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IMPORTANT! Server hosting and costs - possible shutdown of Pitboss hosting!

Would it be possible for me to just pay the server host directly?
Current games (All): RtR: PB80 Civ 6: PBEM23

Ended games (Selection): BTS games: PB1, PB3, PBEM2, PBEM4, PBEM5B, PBEM50. RB mod games: PB5, PB15, PB27, PB37, PB42, PB46, PB71. FFH games: PBEMVII, PBEMXII. Civ 6:  PBEM22 Games ded lurked: PB18
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(December 9th, 2017, 20:42)Krill Wrote: Would it be possible for me to just pay the server host directly?
Yes, if you can pay via PayPal. :-)
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
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(December 7th, 2017, 15:32)Mardoc Wrote: The switch to per-creator instead of one monthly transaction is annoying, though.  I can't think of a good reason for it, anyway.

I ran across a plausible good reason:  https://subfictional.com/my-theory-patre...-business/

TL:DR - it might be that Patreon ran into federal regulations on being a 'Money Transmission' business.  It would explain the shift to a model where they never hold on to anyone's money, and it would also explain why they're being so close-mouthed.  It's always a bad idea to comment on pending litigation/fines/etc, and especially a bad idea if they're in a grey area.  They might be debating between telling the regulators 'We're sorry, didn't realize it's illegal, we stopped as soon as you told us and please have mercy' or arguing 'actually, that law doesn't apply to us because...'
EitB 25 - Perpentach
Occasional mapmaker

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Here is the receipt for Oct/Nov and Nov/Dev for the server costs. smile

           
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
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Evidently Patreon was under heavy fire for the changes they were planning. They've issued an apology and will not implement the changes as previously outlined:

https://blog.patreon.com/not-rolling-out-fees-change/

Maybe they'll be more careful about how they implement fees for small donations next time around....

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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Did the server get shut down for January due to costs?
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(January 29th, 2018, 07:25)Mulder84 Wrote: Did the server get shut down for January due to costs?
The server is up and running.. I just double checked. I am unaware of any outages previously too.
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
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(January 29th, 2018, 07:27)Caledorn Wrote:
(January 29th, 2018, 07:25)Mulder84 Wrote: Did the server get shut down for January due to costs?
The server is up and running.. I just double checked. I am unaware of any outages previously too.

Thank you for checking.
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Hello everyone

All good things must come to an end it seems. My hosting provider is closing shop, and as such the Pitboss server will cease to function from 31. Dec 2018 (Possibly sooner). I will receive the VM Image from him at that date, and I will provide you guys with temporary setup of the Pitboss games at home again. However, we need to find a different solution, as I simply don't have the available hardware resources to host it from home. A couple of potential suggestions are:

* We find a new VPS provider - however, these are more expensive than what we're paying today. One example of this would for instance be hostwinds.net, where an unmanaged Windows VPS with 2 cores, 4GB RAM and 75GB SSD storage would cost us $21.59 per month. I am not 100% sure that this is enough hardware for running the Pitbosses, but given that we're talking about a 10+ year old game here, and that the Pitboss server itself really does not drain much resources on the server, I suspect that it is enough.
* We find someone else in this community who have the available hardware to provide hosting, and my time as the RB host comes to an end.

It's all up to you guys of course. If the second option is picked, then please end your Patronage on the Patreon page, as I have no desire to have any personal gains from you guys.

Please use this thread to discuss options, so that I am kept in the loop. Thank you :-)
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
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BTW - Another option that I didn't think about when I wrote the post above is that we could pool some resources together and perhaps buy some cheap old parts and build a dedicated server that I can host here at home. It would probably cost a few hundred bucks, but if people are interested in that option, please let me know and I'll look into used computer parts in my area and see if I can come up with some quotes.

Edit: Just for fun, I've looked up the local equivalent to EBay, and I've found several systems that would suffice perfectly, and we're talking about a price range between $400 and $600 depending on good a system in terms of RAM, storage etc we want in such a server. I'm not in a financial position currently to dip in myself, so people would have to pool together for us to go with this option. However, compared to a VPS, unless any part in the computer were to fail, this is a one-time investment instead of a regular monthly cost, so long-term it would save the community money - and I would be able to maintain the thing locally if we want to go with this option. But of course, computer parts do fail from time to time, so there's no guarantee that we wouldn't have to replace any part. Especially the two most common parts that fail - the HDD and the PSU (In my experience those two parts are the parts that fail regularly with 3-5 year intervals).
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
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