What's this about paying for servers to play on?

[magickmynd]

EDIT: Question was answered, no further posts necessary. Thank you for your responses!

So, quick question. I've been seeing comments on the discussion boards about people who are paying to play on private servers. This makes me curious because I thought the game was free to play after you pay the $30 EA? I am currently hosting my own private password protected server and I am not paying to do so nor are either of my friends paying to access it, they just have to know the password which is there to prevent public players from accessing the server and raiding our bases.

Does this mean that there are people who are hosting private servers and charging money to play on them? If so, are the devs seeing any of that money or are the players taking advantage of the private server system? Or is there a section of the servers I have not seen yet that charge money to play on them in exchange for higher level server admin or dev support?

[Rackham]

There will never, ever be any monetization of this game whatsoever other than possible entirely new Expansion ARK's (whole new worlds as expansion pack).
There will never be any pay items, not even cosmetics -- there WILL be tons of cosmetic "item skins" but they will all be earnable in-game rewards and time-limited free events to encourage gameplay, nothing ever to spend any $$$ on.
The term Loot Crate simply was employed to denote high-value item cache ;)
To be clear, we at Studio Wildcard are very much against any in-game monetization whatsoever. We've seen it distort too many otherwise good games.

Copyed this from FAQ

[magickmynd]

Originally posted by Motionless:

There will never, ever be any monetization of this game whatsoever other than possible entirely new Expansion ARK's (whole new worlds as expansion pack).
There will never be any pay items, not even cosmetics -- there WILL be tons of cosmetic "item skins" but they will all be earnable in-game rewards and time-limited free events to encourage gameplay, nothing ever to spend any $$$ on.
The term Loot Crate simply was employed to denote high-value item cache ;)
To be clear, we at Studio Wildcard are very much against any in-game monetization whatsoever. We've seen it distort too many otherwise good games.

Copyed this from FAQ

Okay, so that says that the devs have officially stated the game should cost no more than $30 for the early access (or whatever it will cost when it is released), but then that means that there are people who are using the private server system to make money. That makes me worry that the devs will shut down the private server system in order to prevent players from making money off of a product the devs created :(

[bry.bell]

I play on a private server with a group of about 10 friends. We pay for it, but we pay because we want to, to play together and be in control of the settings. You can play on lots of official or unofficial servers for free as well, its just up to you what your preference is.

[bry.bell]

Originally posted by magickmynd:

Originally posted by Motionless:

There will never, ever be any monetization of this game whatsoever other than possible entirely new Expansion ARK's (whole new worlds as expansion pack).
There will never be any pay items, not even cosmetics -- there WILL be tons of cosmetic "item skins" but they will all be earnable in-game rewards and time-limited free events to encourage gameplay, nothing ever to spend any $$$ on.
The term Loot Crate simply was employed to denote high-value item cache ;)
To be clear, we at Studio Wildcard are very much against any in-game monetization whatsoever. We've seen it distort too many otherwise good games.

Copyed this from FAQ

Okay, so that says that the devs have officially stated the game should cost no more than $30 for the early access (or whatever it will cost when it is released), but then that means that there are people who are using the private server system to make money. That makes me worry that the devs will shut down the private server system in order to prevent players from making money off of a product the devs created :(

You're totally misunderstanding. No one is doing it to make money. Server time costs money, and if you want a private one you have to pay for it. Usually the cost you are paying goes to the admin to cover hosting fees.

[magickmynd]

Originally posted by bry.bell:

I play on a private server with a group of about 10 friends. We pay for it, but we pay because we want to, to play together and be in control of the settings. You can play on lots of official or unofficial servers for free as well, its just up to you what your preference is.

Right, but who are you paying for it? The person who is hosting the private server? Because you can have your own private server for you and your friends to play on that is password protected and you can control the settings without having to pay a dime. I host my server, I play on my server, my two friends play on my server, I can edit the server .ini files to play any way me and my friends want, and I haven't paid anything more than the EA cost of the game.

Edit: "You're totally misunderstanding. No one is doing it to make money. Server time costs money, and if you want a private one you have to pay for it. Usually the cost you are paying goes to the admin to cover hosting fees. "

I posted my last comment when you sent this. Okay, so you are paying the person who is hosting the server. Are you doing that because you and your friends don't have computers beefy enough to host the server and play on it at the same time?

[bassemandere]

You say you host your own server, i guess its direct from your computer, how ever there is an way that cost money, and that is if you buy a server from a hosting site (means your server can be online 24/7) and your own computer dont have to be on if others (your friends) want to play some.

try look here to get the idea what im talking about http://comparegamehosting.com/game/ark-survival-evolved/

[bassemandere]

Originally posted by magickmynd:

Originally posted by bry.bell:

I play on a private server with a group of about 10 friends. We pay for it, but we pay because we want to, to play together and be in control of the settings. You can play on lots of official or unofficial servers for free as well, its just up to you what your preference is.

Right, but who are you paying for it? The person who is hosting the private server? Because you can have your own private server for you and your friends to play on that is password protected and you can control the settings without having to pay a dime. I host my server, I play on my server, my two friends play on my server, I can edit the server .ini files to play any way me and my friends want, and I haven't paid anything more than the EA cost of the game.

Edit: "You're totally misunderstanding. No one is doing it to make money. Server time costs money, and if you want a private one you have to pay for it. Usually the cost you are paying goes to the admin to cover hosting fees. "

I posted my last comment when you sent this. Okay, so you are paying the person who is hosting the server. Are you doing that because you and your friends don't have computers beefy enough to host the server and play on it at the same time?

i have a private server i dont take any money for ppl to play on it, if anyone does it its rare i thing almost none do that.

[magickmynd]

Originally posted by bassemandere:

You say you host your own server, i guess its direct from your computer, how ever there is an way that cost money, and that is if you buy a server from a hosting site (means your server can be online 24/7) and your own computer dont have to be on if others (your friends) want to play some.

try look here to get the idea what im talking about http://comparegamehosting.com/game/ark-survival-evolved/

Ah, okay, that makes more sense. If you are paying a web site to host your server for you then that is different than me playing it directly from my computer. Yes, I am hosting the server directly from my computer. One of my friends can connect to it from our LAN and the other friend is remote, so I enabled port forwarding on my router so that he can reach the server as well. My computer is beefy enough to run the server and have me play on it at the same time, so it's a better solution for us than playing on public servers or paying a web site to host it.

I don't keep my computer turned on all the time and even when I do I don't enable the server until we are ready to play on it, but if I wanted to I could keep it on 24/7 except for updates. My friends aren't on much though, so it works for us if I only turn on the server after work hours.

[magickmynd]

Originally posted by bassemandere:

Originally posted by magickmynd:

Right, but who are you paying for it? The person who is hosting the private server? Because you can have your own private server for you and your friends to play on that is password protected and you can control the settings without having to pay a dime. I host my server, I play on my server, my two friends play on my server, I can edit the server .ini files to play any way me and my friends want, and I haven't paid anything more than the EA cost of the game.

Edit: "You're totally misunderstanding. No one is doing it to make money. Server time costs money, and if you want a private one you have to pay for it. Usually the cost you are paying goes to the admin to cover hosting fees. "

I posted my last comment when you sent this. Okay, so you are paying the person who is hosting the server. Are you doing that because you and your friends don't have computers beefy enough to host the server and play on it at the same time?

i have a private server i dont take any money for ppl to play on it, if anyone does it its rare i thing almost none do that.

I have seen youtubers that host their own servers and tell people that if they subscribe to their channel and pay money (like $5 or something) they give them an access code to the private server.

[Virtex]

i dont see how this is ark or anyones issue? they pay so what? whats the problem here? you playing on a private server and you have to pay well leave then?

[Bob the Boomer]

Originally posted by magickmynd:

Originally posted by bassemandere:

i have a private server i dont take any money for ppl to play on it, if anyone does it its rare i thing almost none do that.

I have seen youtubers that host their own servers and tell people that if they subscribe to their channel and pay money (like $5 or something) they give them an access code to the private server.

That is fair, though i personally would not do it. The server rental prices from a game server provider or someone with a good fibre connection wouldnt be cheap if you wish to host for 40+ ppl

It would make people who pay though behave properly and it would benefit the players as the server admin would invest more time in the server hopefully. In theory.

[bassemandere]

its fully up to the server owner how they do but in unofficial servers without password its normally free to join like official servers, remember some servers can have abusive admins and other servers can have nice admins, the best way is just to join and try it out :)

[[☥] - CJ -]

ARK servers are no different from any other that you pay for, BF3/BF4 for example.
Same thing, different game type.

If people want to donate money to the server owner to help pay for the server thats their right and again, no different than any other game that allows you to rent your own server.

The game Devs nor anyone else have any business dictating what someone does with a server that they have no control over. The Hosting company controls the servers, the person renting the server says whats done on it Not the Devs.

People donating to the person that runs the server is perfectly legal and theres nothing the devs can do about it

[Malkuth]

Think people are getting confused I pay for a server to host ark on.
Not pay to play. If people are paying its possible they at chipping in for the server cost.

Also some big YouTube names sometimes have private servers for subscribers that pay them monthly for some service don't rember what it's called but it's pretty popular for big name guys.

[magickmynd]

Ok, got it, makes sense.

Summary, official game is free to play after you pay the $30 early access.

As long as you are hosting a server from a private computer or playing on an official server there is no pay to play cost.

However, for individual players or groups who don't have the option to host from their own computers and don't want to play on official servers for whatever reason they can pay someone to host their server for things like 24/7 server availability, possibly better admin support, etc.