A Brief History of Why Mineplex Failed
Mineplex was once the crowning champion of Minecraft servers, a name synonymous with the rise of early Minecraft. It was once the most popular community ran multiplayer server for Minecraft, taking its name from the same game. It’s peak was recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records in early 2015 for having 43,033 simultaneously connected players. However, soon after that record was met it’s player count tanked, staff left in droves, they even lost their record to Hypixel in the same year. So what happened?
Let me explain my bias first. My online alias is, and am known in the Mineplex community as, “t3hero”. I was hired in early 2016 (a whole year after its record player counts) as a manager for their team of level designers, or “builders”. This is a team of individuals who place blocks in Minecraft to produce new content for the network, but involves knowledge of community tools and a dash of game and level design experience. Later I would also take on the responsibility of assisting with game updates beyond just level design, physical conventions, relationships with Microsoft and the Bedrock engine, and even managing community outreach. I worked extremely close on the development and production side of things, not the volunteer or moderation. In the end, the only individuals managing me was the owners of Mineplex its self, so take everything here with a giant grain of salt. The history of Mineplex before I joined was told to me by the people involved in the story, not always from my own perspective. I have the knowledge to back the claims I make, but was not the only person working at Mineplex. I was even specifically hired to replace someone who left Mineplex out of frustration for working there. I have an extremely bias perspective coming from frustration and not knowing everyone’s side of the story, please keep this in mind when reading.
Want to read this story later? Save it in Journal.
Also keep in mind reading this that I will attempt to use the online identities of individuals as much as possible (their usernames), as not everyone is comfortable having their real names known.
The Basics
Mineplex is old, well, old for a Minecraft server. It was founded by Sterling and Spu (Spu_) early 2013. They wanted to have a place to host one of their minigames, Castle Siege, and would later create and later host Bridges. During this early period they also bought out another Minecraft server of very similar games, BetterMC (also know as Nautilus or NautilusMC), which hosted Dominate (later turning into Champions). This buyout brought their volunteer staff, but also their leads, defek7 and Chiss.
Immediately there was already unorganization and chaos, blowing up in popularity. Sterling handled payments and “business” side of things. Spu handled publicity, reaching out to multiple YouTubers and gather feedback or requests. Defek7 assisted with backend systems work, making sure servers were online and running. And Chiss was the lead designer, developer, game creator, and creative lead of Mineplex.
Going into late 2013 we already have some of our immediate issues that Mineplex is still struggling with today, however the effects aren’t immediately noticeable. Going into this with zero long term support, games are built and put together quickly and with little testing, causing permanent issues to be built into the core of Mineplex its self.
There is no 5-year plan, not even a plan for what’s going to happen a month from release. The idea is to just build Minecraft minigames as fast as you can before players get bored, leave, and never come back.
It Gets Bigger
At this point Sterling is already completely hands off on Mineplex, and defek7 is doing his best to keep up with everyone else. Spu is reaching out to even more and more influences, and Chiss is trying to do everything he can to pump out more content. What’s next? At the end of 2013 one of the largest Minecraft YouTubers, CaptainSparkles, joins to promote the network.
While survival games in Minecraft is not an uncommon additional to other servers around the same time, Mineplex added the addition of publicity. With Spu reaching out to influences to push Mineplex content, and the rise of Minecraft Survival Games at the time, this pushes Mineplex even more into the light of the giant growth of Minecraft at the time.
In 2014 the dust started to settle. Chiss continued to add more minigames, an anticheat, and a double down focus on teenage volunteers to help moderate the server for free.
Into mid-2014 however, Spu was pushed out of Mineplex by his fellow owners, as continuing to tell YouTubers they can have anything they wanted started to cause more harm than good. With this however, Mineplex was unable to retain their connection and influence with YouTubers, with CaptainSparkles also stepping down soon after.
Around the same time however, ParkerGames moved into defek7’s tiny house in LA so he can try his luck with acting. It seemed like a perfect opportunity. Defek7 suggested Parker start a YouTube channel with a focus on his Minecraft server, creating the YouTube channel MineplexOfficial. This channel would claim additional influence for Mineplex, and only media connection, until Parker stopped making videos late 2015.
Late 2014 however we had our first dip in major issues. Not code related, not management related, but the Minecraft EULA. While there are much better write ups at the time explaining exactly what was happening during this time, Mineplex was one of the most popular Minecraft server at the time, making millions a year from micro-transactions. Mojang decided to step in and prevent servers from being as free in selling whatever they want. Up to this point, Mineplex was making its money off of selling “Pay to Win” elements, such as exclusive kits, giving gameplay advantages. Once they were no longer allowed to do this, a lot had to change.
Having a massive cut in revenue changed how the owners saw the server. Defek7 backed away (starting a chain of coffee houses), Sterling was nonexistent (Mineplex was not his only investment), leaving Chiss to manage everything.
This spilled over into 2015, setting the stage for most of what went wrong with Mineplex.
Let me try and set a picture here. Mineplex suddenly lost most of its revenue, cutting to about 20% of original profits. Servers, developers, and staff still need to be paid. And you need to keep living up to this incredible standard of being the best server in Minecraft, all while competition is getting better and bigger.
Chiss was alone. Even though on October 16th, 2015 Mineplex received the world record for most simultaneous players connected to a single Minecraft server, it wasn’t going to go up from there.
Earlier in the year Chiss made the decision he couldn’t do it alone and hired Sigils, the new lead game designer for Mineplex. Chiss would spend about half a year training him then go dark. On February 16th, 2017 Chiss finally resigned and sold his shares of Mineplex, but at that point hadn’t touched Mineplex since he handed over design to Sigils.
I Was Hired
I previously worked with Sigils on a similar minigame server around this same time. Sigils ended up leaving our network to join Mineplex, and we later had to shut the server down all together. A few months later Sigils brought up my name, I was interviewed, then took my position in early 2016.
I was immediately given the worst possible introduction to the community, and only a taste of what Chiss was supplied with up to that point. I gritted my teeth and powered through it, all while being on boarded to systems no one knew how to use, and would later cause issues anyway. To this day, there is still a password-less web interface on one of Mineplex’ boxes that has every player’s IP address in plain text.
Introducing yourself in the community is still horrible on your mental health. The community trashes the paid and non-paid staff, and you receive zero support from your coworkers or managers. This bounces back and forth, causing the staff to be angry and inflated while responding to concerns, just causing an infinite loop of toxicity that is the Mineplex server. The thick skin you need to work here on top of zero support from your peers just ends up defining how every and all official responses from Mineplex here on out.
The Slope Down
So we’re at mid-2016. Chiss, the original creator of the uniqueness of Mineplex is gone. Spu, the recruiter of content creators is gone.
Sigils comes in to replace Chiss, creates multiple minigames, but are later removed due to decrease in popularity. Although this keeps Mineplex at a somewhat steady player count, it’s still heading down. Hypixel at the time is releasing blockbuster games while Mineplex continues to pump out average water downed experiences due to their poor planning and zero long-term support for their code base.
During this same period of time Mineplex also invested outside of Minecraft. Two android games were developed, one including over 50 levels of content and about 90% development complete. As well, Mineplex invested resources into a Roblox game, a direct competitor to Minecraft. They had a working prototype of one of their minigames, Turf Wars, working in Roblox, and 2 full time developers. Sterling stepped in late 2016 and closed off development of anything to do with Minecraft, and firing the developers involved.
This continues until early 2017, in which AppleG and Strutt20 purchases Chiss’ shares of Mineplex. AppleG comes in to try and organize the operations, but ends up eventually failing to do so, as he doesn’t have any previous experience with Minecraft, and in his 4 years at Mineplex, only interacts with his core product a few times.
Strutt20, previously hired to manage support, leaps at the opportunity to manage production. Deciding what to make and produce next while also having no previous experience to do so.
It’s Failure to Recover
At this point the original creators of Mineplex are long gone and haven’t touched any design or game development in years. It’s mid 2017, the creations being pumped out by Sigils and his design team (including me) are failing to gain attention or community support. There are millions of players joining, but zero player retention. Late 2017 is when the event internally know as “the firing” happens. Sigils, multiple developers, and admins are let go with no advanced notice. Throughout the next year the rest of creative development leaves Mineplex, leaving only admins that rose from a volunteer moderation position to design and create new content. So where is Mineplex at now?
Code Base
One of Mineplex’s largest issues in resolving anything is it’s legacy code base, built over the years by multiple developers that did not assume the same code would still be used today. Anyone that develops system with long term support would already know how much of a disaster dealing with such a spaghetti code of a system, but imagine dealing with an additional database on top of it, stored inefficiently, and with millions of entries that the current ownership refuses to trim.
A small example of this is hoppers. Nowhere in Mineplex is the hopper inventory, because if a developer wants to add this small feature, they would have to go through years of horrible and unmanaged code to accomplish this. So far, no one has bothered because of the mass effort required to accomplish such a small task.
If you’ve ever hopped on and played Mineplex, especially recently, you may have noticed a light lingering lag that does not appear on other servers. That lag is the large database attempting to retrieve your information or save it. If you ever switch servers and start a game, try and pay attention to how long it takes for items to appear in your inventory, or your information to update. A significant amount of that lag could be reduced if all information of, lets say, players with less than 2 games played were dropped. This would trim a good 70% of entries in the database, significantly increasing the stability of the overall network. However, the current ownership believes there is worth in that large amount of usernames, and refuses to drop the data. Even if it means a better experience for the current players, which leads me to my next point.
Lack of Community Awareness
From the outside this is the easiest to point out, Mineplex’s lack of interaction or reaction to the community that still plays. While this hasn’t always been a major issue (specifically when Chiss handled community management, as well as when Nuclear_Poptart handled this), however has been on the rise as of Chiss’ step down.
Going back to describing exactly what type of community Mineplex had, the staff attempted to do everything they could to avoid the community instead of working with them. However, they were still making content for the community, so Mineplex just ended up releasing content that no one in the community wanted because of the pure lack of interaction.
To this day, the owners still haven’t had a real conversation with someone in the community, or even played games on Mineplex. The total takeover of production while also being far away from the community as they can results in incredibly tone-depth responses
These rules and methods are very trickle-down. Ownership yells at admins, admins yell at moderators, moderators yell at community members. It’s a circle of inappropriate behavior. For example, one of the many rules Mineplex enforces is giving zero feedback unless you can come up with a better idea for them to use.
I want to make it clear, while I was an administrator at Mineplex I enforced this rule. It was only once I left Mineplex that I understood how this creates and echo chamber of feedback. Because of this rule Mineplex would only receive positive feedback for an update, allowing ownership to shift the blame of failure to someone or something else. It’s empty feedback, you might as well allow no feedback at all. As shown above, the average age of players at Mineplex isn’t that old. It’s unfair to ask for constructive feedback, even when you redefine the rules of what’s considered constructive. This is only one of many examples of Mineplex and it’s administration pushing the blame onto someone else so they can claim zero responsibility for their own failure.
Failing to Follow Trends
Because of the lack of interaction with their community, they also lost track of what made them popular in the first place; following trends. When Chiss and Spu were at the peak of Mineplex, the games coming out were on the current Minecraft trend. This allowed YouTubers and Twitch streamers to make content inside of Mineplex for their audience retention, allowing this circle of new players jumping on Mineplex from YouTuber videos and streams. Since the fall of communication Mineplex has failed to stay a step ahead in trends, loosing their trend with YouTubers.
For example, let’s take the Bedwars trend. Hypixel released their variant of this January 2017, already late to the party. Mineplex released their variant (Cake Wars) November the same year, 11 months later. At this point not only did other servers already have their own flair, but Hypixel firmly had their game already in place. Even still, after Mineplex released Cake Wars, it quickly became their most popular game. Imagine what would happen if Mineplex actually stayed on trend and didn’t loose all of those potential players from a buggy mess of a code base, a tone-depth moderation and ownership teams, and a failure to actually jump on popular trends in the first place.
Where Is Mineplex Now?
Mineplex is currently on a somewhat stable amount of players, with players hoping that things will magically change for the better for their favorite games that haven’t been updated in almost 5 years now. They recently introduced a paid subscription model called Immortal, allowing you to buy bug fixes for previously free features, as well as staff only permissions; allowing you to harass other players on the server. This income stream has allowed them to stay somewhat stable for the time.
Mineplex and its future will be dependent on its community here on out. The community should not expect interaction or updates from Mineplex beyond the level of updates it has received in the past year. It’s become a niche community of those that take their own levels and stats very personally, and that’s ok. Mineplex’s community (not Mineplex its self) has done an incredible job in keep its self together and using the platform as a base for social interactions and fun events.
In Conclusion
There are plenty of reasons why Mineplex’s old audience do not play on Mineplex anymore that I did not go over, including the amount of cheaters, no updates to their favorite games, developer turnover rate, and internal drama. However, I do want to try and make a connection that most if not all of the issues frequently talked about in the community, in one way or another, link back to the issues I stated above. Those, even with little power at Mineplex, always follow the inappropriate behavior shown by the ownership and parrot it in hopes of either ignorantly being able to change Mineplex for the better, or to be able to parrot the same behavior to someone else.
It’s sickening, detrimental to the mental health of the contractors working at Mineplex, and I hope it stops.
📝 Save this story in Journal.
