RFC: Banning Purchase of Individual In-Game Items

[RainOfPain125]

@Trojaner

Add U-bucks
Now sells items ingame with U-bucks that people can only buy from your online shop

@anon37323693

what’s stopping a server owner creating a credit system in game which they sell items in, these credits could only be retrieved from buying them on a store, but they are not selling items directly.

ban the sale of in-game currency for real world money. simple as that fellas.

@anon37323693

The only solution to this would be blocking the server/IP entirley.

I don’t think we should just “block” access to a server entirely. Removing P2W servers off of the serverlist is enough for me. Removing the massive amount of clutter and useless trash and making the serverlist an easy to use browser to actually enjoy the game without unfair advantages is good to me.

And if you think about it, similarly in the case of Minecraft’s enforcement of its EULA, P2W servers will simply adapt (because those servers are based on profit, not community well-being) to be profitable while abiding by the EULA, in order to show up in the serverlist. This means removing unfair advantages, but still selling special server cosmetics.

I think you over estimate how popular the vote websites are. And even if they are popular, they are outside of the possible realm of dealing with them. Vote sites are, of course, a cancer.

@SDGNelson

I also think this is a good place to start because stopping the sale of consumeables does not affect any existing server customers, i.e. it is not taking anything away from anyone, only preventing future purchases of this type.

I disagree. If servers that provide an unfair advantage are blacklisted from the master serverlist, that doesn’t imply that you are going to come down from the heavens are just remove their rank - it simply means the server won’t be as public.

The owners of the server can choose to either work around this by continuing to be unfair, and find an alterantive way to broadcast themselves to the playerbase, or they can voluntarily remove the unfair advantages from their server, and as compensation, give players with ranks or kits a supplement of non-P2W cosmetics or similar items.

To make the entire concept permanently useless simply because you don’t want to upset ~1000 kids who have unfair ranks, in a one-time update to the enforcement of your EULA, doesn’t seem like a good compromise when it could make tens of thousands of other players happy, or attract tens of thousands more players to the game.

Personally, I stopped playing the game because of P2W. All the friends I know of stopped playing because of P2W. We didn’t stop because we got bored of the game per say, but because we literally could not find good servers, because P2W servers would always outcompete them for clicks, attention, etc to make more profit.

Profit over community well-being.

@anon37323693

Another thing which is similar to above, whats stopping servers from just changing IPs if they break your rules supposed, assuming your going to ban by IP? If you have other methods would be interested to hear them proposed. Especially as a Hosting Provider owner like myself.

While this is a valid concern, think about it this way.

If you are in the Unturned server-hosting biz just to make fat profit, 10 times out of 10 you are going to be renting your servers from a gameserver rent site, or directly on a VPS, because it is simply not profitable to invest thousands of dollars into quality server-hosting hardware, because these profiteers don’t care if their servers stay around for years and benefit the community, they just want to make as much profit possible, as quickly as possible.

These services, AFAIK, aren’t going to simply allow you to change the IP. I don’t see why they would.

Furthermore

“While masking your IP address is perfectly legal, changing it and falsely advertising what your IP is online is illegal . This also falls under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. … Fact: Changing your IP address can actually net you a vandalism charge if you change it to the wrong place.”

Of course, a server franchise could attempt to hide their true IP to avoid a master server blacklist by using a VPN. But then of course, their servers are going to be HORRIBLY unplayably laggy, and in enough time they’ll just get blacklisted again. Tough luck.

@anon37323693

If you truley want to stop it. It has to be stopped. IE the servers not playable.

Look as I said, I’m all for ending P2W servers, but going out of your way to destroy them like this isn’t going to work. We de-incentive P2W servers by removing them from the master serverlist, thus decreasing their popularity by tons, thus decreasing their fat profits by tons.

This will work either way. P2W servers will fade out of popularity, quality community-based servers will take their place, everyone wins except the rich goons who make tens, or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year off their franchises, mostly from children who don’t know any better.

@Mr.Gibbys

If there is a disclaimer i want it to be big, red, scary, and very hyperbolic and generalized to scare as many people away as possible

I mean, this kinda works? Its not going to make P2W servers are unpopular as they could be. This would just de-incentivize Nelson to actually carry out this plan. Why go through all the trouble on labeling all these servers as P2W if its just going to wave a flashy red banner at you, that people (especially kids) are simply going to tell you to exit out of?

@SDGNelson

One-time purchase for a permanent unlock = OK
One-time purchase for a permanent kit = OK
One-time purchase for a permanent rank = OK
One-time purchase for a permanent benefit = OK

BAD

[RainOfPain125]

I’m making this a separate post because its just, really big.

@Modern_Mo

To input, As requested.

to be frank nobody asked you modern mo. Your input as one of the unfair server hosters isn’t productive or useful or representative of the general community, or even, the hosting community. I will read it anyway and of course debunk what I feel like is easy dunking.

@Modern_Mo

Server’s, No matter what, cost money. Whether that is with a host, Your old laptop or your electricity. With smaller revenue streams, it makes it crippling to run a community server. Players can still run their own server for their friends, but after which they want to make it publicly available, and run properly. It becomes harder to grow and maintain their player base, Expanding below,

To be very, very, very, very, very kind about this, I will do some math.

I ran 8 Unturned servers, a Minecraft server, and a MySQL server, on the same machine that I use all the time to play games or do my work. My machine only costed 650$, a one time payment. I will not include this value in the overall analysis, since, regardless if I were hosting servers, I would have still bought the parts and made this machine.

My machine, at full load, would draw 251 Watts of power from the wall. This is a ridiculous number to use for finding the power cost, because why would my GPU or CPU or RAM be at full load while my computer is idle running servers? But to emphasize my point, I will continue to use this number.

And I’ll be generous here again. I use my computer personally for ~8 hours of the day, theoretically the server cost should only be taken into account for the 16 hours the machine is idle and soley being used for server hosting purposes. But I will ignore this and do the cost for running the servers 24/7

Using an energy calulator I put in 251 watts, 24 hours a day, at .1105 cents per KWH (my local cost).

This amounts to a whopping $242.99 a year.

But lets do the math if you rented a server.

I searched for Unturned server renters and picked ones that I see the most. Picking a 24 player slot “package” on all of them.

Nitrado: $24.05 a month.
GTX gaming, it is $10.07
LHYME, $12.95
Yours, “modern hosting” which does not say if it is 24 slots: $12.00

This is for one server. Lets do the math on how much it costs me to run one server per month.

I said I run 8 Unturned servers, 1 Minecraft server, and 1 MySQL server. Although the MySQL server is necessary for the Unturned servers to work (globalban, etc) I will be generous and not include it in the math.

8 Unturned servers, and the cost per year is $242.99

Cost per moth would be $242.99 / 12 = $20.25 a month for 8 servers

$20.25 a month for 8 servers / 8 = $2.5 a month for 1 Unturned server.

/////

It costs only 2.5$ a month to run an Unturned server. This is including my extreme generousity in the math used. If I had it my way, with 16 hours a day, with 9 servers, with low-end GPU wattage (as much more realistic estimate) it would come out to $1.16 a month, per server. Of course, this would be even cheaper if I were running an SSD instead of two bulky hard drives (I do run an M.2 SSD setup now which is way more power efficient).

So don’t go out of your way to cry that “WELL SERVERS COST A TON OF MONEY TO RUN” no they do not. They only cost a ton of money when you go out of your way to rent them to make a profit.

I ran my franchise for as long as I physically could with no donations at all, and I only stopped when I went into fostercare, where I could not portforward anymore.

debunked.

@Modern_Mo

But if you get into anything unique, that expands the game such as Roleplay, Modded PVP, Minigames, It typically involves custom, or paid content from sites like Imperial Plugins.

Great analysis! The monopoly of the plugin market leads to way higher plugin costs.

Who would’ve thought Capitalism would do that? Make more profit? That would never happen.

Thoughts on paid plugins for a free game?

A long time ago, when Nelson started to work on Modules in Unturned I was suuuuper hyped. It would allow for people to virtually make plugins for Vanilla Unturned, which would mean there wouldn’t be much of a need for Rocketmod once the same plugins from there were on the Steam Workshop - which, would mean, the plugins can’t be paid for. Obviously this never happened. Which is sad to me, because these external third party non-official websites can put a price-tag on plugins. Sites such as Imper…

@Modern_Mo

Those new Server Owner’s would be pushed away by the fact they can’t make money off of purchases / ingame purchases.

GOOD. They should be pushed away. If they come into Unturned with the intention of making profit at the expense of profitting off of Nelson’s work and ruining the core gameplay, then they do not deserve to exist. There are hundreds of community-based servers that will be hosted by fans of the game regardless of “cost”.

By removing the trash out of the serverlist, we would only empower those servers to be more popular and lively, possibly reviving the game as a whole by reducing the serverlist (thus more players on average per server). Trash servers get removed, and in its place, good servers get more players.
Win-win.

@Modern_Mo

On the first 3 pages, ALL of these server’s (Ones who have a store or accept payments) are “P2W” as some would call it

Yes that is exactly the problem. Wow great analysis. You did it. We can pack up, you figured out that P2W servers dominate the serverlist. It is almost as if shamelessly profitable servers can afford the money to (not going to name names) buy YouTubers to promote their server.

In an Unturned where P2W doesn’t exist, these servers would still exist. The profit motive only drives owners to ruin core gameplay in return for their own wealth, whether or not you excuse it as “necessary server costs” or, more realistically, profit for themselves. These kinds of unique servers can still, and will still, exist when the game is made fair and fun for all players.

@Modern_Mo

Regulating server’s that are P2W would involve a lot more time

oh yeah, I’m willing to put in the time to add all of your servers to the blacklist. I won’t sweat it.

no sweat.

@Modern_Mo

Unturned would see a major separation between server’s that are basic, compared to heavily customized server’s that have already been around for a while.

Implying that servers without the profit incentive are going to be “basic” while servers where the owner makes a ton of money off of exploiting children who do not know any better as “customized”.

ridiculous.

@Modern_Mo

• (This is really a small point)

I agree and it has nothing to do with unfair advantages so I’m skipping it. Obviously I would prefer an Unturned without cosmetics, but its not like it matters that much since it doesn’t give people an unfair advantage.

If Nelson added a personal client option to disable cosmetics, that would be preferable. (off-topic) or I can just delete all the cosmetic model data in my files. I’m sure that would work, as hilarious as it sounds. I remember I was able to delete the data for in-game structure models and could see through anything I wanted to, albiet those objects still existed and I still had to walk around them.

Example of 'ESP' advantage at Summerside

@Modern_Mo

Unturned currently is a great free game

The game itself is good, yes, we agree on this.

@Modern_Mo

that attracts players from being free

yep

@Modern_Mo

Many people within the community want to spend money for advantages

no, most players go through the game spending thousands of hours without paying for a single advantage. This is how all P2W things work. Mobile app developers dont expect to make their game and get most of their playerbase to buy microtransactions for gold, mana, whatever it be. It is the 1% of snobby rich kids who waste hundreds of dollars on ranks like yours to get an unfair advantage at the expense of literally everyone else.

You own a P2W server franchise, albeit it is creative (you just paywall crap, its not that insane). You can do the math yourself.

If you searched through your players folder for _0 (meaning the first character attached to a steam account) and then compared the number of results of that, to the number of players who bought your crappy P2W ranks, you would almost certainly find that it is an extremely small minority of players who are purchasing unfair advantages.

Personally I still have all of the data from my servers, so I can see how many unique players have joined with the method I explained

@Modern_Mo

Defining P2W.

This is unbelievably simple. I will make a flowchart to demonstrate the simplicity.

@Modern_Mo

What about server’s that primarily require payment to have more than 60% of entertainment capabilities?

what does this even mean?

[NickO2]

The removal of P2W should be a priority for Unturned. The reason I think this is because Unturned has large number of young players who are susceptible to this targeting by servers to buy in game item or currency.

[RainOfPain125]

@zman1064

This may finally destroy pay-to-win servers once and for all.

Yes it will, if Nelson decides to actually ban unfair advantages, rather than just banning the purchase of “individual in-game items”

@xXToxic_LlamaXx

When you look at any type of regulation, the small businesses suffer more than the well established companies.

Or, you can stop thinking of community servers as “businesses” that are solely here to make profit, and think of them as community servers, that exist to serve the community, for the betterment of the game.

The “regulations” here would affect “all business” including “small business” because unfair advantages are crappy and bad. I don’t care if unfair server franchises, big or small, “suffer” because of these changes. THAT IS LITERALLY the point.

@Teemo

That is how most of the server owner pay their servers.

Already explained above how servers don’t cost ridiculous amounts of money to host as some franchise owners would like you to believe (so that they can pull the “WELL IT COSTS A TON SO WE HAD TO RUIN THE GAME AND MAKE IT UNFAIR” card)

@Yarrrr

all I can say is that I’m fine with putting a stop to exploitation or shady practises

like paying for unfair advantages.

@Yarrrr

How will these offending servers be reported (And maybe who handles the reports)?

Perhaps directly on the SDG forum like this. If you simply added a “report server” button on the serverlist, it would be way too easy to push and would just lead to tons of false positives because of upset kids.

If we kept it here instead, on a forum, where you need to create an account, we would have much more legitimate reports, and we will eventually get around to blacklisting the unfair servers (sure, the first wave of blacklists will be a little tough, but once you jump the hurdle it should be smooth sailing from there).

I wouldn’t mind if you made a team that joins these servers, or goes to their websites, to validate that they are P2W. I would be more than happy to do that. I have been more than happy to do that for years now.

@bitlol

This should definitely be implemented, p2w has ruined too many unturned servers

yes!

@NotSoKing

Pls do make this rule

yes!

@Dug

personally I fully support the banning of selling in game currencies for real money, I see it as being comparable to having a subscription service to a cheat client, the amount of power that paying for in game currencies give you is absolutely ridiculous, and I have played on many servers where no matter what you do you barely make any money whatsoever, unless you pay.

yup

@Rain

True

you stole my name >:(

@TheKnightWriter

I say ban it all. I believe the only thing people should pay money for in Unturned whatsoever is cosmetics, but that’s just me.

based!

@Pesticide

Well here I have egg on my face when rain wins the p2w battle

I’m going all in.

@Dug

if modern isnt p2w he’s got nothing to worry about!

true! and yet he made a forum account to come out here and make up reasons why servers should continue to ruin the game for profit. I wonder.

@Finfee

and yes i made this account specifically for posting this

people are so frustrated with P2W shit that they are flooding the forum to agree with the notion of ending paid unfair advantages.

@Jordxn

I completely agree, if a player doesn’t like that you can purchase items then they can just leave.

Players can leave a P2W server, yes. But a ton of the serverlist is just P2W trash that clogs up the space. It is impossible to find good servers when P2W dominates the serverlist. If your only real options are to play a P2W server or a P2W server, then you cant “just leave”.

[RainOfPain125]

To clarify my personal position of unfair paid advantages:

Being able to purchase

• Money
• Items
• Kits
• Vehicles
• EXP
• EXP boosts
• (Others if someone names them)

Paywalls

• Having TPA plugin but only for real world pay
• Having HOME plugin but only for real world pay
• (Others if someone names them)

Lets take a review of Modern Mo’s server, since he seems so interested in this.

What Modern Mo does with only allowing players on their creative servers, to only have one creative loadout, is scummy but it isn’t paywalling the entire feature itself. Players are ‘at a disadvantage’ but it is so miniscule that nobody cares. Literally nobody. We dont care. Its scummy, but we do not care. Nobody does and nobody will.

Modern Mo introduces an unnecessary barrier to aspects of the server that can be lifted through paying, which may be seen as ‘paying for a luxury’ and not an unfair advantage.

Similarly, on Modern Mo’s server, he doesn’t paywall the entire /i command, but rather, puts a crappy cooldown on it, and sells a rank that provides no cooldown. While he didn’t have to go out of his way to paywall a 0 second cooldown command, it doesn’t necessarily make the game unfair. Same with /v, or /save, or /load, or /heal.

I don’t play your servers (because I am banned) so I will not comment on the “$75 paycheck” part, as I am unfamiliar with what you can do with money (perhaps buy weapons or items that are blacklisted from being spawned in? then it would be unfair)

The barricade and structure crap is also a paywall. However, you would be paywall-ing an official feature of the game for your own profit. That, is ridiculous - if it were vanilla.

Limiting the build potential of players on a Vanilla server would definitely be an unfair advantage, but because it is a creative server, and those structures are more than likely cosmetic in practice, then it would not be unfair. This is why these judgements should and will be made on a case-by-case basis.

You might think of these things as “gray areas” but I see objective conclusions, and I have put them forth.

[Dug]

LMAOOOOOOO

[Ainsley_is_ok_now]

I agree baby.

[RainOfPain125]

yeah thats scummy as hell too.

Thats what profit does. Putting your “”“donators”"" above everyone else.

(not really donations, its paid purchases for unfair advantages)

it makes sense, but its scummy.

I can go on and on and on about examples of P2W servers. Infact, on my server franchise website, I had an entire page dedicated to screenshots of unfair servers and their store shop ranks.

This is that page, actually. If SDG mods want to remove this line because “muh harassment” or something like that, sure, thats fine. Not sure if it is or is not.

[Liebesleid]

been playing for nearly 8,000 hours and I like this. I think ranks and vaults are fine since they can be somehow limited, and servers need money to run, and its usually just pvp items. sure you have to put more effort to fight or beat the pay to win players, but its still doable.

now, putting in effort to build a sturdy base, just to have someone waste as much money as he can to obtain raiding items or money to buy those raiding items to disappear your base, I think that’s sad.

[RainOfPain125]

@Modern_Mo

I have played Unturned for 5+ years now, Owned a server for 3+ years

I know I have already posted a ton, but Modern Mo felt the need to explan their credentials on why they’re a valid authority on the subject (experience, etc.) so for the record, I would like to list mine.

• 7 Year Veteran
• Ran a (non-P2W) Server Franchise early 2017 - late 2019
• Ran servers before that, since Canada days
• Ran one of, or, perhaps the largest, Faction in the game.
• Forum Veteran since ~2016, maybe 2017
• 12,623 Steam Discussion comments (almost all exclusively for Unturned)

These SDG stats lol

• 6,500 hours
• swag energy
• Staff for countless servers, some still existing (Like IBC)
• Unturned Cabinet, when thats was a thing lmao
• First wave of hand picked U4 testers //must’ve done something right I suppose?

[Rain]

@RainOfPain125

I don’t play your servers (because I am banned) so I will not comment on the “$75 paycheck” part, as I am unfamiliar with what you can do with money (perhaps buy weapons or items that are blacklisted from being spawned in? then it would be unfair)

Just going to confirm, ingame currency cannot be used for anything besides roleplay. Its mainly used as a trade function between players, it provides no real benefit. There is no need for speculation, IMO.

[RainOfPain125]

cool, so it doesn’t matter. great.

good to know I suppose.

[CannedBeanz]

Yes, ban it, im tired of seeing 10 yo kids getting dragonfangs all time

[RainOfPain125]

@Fierybattlehawk

[Malviyn]

This would be a very great start at combatting the huge problem that is P2W on Unturned, and even though I do not think that this is really enough to provoke any serious change in the short therm, as most Unturned servers are, unfortunately, all P2W, it may be enough to discourage possible future server owners from adding P2W transactions to their servers, and telling old ones to stop and back down.

Either way, I believe it is important to clarify why I think this is, by debunking points made by owners of P2W servers under this same comment section.

1. In his comment, Modern Mo stated that players WANT to spend money for rewards and support the server, and while this may be true for a handful of dedicated players, the vast majority donate because they are A) pressured into doing it with semi-constant automated messages and reminders in the chat, which, if you play on these server, you’d notice almost immediately, or B) because being a donator is the only way to have fun on the server, because so much content, kits, jobs and salaries (for RP servers) are locked behind a paywall.

2. Servers obviously do have a cost to setup, but this cost is made out to be much higher than it actually is. I’ve been a server owner for 3 and a half years and I laugh everytime a server owner replies to a problem like this with “Muh server expensive”, because in most cases, it is not. Unless you seek only the highest of quality server and hosting, your expenses won’t go beyond 15 euros a month. Obviously, we should factor in plugin costs, but those are one time payments, and can be reused over and over again for months without needing to buy them back every time. For these expenses, retaining what this ban wouldn’t remove (IE One-Time purchases) is more than enough to produce enough income to cover the costs of the investment.

3. Let us be real here for a second, and consider the age-demographic which is well known for being the primary source of income for these servers: children under 14. It is unbelievable how many P2W servers claim that they do not accept payments from kids under 13 or even 18, and then you go onto these servers and see how many of their donators sound like they are still in preschool. They’ve been lying to avoid legal consequences for years now, and it is good that you are taking action about these issues, even though I think that, while you’re at it…

You should also implement a ban for any server that creates a fake sale for its products, and there are a whole bunch to choose from, some have even been doing it for years. cough Brad’s RP cough

Finally, as stated in the introduction to my comment, I do not believe this is enough. More restrictions would need to be implemented to push for any signficant change in the long run, but for now, this is already a good start, the only problem would be the enforcing of all of this.

[Rain]

@Malviyn

Let us be real here for a second, and consider the age-demographic which is well known for being the primary source of income for these servers: children under 14. It is unbelievable how many P2W servers claim that they do not accept payments from kids under 13 or even 18, and then you go onto these servers and see how many of their donators sound like they are still in preschool.

This would be really hard to moderate. Everyone can lie about their age. It doesn’t work.

[Elliot]

Sure, I agree with banning unfair advantage, but not only pernament (or repeatable) purchase - one-time things too. I can’t say so much aboit it but I can give an example of 2 awful russian P2W servers.
First, we have one interesting S@@@@@@x Metro 2033 RP. In this server you can purchase a one-time donate kit. Items in these kits not so OP but it gives you direct unfair advantage, because you can basically KOSing the players. Every donater can.
Second, one time we had Escape from Unturnov p2w. In this one you was able to buy OP jaggernaut sets and Aek. Jaggernaut can handle with 70% body protection and Aek is just a minigun with no recoil and smallest spray.

[Fristy]

Thank you Nelson, p2w servers have ruined this game. People would play those server instead of a nice vanilla server. It is time for this problem to be fixed. Implement this rule ASAP.

[Rosteg]

I fully support this. Even if unturned is going to lose some players, those will probably br roleplayers that do not contribute to the game and community at all. Most roleplay servers end up doing more harm than good, by dumping their modpacks and maps into the workshop.

[sebuhayha]

I would love if this ban became true, because pay to win servers have been ruining my unturned experience for so long. I want the game to be pure fun, i don’t want it to be a pay to win sausage fest where everyone has fully pimped out maplestrikes.