Let me re-iterate something: I don't like Tezuni or his servers. Personally I'd love to see the donation disappear because then I probably wouldn't have to see his garbage servers on the server list. But what I don't like is all these dipstuff donation gestapo characters stuffting on Tezuni because he dares give some players some trinket-tier bullstuff when they spend over 2x the game's worth of their own money to help him maintain his server.
A sticker is useless. Access to a room with extra items is not. You're comparing apples to oranges here, I doubt a sticker would cause more people to donate to them.
I'm not saying the system is bad, by the way. I just don't think you can call it a donation if you get something useful in return.
$5 for a particle effect? $25 for some extra guns? I guess a few extra gimmicky guns in a jail dress up game might be more useful than a sticker if I was literally 5 years old. Paying $25 for some cutesy souvenir-tier knick-knacks isn't 'useful', it's just a gewgaw for paying a dis-proportional large sum of money out of appreciation for a server.
Is it possible that people are probably sending in donations for some half-assed titles to feel important on a lego game? Yeah, definitely. Or maybe they just have extra money to throw around and don't want to see the server die. I don't understand why it matters, and I don't understand why you're trying to speak for them. You're missing the point either way.
Let's step it up a bit, say Salvation Army throws in a free T-Shirt. Are we apples to apples yet? Still a donation.
That the money is being used to pay for the server is irrelevant. You give money to Badspot, he gives you a blockland key in return and uses the money to pay for the master server and CDN. Is that a donation?
The difference being that Badspot earns a forgetload of money from selling copies of Blockland and turns a gigantic profit to the point where he can sit inside all day drawing lesbian research because his entire income comes from this game. I'd be surprised if Tezuni's expensive ass VPN wasn't putting him in a deficit, regardless of his donation system.
Do you have to pay $10 to access Tezuni's server? Talk about forgetin' apples to oranges.
