Donate to Server Costs

Many of you enjoy the warm, fuzzy feeling that you get from donating to support your favorite MUD, LotJ. Here is a breakdown of our annual operating costs.

Server Hosting: ~$100.00/month ($1,200/year)

Domain Registration: $20.00/year

Email Hosting: $17.00/month ($204/year)

Assorted Other Things: ~$100.00/year

Payment Processing Fees: ~5% of donations (~$80/year)

Total: ~$1,600.00/year

Any additional donations received over our $1,600 goal will be put towards server costs for the next year. If we don’t reach our goal, Rojan and Walldo make up the difference.

If you have any suggestions on how we can save money, feel free to let us know at [email protected]

We’ve formed an LLC called Keyboard Galaxies LLC to officially hold the infrastructure behind the MUDs we run (LotJ and AvP): domains, server accounts, hosting, and the rest of the boring operational stuff. This is something we probably should’ve done years ago. Twenty-plus years in, it just makes sense for this to live in its own entity rather than tangled up with personal accounts.

To be clear about what the LLC actually is: it’s a legal structure to consolidate operation of the game and give it some separation from any one person. It owns the domains, the hosting accounts, the GitHub organizations, the various service subscriptions that keep things running, and any LotJ-related IP that would otherwise be personally held. It doesnot own any open-source, licensed, or otherwise protected IP belonging to other parties, and it does not own the characters and content our players create. Community contributions remain community contributions.

Nothing actually changes for you. Same team running things, same games, same free access. The only practical difference is that donations now go to the LLC’s bank account instead of a personal one, and they’ll continue to be used for exactly what they’ve always been used for: covering hosting and infrastructure costs.

The MUDs remain what they’ve always been: non-commercial, volunteer-run community projects. No one’s making money off this, nothing’s being commercialized. This is just cleaner paperwork.

Obligatory disclaimer while we’re at it: neither LotJ nor AvP MUD are affiliated with or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd., The Walt Disney Company, 20th Century Studios, Disney, or any other rights holders. Star Wars and Alien vs. Predator are trademarks of their respective owners.