Server Donations and the EULA
Recently on the discord there has been questions about receiving donations and charging people for in game content or soft currency.
TFP’s End User’s License Agreement (EULA) states the following:
“SERVER DONATIONS
Anyone who has purchased or has received a gift or press release copy of the game has permission to receive server donations from players. Server owners MAY NOT charge hard currency (tangible money such as cash, credit, bitcoin, etc. that has monetary value) for soft currency (in game currency that has no monetary value) or in game items. Server owners MAY allow priority access to players that make a donation.”
Soft currency would be in game currency, (i.e. Dukes aka Casino Tokens,) or currency provided by your server manager. An example of this would be Zcoins. Zcoins is a default suggestion in CSMM. Zcoins can be earned for killing zombies, other players and play time on the server.
A violation of the EULA would to directly sell Zcoins and/or Dukes for actual money, (i.e. you pay me $5 you get 1000 Zcoins/Dukes.)
Another violation of the agreement would be to sell in game items for actual money, (i.e. You pay me $ for an Auto Turret and 500 rounds of ammunition, you pay me $2.50 for 50 Reinforced Concrete Blocks.)
These are a huge no no and The Fun Pimps are with in their rights according to their EULA to revoke your access to the game and ban you from playing or running a server.
Now that I’ve presented the violation portion, on to what you can do for actual server donations.
Say you have a community or at least a few players that enjoy playing on your server(s). They want to support you by sending you some money to help with server related expenses. This is acceptable under the eula. You are not telling the players pay me to get this. Players are coming to you saying I like playing on your server, I like the community that we have here, let me help you with some money towards the cost of running the server.
What you can do as thanks for the donation, is offer them perks in game. Perks might include a reserved server slot, donor level commands, extra teleport locations, a higher multiplier on earning the server manager currency and/or adding some server manager currency as part of your donation package.
As stated earlier, you can not sell soft/server manager currency for straight up cash. In this instance you are offering it as a bonus for donating. The $5 donation you received from the player gives them donator status, extra teleports, donor level commands and a small amount of server currency as a thank you for their donation. In this instance the Zcoins are an added benefit you receive from donating versus just purchasing Zcoins directly.
I hope this clears things up a bit for everyone on what you can and can not do about accepting money for your 7 Days to Die server and community.
