Literally worse than EA
Hosting game servers is hard, expensive work. Hosting Minecraft servers is even tougher since the hardware requirements are pretty steep and the main userbase doesn't have much money to kick into the pot.Minefold was a YC company that tried to make a go of monetising Minecraft hosting in the Right Way. They were smart guys and built a great platform, but they're not around any more. I believe it's because it was just too hard to get Minecraft users to pay anything for their servers.We looked into ways to incorporate advertising into Minecraft in a player-friendly way. Mojang weren't interested in helping, but it wasn't the technical barrier that stopped us. It was inability to find buyers for the ad slots given the perceived demographic of the game.Online multiplayer doesn't happen well without servers to mediate the experience. Those servers cost money. This remains a massive unsolved problem in the gaming industry.