Forwarding the announcement post from our discord:
Satlantis Community,
First of all I want to thank you all for playing and supporting Satlantis for nearly a year now.
Mojang, the developers of Minecraft, have contacted us stating that we must remove the play-to-earn functionality from the server.
What does this mean for the future of Satlantis?
This sucks. There’s no getting around that. But,
SATLANTIS WILL LIVE ON
“The Game That Shares its Profits with Players” works. And it works well. All of the time, money, and energy that we put into this game together will not be forsaken by a few dinosaurs at some conglomerate. We will be porting the Satlantis community to a platform that encourages innovation, instead of stifling it. We are currently exploring platform options and I will keep you all updated in regards to that.
What does this mean for you, the player?
We will continue to do right by the players that make this all possible. All of your sats in-game will be honored. Please submit your withdrawals and I will work through the weekend to ensure they are processed. All of your ASICs will be ported to the new platform, as well the prize pool, your premium battlepass status and all other progress and data that is possible to transfer.
The minecraft server itself will continue running(without any pay-to-earn functionality) for the foreseeable future. This is to ensure the transition to our next game platform is as smooth as possible and allow you all to continue enjoying the great world you’ve built.
Stay tuned to our discord for further updates.
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🤘SATLANTIS WILL LIVE ON🤘
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Sad.
Would you be willing to continue the project on top of Minetest? It's open source and with a sizable community.
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We're considering it, but one of the maintainers of minetest plays on Satlantis and he doesn't feel its production ready for what we're trying to do
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I was a minor admin for Civcraft, and we went through something similar to, but less serious than, what you guys are going through now. After a year of runnning the Civcraft server with 300 players everyday in 2011 (or 2012, I forget), it was decided that Minecraft was too slow and too limiting.
We looked at Minetest, but it was way too rough at the time. And it still has security issues that will be difficult to address. The other Civcraft admins started developing a new engine. Despite having a lot of really good ideas, development ultimately failed. It turns out that programmers often don't make good businessmen.
I recommend setting up an email newsletter so you can inform players whenever you get Satlantis working on a new engine.
By line count, Minetest is written mostly in C++, so it will likely be a while before it could be made production ready. A complete re-write in an entirely different language may be necessary. I recommend writing such an engine entirely in a higher level language, such as Common Lisp. There are so many things that Common Lisp does for you that C++ and Java simply can't do without a huge amount of work (hence why Minetest will take a long time to be production ready, and why Minecraft in Java was limiting).
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Then why not contribute to that codebase? Only by making it production ready can you then truly call it your game
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Kind of odd when platforms hate people innovating on their platform.
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That is pure signal that Bitcoin wins... They do not like it when Bitcoin wins so their last resort is to kill the innovation.
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Maybe it's more because of legal compliance? Not sure
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Its against Mojang/Microsoft end user license agreement. Every server admin must agree to the EULA by setting eula=true in their server config.
Microsoft has the right to enforce any rules that want on their property. Disallowing third party payments is one of those rules.
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Sad on two accounts. One is for the operator and community.
The other is that my kids could have been stacking this entire time if only I had known about this!
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That's one of these posts where you don't know if you want to zap since it makes it look like you like it, lol
But can't zap anyway! haha
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Zapped to spread awareness on your behalf
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It's unfortunate how much effort is wasted in the Bitcoin community because innovators have done no research about what kinds of rules they're breaking. Then after years of work, they get big enough to be targeted and shutdown.
The same will happen to SN. They will be forced to issue 1099 tax forms to users who earned more than $600 in a year.
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Yet SN is still here. And you're still here.
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Yea, and Satlantis allowed BTC transfers until recently too I won't be here when SN starts KYC-ing users to issue them 1099s tho
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Why would you assume that SN will need to abide by some US requirement? Fuck 1099s, worst case: you can't use the platform is your reside in the US aka hello my VPN friend.
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Because "made in Austin, TX" is at the footer of every page on the site. SN is also custody all the sats held in user wallets and the SN node handles all the withdraws.
Yes, there will be ways around it. But, IMO, SN should focus on a new model with respect to how users are paid, lest they become a central point for regulation.
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You raise an interesting set of points that I had no considered previously. Certainly something to be aware of, might be prudent to try and decentralize the infrastructure of this site as much as possible.
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Same. Had given zero thought to this. I don't think I'm in danger of earning $600, but even so, what would the maximally-decentralized architecture for a SN-like thing be? I assume there would be all sorts of interesting choices based on different threat models.
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Something like nostr where each user brings their own LN address and every tip is p2p without a middleman taking custody. Maybe theres a way for SN to generate a payment split, so from every tip made using the webapp, some gets sent to SN. But that won't stop people from tipping using their wallet and sending to user's LN address directly and SN getting no cut.
When these regulations get enforced on SN, it likely won't be too traumatic. Just depends on how much "the law" wants to make SN feel the pain. Best case, zaps are disabled for a few days/weeks while they find some other way to enable tipping. Worst case, they are forced to collect KYC from every user to "ensure" that users aren't making duplicate accounts to bypass the 1099 earning limit.
There are loopholes for things like "credit card rewards". Where users can get paid more than $600 and not have to report it. So maybe if SN gets a good legal defense, they can slide under this exemption.
My thesis is (unless regulations change), SN will have to become a Nostr client like Primal, Damus, Snort, etc.
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
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YouTube super chats are just basically a one-time donation that YouTube/Google takes an automatic 30% cut from, in exchange for displaying a message the donor submits along with the payment, pinned to the top of the stream's chat for varying amounts of time (more money donated = longer time pinned/longer message length allowed).
The Bits thing on Twitch is more or less the same thing just without having the message feature necessarily tied to it, users can choose to use the "bits" in whatever way they want to, such as highlighting messages in chat or redeeming certain pre-set features determined by the streamers themselves, they wind up just showing up on the backend as income for the streamer the same as anything else. This is why it's preferable for most people who are using these platforms to simply go with a third party donation service like Streamlabs' payment processor or others who take a far smaller cut, though this proves to be too much to ask of most viewers (unfortunately).
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There's nothing stopping any player from building a giant QR code for their LNURL address using black and white wool on any minecraft server. Take that Mojang!
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That is a sad developement, but I am sure Satlantis will find a new home or as they say if you build it they will come.
Would love to see Satlandis securing the funding to go nuclear and wipe the grin off Mojangs face.
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If you are leaving Bitcoin at this level then you are leaving something big on the table for others to go grab
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What were you thinking, using a CENTRALIZED codebase run by MICROSOFT???
Switch to Minetest, the open source version of Minecraft where you can do whatever the beef you want without requiring permission.
Not your code not your game.
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Minecraft's loss
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