About

Gamocosm is free and open-source software. Gamocosm is free in that it respects your freedom and the community. Gamocosm doesn't accept payment, hosts no ads, and doesn't track any user data (it only stores what it directly needs to use). Read our Security and Privacy wiki page.

Gamocosm is the product of multiple contributors. As of 2023 July 27, I (Raekye) have been the sole maintainer of Gamocosm (e.g. running this website); so following section is written in first person.

I don't make any money off of Gamocosm. I intend to keep everything as transparent as possible. Gamocosm does present my referral link for Digital Ocean - each such link should have a hover-text saying so, and be followed by a "no referral" link in parantheses. The Gamocosm server(s) used to be hosted on a separate Digital Ocean account (just for Gamocosm), but at this point (especially with the introduction of Digital Ocean teams), it's just easier for me to manage everything under one account. I changed the referral link to point to my personal account in this commit.

Contact

  • Submit an issue on GitHub
  • Gitter chat (you can also join #gamocosm_Lobby on the gitter.im homeserver using any Matrix client). This is the preferred method of contacting me.
  • IRC in #gamocosm on irc.esper.net. You can also direct message me on libera.chat. Although IRC doesn't require any sign up, it doesn't keep history by default, so unless you actually run your own IRC client/bouncer, you're probably going to miss my response/I won't bother if you've disconnected.

Source

The source code is on GitHub. Feel free to fork and send a pull request!

Basic Information

How much does per hour hosting cost?
Let's say you and your friends play 2 hours a day, every day. That's ~60 hours a month. Typically, private servers only need 1GB-2GB of RAM. On Digital Ocean (no referral), this is 0.7-1.5 cents an hour (pricing, no referral), or ~$0.40-$0.80 a month.
What is Digital Ocean?
Digital Ocean is a general purpose cloud hosting provider. They host a lot of servers, not just for Minecraft, so their prices are about as low as servers get. A lot of developers/companies use Digital Ocean for their websites and apps; they're not just another Minecraft hosting startup. Running Minecraft on Digital Ocean is not only cheap, but you have unrestricted access to the server! It's more work to set up and manage a server on Digital Ocean yourself, but Gamocosm tries to bridge that gap.
If Digital Ocean is hosting the server, what is Gamocosm doing?

Gamocosm sets up your server. Digital Ocean provides a bare linux server, so you/Gamocosm needs to install and configure it to be a ready, secure Minecraft server. If you're interested, check this wiki page for more info on the setup.

Secondly, Digital Ocean continues charging you when you just stop a server, because its resources are still allocated. When you turn off a server on Gamocosm, it snapshots (backs up), and destroys your server. When you turn on a server, Gamocosm recreates it from the snapshot. This way, you only pay when the server is in use.

That's a little confusing
Just make sure you click "Turn off" on Gamocosm when you're done playing!
Anything else I should know?
Gamocosm just automates the general process of running Minecraft on a cloud server - you have full access to a Linux machine; you can do whatever you want with it! You can SSH, FTP, install mods, and even use entirely custom servers!

FAQs

There's a bug!
Do one of the following:
Why does it take so long to start/stop a server?
Cloud hosting providers continue to charge you when your server is off, because resources are still allocated for you. What you can do is backup the server, destroy it, and restore the server from the backup the next time you need it. This is one of the things Gamocosm does for you automatically. It is a tradeoff so you can have the insanely low prices. Estimate: 2 minutes start time (5+ minutes first time creating server). Read more about how this works in the About page.
What's the difference between the domain and IP address?
An IP address locates an actual server. Domains map to IP addresses, and are used because they're easier to remember. Occasionally, the IP of your server may change, but the domain we create for your servers will always be the same. However, sometimes the old IP is cached somewhere along the pipeline, so you have to enter the IP directly.
Where is Minecraft on my server?
Your home directory is /home/mcuser/. Sometimes this is shortened as a tilda (~). Minecraft is installed in ~/minecraft/
How do I edit the ops or whitelist?
  • If there is already an operator on the server, he can op/deop/whitelist other players in chat; otherwise
  • Start the Minecraft server
  • Under "Send Command to Server", op, deop, or whitelist add/remove players
Where are my server backups?
Backups are saved on your server in ~/minecraft/backups/. However, it is recommended that you download backups (e.g. via FTP) from time to time, and keep your own local backups
How do I FTP or SSH?
See this wiki page.
How do I run different Minecraft versions, modded, or custom servers (e.g. Bukkit, Forge, Cuberite)?
See this wiki page.
How do I get my Digital Ocean API token?
See the Digital Ocean documentation.
How do I resize a server?
To increase the size:
  • Stop the server
  • Under the "Advanced" tab, update "Digital Ocean size slug" to be one of [s-1vcpu-1gb, s-1vcpu-1gb-amd, s-1vcpu-1gb-intel, s-1vcpu-1gb-35gb-intel, s-1vcpu-2gb, s-1vcpu-2gb-amd, s-1vcpu-2gb-intel, s-1vcpu-2gb-70gb-intel, s-2vcpu-2gb, s-2vcpu-2gb-amd, s-2vcpu-2gb-intel, s-2vcpu-2gb-90gb-intel, s-2vcpu-4gb, s-2vcpu-4gb-amd, s-2vcpu-4gb-intel, s-2vcpu-4gb-120gb-intel, s-2vcpu-8gb-amd, c-2, c2-2vcpu-4gb, s-2vcpu-8gb-160gb-intel, s-4vcpu-8gb, s-4vcpu-8gb-amd, s-4vcpu-8gb-intel, g-2vcpu-8gb, s-4vcpu-8gb-240gb-intel, gd-2vcpu-8gb, g-2vcpu-8gb-intel, gd-2vcpu-8gb-intel, s-4vcpu-16gb-amd, m-2vcpu-16gb, c-4, c2-4vcpu-8gb, s-4vcpu-16gb-320gb-intel, s-8vcpu-16gb]
  • Start the server
To decrease the size, you need to FTP or SSH to backup any files you want to keep (such as your world folder), and create a new server. Upload your files back on the server.
What do you mean "Autoshutdown is experimental"?

Gamocosm works with a lot of infrastructure behind the scenes; a lot can go wrong that is and isn't Gamocosm's fault (we're working hard to iron out our bugs!). Autoshutdown is an especially tricky feature, and we can't guarantee that all cases are covered - especially when thing's outside Gamocosm's control go wrong. As much as feasible has been tested, but you shouldn't rely on it to shutdown your server before a month long hiatus, for example. On the other hand, if you play daily and check your email (for when Gamocosm tries to notify you that something went wrong), it's not really a problem if your server doesn't shut down one day.

Why did we introduce this experimental feature? Because it has been requested the most! :P We - or more accurately I xD - don't have the manpower to test and push an enterprise-grade feature like this. The only way I can polish it is with user feedback and support.

Gamocosm got an error pinging/querying my server
  • Ensure enable-query is set in your server.properties
  • Ensure port 25565 is open to UDP ((sudo) firewall-cmd --add-port=25565/udp and (sudo) firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=25565/udp)
Both of these are done automatically on new servers, but you will have to do this manually for servers created before the autoshutdown update

Donations/Internet Freedom

At this time, I do not feel worthy of donations :P If possible, using Gamocosm's referral link for Digital Ocean (no referral) to subsidize server costs is appreciated. However, if you wish to support, I encourage everyone to support internet freedom groups such as Wikipedia. It's easy to gloss over their donation requests, but it is really important that we don't take them for granted!

After doing my own research, I personally set up monthly donations to the following organizations:

Really, looking at the big picture, it costs almost nothing. It only feels like a lot because "I don't have to" - bystander effect.

I personally like these quotes (tl;dr? Fight the good fight! Fighto!):

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out - Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out - Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemoeller
Other good reads: