TL;DR: I professionally ran a Minecraft server for three years. While I was 10-13 years old. Still don’t know how I managed to pull it off.
The SurvivalCraft-MC Network. Oh, what an interesting time of my life. It’s the reason why I can say I was a professional Minecraft Server owner for 3 years – because that’s exactly what happened.
Back in September 2013, I made a Minecraft server. That then tumbled into a server that remained up for 3 years, got about 1,000 unique players, which led to a lot of work.
Running a Minecraft server is an interesting thing to do. Since I ran it solo, there were a lot of aspects to it. Server management, plugin management, staff management, community management, website management, squirrel management (okay maybe not that one).
It’s a lot of management, management, management. Running the SurvivalCraft-MC Network was literally my full-time job for about 3 years.
I baked in many gamemodes and features into the server – Survival, Creative, Creative Flatlands, PvP, Parkour, Prison, Survival Games, Factions, all the usual stuff that a Minecraft server circa-2015 would have. It was absolutely insane how much stuff there was on this server.
Anyway, back in the day it was pretty fun to run a server. I learned a lot about hosting, domains, DNS, all that good stuff. I got my basic knowledge of Linux from running this server, and started up my first VPS on OVH (which I still use today!).
On the web side of things, I learned about Enjin, myBB, Weebly, and more about WordPress
In mid 2016, shit hit the fan for the server. After 3 years and two shutdowns, staff were getting corrupt, I got doxed by a player who lived about an hour away (so you could imagine how not scared I was), and not to mention Minecraft was dying. As a result, in August 2016, I shut down the server for good.
Four years on, it’s interesting to look back on this project. 2016 was the pivotal moment where I switched from Minecraft server management to software development – and I think this switch for the better.
It’s also really interesting to look back on this project, and how much time I put into it. It continues to be one of the biggest projects I’ve ever made – track.easterbunny.cc (my 2nd biggest project) hasn’t yet hit the level of complexity SurvivalCraft-MC had.
I can’t see myself managing a Minecraft server on this scale nowadays. Towards the final year of managing the server, a huge chunk of my time was spent on server upkeep. I’m happy that I put the server to rest, and took up a career in coding instead. But, I won’t forget about SCMC, and the huge impact that it had on my life.
Seems sad that you shut down your server ;-; It would have been fun.. If only I found it in time 😛