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Is it dodgy that someone wants my 12 yr old to donate money to his minecraft server in exchange for every command on the server? Im not sure if this is normal or if he is being taken advantage of. It is only $10 but they seem to be pressuring him for money.

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It is fairly common for servers to provide perks to reward donations - while it doesn't cost anything to get a server up and running, the server consumes energy and bandwidth so the owner still incurs into monthly costs. Granting access to additional commands is a rather easy way to recoup some of those costs. – badp Oct 5 '12 at 12:14
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I'm closing this because it's off topic. Questions about Minecraft are best asked at gaming.stackexchange.com. However you've got your answer anyway. – paulmorriss Oct 5 '12 at 13:20

closed as off topic by paulmorriss Oct 5 '12 at 13:20

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I have spent a little time with this game, don't know everything, but know enough to help you i think :)

in the server guys defense the minecraft server providers can get expensive when supporting multiple players. they can be as cheap as $4/mo and grow exponentially more expensive. A quick google search i found this: http://minecraftservers.org if your kid's server is on this list (ask for the name and cntrl+f to find it may help) you can get an idea of the financial burden the server owner is experiencing and make a more educated assessment.

Another quick google search i turned up this: http://www.gameservers.com/game_servers/minecraft.php which allows anyone to buy a server, but it didn't have ones supporting 400 people. That being said, you can simply set up your home computer as a server and manually set the number of players allowed, which for more and more people requires a heavier duty machine– more cash.

All that aside, these commands s/he is offering your kid can be found here http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/SMP_Server_commands It is essentially giving someone access to cheat codes and administrator rights.

With all of that in mind? $10 isn't much as long as the method of payment is say PayPal. I'd ask your kid why it's important to them.. say for instance, if s/he has many friends on this same server it may affect how important said server is to him/her. Servers like this are not the only way to play this game.. you may consider setting up your own or playing offline. On the flip side, a big appeal is playing with others simply to see what constructs others come up with. My friends refer to this game as "Legos for adults," however, still legos for 12 year olds too..

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