Space Engineers Managed Server + Better Donation System

[mennes]

Hello, was just suggesting a few things.

One of them just being a managed space engineers server, so i can run it on a managed server. I only have enough money to either have a Managed machine or unmanaged, and it sucks having to sacrifice a lot of big games like this to go managed. I would love to just have an unmanaged server, but its very hard for one person (me) to keep multiple servers running smoothly on an unmanaged set up. Not a huge deal, but i feel like a lot of people would enjoy this.


Secondly, the donation system.

I would just like to ask if you can make it so people can pay/donate monthly, and maybe be able to link their account elsewhere so i can give them stuff in return. I know that bigger communities already have these things set up, but i dont really know how i would set something like that up. If anyone has an easy solution, please let me know!



Not really a big deal on either of these things, would just be nice to have. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this!

[kraze]

We actually investigated into hosting Space Engineer servers and ultimately decided against doing so. They had some pretty strict requirements that made hosting it a bit of a challenge. Specifically, they wanted 5% of our monthly profits from hosting the game, an online portal to view sales each month, active servers, slots of said server, the cost of each service, and the cost of the physical machines hosting the servers.

As for the donation system. Making it so people could make routine payments while useful to some could create a lot more work on our end. There is surprisingly a lot of people who don't keep track of subscription based services and forget they exist. It's very common for people to ignore them for months then suddenly demand a refund for those months. This could lead to charge backs which would not only effect us, but you as well. If you have spent the money they donated, your account coffer goes negative. Meaning it must be brought positive before it can be used again. We also already include a notes area so users can leave their in-game name or accountID.

[Edge100x]

Donation system adjustments like that are an interesting idea, but payment processing isn't really our core business and I'm not sure that we should go further into that market -- they're already extra work for us due to the chargebacks and disputes that they bring in. I'd recommend that you look into using Paypal or another payment-centric system that is meant for automatic payments and will give you a full array of other features, as well.

[stickz]

Have you guys thought about requiring customers who want extended coffer features to put first and last month's down on their services; then having a third-party do the payment processing for you? Economically, it might be more efficient to let anther business that only specializes in payment processing handle the heavy lifting.

I think that mennes has a good point in the sense that, it's highly inefficient for multiple customers to "re-invent the wheel" with their own payment processing. And having less funding can reduce one's buying power when purchasing your services; not only reducing their scalability, but also reducing your potential revenue. (possibly)

[kraze]

We actually already use payment processors to process our payments, but the same would apply when it comes to chargebacks. When a chargeback is filed and successful (which most are) We get hit with fees and it seriously hurts our standing with said payment processor. Having first and last month wouldn't really help here and would complicate the process a bit more on both ends.

We also don't want people promising in-game items/rewards for donating. Too many times have people not been given those items or have gotten them then filed a chargeback. A donation really needs to be just that, a donation.