you a good idea of how to stay within Mojang’s guidelines, while still allowing a lot of freedom in how you develop your store’s brand and keep your community alive.