I did some math in another thread and determined that sever costs are likely between $1,000 and $7,000 USD a month, but remember that those servers are also running the 300+ sov planets, which generate at least $3,000 monthly revenue assuming they are all the smallest size.
Can the servers even handle an influx of players? I would much rather see the playerbase grow than just “maintain”.
Phil had indicated the server costs for the public universe was in the low thousands per month. Unfortunately he was not more specific than that. That probably fits more with your high end total (including Sovereigns) than the low end. The public might be more expensive since they support more player instances than the sovereign planets .
Technically we had over 1000 players on the public planets simultaneously (this was long before sovereigns and I think even before exo-planets). I do think there were some issues with some planets being full, but how many I have no idea. I would think the existing public universe could handle more players than we have now, since it has done so in the past successfully. Maybe not over 1000 and everyone being happy but certainly more than we have now.
I do agree more players is better for the game. Hopefully more players is more gleam club and other revenue to support the game.
This was why I asked if it could even support it. I want the game to be more popular but if it can’t support a player base of more than 1000 the game will never be more than that sadly. I am talking about 50k+ players here.
With that large of a player base, revenue would most likely be a non-issue.
There is probably some number of concurrent players that could use the public planets without having issues. All I can assume is the number is between what we have now and the 1000+ Steam and PS players we had for the Steam free weekend. Now is that total players? Probably not. But I would hope that it is a number that could successfully fund the game
As long as the growth is at a moderate rate, the developers can always add more planets. If we got to 50k + players I wonder how many planets that would actually require? Several hundred at least I would think. I do think this size universe makes the game very different from what it is now. As an example, is there really one guild of players that could manage a portal network across so many planets?
As IIRC in posts the Devs never considered these large portal networks as an actual thing and these large networks posed issues for the game. I am guessing those issues were addressed.
I wouldn’t count gamers out though; they always find a way to make things happen.
This is all speculation, but the game deserves a larger player base, but if it can’t support it, that is quite sad.
I agree the game deserves a larger player base. I feel that it can support it since, the universe was structured to be able to add planets as the player base grew.
I will also agree that players would find a way to make travel work even if it was more a series of regional networks with a few central networks tying them together. I think the ability for players to travel pretty seamlessly across the universe is an important part of the game, even if it was not what the developers had imagined would happen.
Edit: I guess what I am wondering is what is going to happen or change that will bring more players to the game? Is this at all part of what James is going to announce?
My estimates are based on how many individual server instances there are and an estimation of what type of AWS instance the software would require. Since we don’t really have access to the standalone server yet, it’s only possible for me to guess based on known CPU requirements, which is why the range is so big.
My guess is that they have saved up enough sov revenue over the last year, or that the new agreements or something will allow them to hire a full time or part time developer to start getting any development velocity going, but that’s a mostly blind guess - at this point it could be anything tbh.
I’m not sure if it’s the main issue, but one of the issues that persists is that looking at a world through a portal counts as being on that world, so if you go looking through all the portals at a hub, you’re affecting the player count on those worlds. If there are a bunch of hubs and a bunch of people looking through portals, that’s a lot of “not really” players counting toward the player cap.
Go ahead and shut it down @james I would not blame you one bit. It has been a great run
Stay Boundless!
Hopefully just an expression of how much you like this game but if not here is a number that could help before this game shuts down 800-273-8255.
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It’s Both!!! But being Funny with it I’m already live in a Mental Ward for 2 years now all I’ll say
“Thank you” for the # Dough xD (explains why I’m on 24/7) they probably extend my time in here if boundless went off on serious note lol 
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Your Boundless family always here for you if you need us, reach out! I’m sorry you feel such hurt… 
I do understand some of the feeling you’re expressing, I’ll openly admit there are times I feel like it is basically games and my cats that keep me plugging along with my own existence here. Games can be the biggest healing and greatest escape from the pain and troubles of life. There is no “just” about games… they are so much more, to so many of us.
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Life is way too precious to have to suffer through, especially alone. I am always around on here or Discord if anyone ever needs someone to talk to or just someone to hear you and listen. 
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There’s a lot of unnecessary guessing here.
There’s a software cap of what, 85 players per planet, now? That’s because the world server as it was couldn’t really support the original limit of 100 per planet. 85 per planet has been fine, I don’t think they ever raised it again.
So anyways population cap * worlds is it. No more regardless of running an entire AWS datacenter as a single instance.
50 * 85 = 4250 absolute max on public servers. You could add as many as you want on sovs but nobody would be able to travel any route that depended on a public world.
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We are lucky to have 85 in the entire game currently so wishful thinking on my part.
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I think that if something like this actually came up, especially if there were a significant increase in the number of planets, the megahub style network would quickly die off, and the Portal Seekers style travel network would become more valuable again. If routes between worlds started getting clogged even after that change, it would make sense for more routes to open up through less popular worlds.
But, all of this is silly speculation. Fun, but silly.
That’s just a snapshot of concurrent players at that moment. Doesn’t include playstation players nor MAU Monthly Active Users number, which is much higher.
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