Encreecia will become Pay to Play
In a somewhat unexpected move (even to me), Encreecia is going be run using “Pay to Play” model in the future. What this means is that the players need to subscribe with a monthly payment – the amount is open at this point.
In the first stage, the aim is to cover costs for a dedicated server hosted by Nebula. If we can’t get enough subscribers to offset the costs, another possibility is selling in-game items and goods for the players. This model has been well-tested in various online games and should prove to be effective.
In the second stage, when the server costs are covered, the plan is to fund the development with the income. This includes graphics artists, background music composers, UI designers, etc. Depending on the amount of money left, I may consider working part-time on the project myself (unlike working on it at evenings on my free time now).
The game will still remain free software in the future. The only change to that is that the Pay to Play server will be always running the newest software, and the free software releases will lag a bit behind that. So you need to subscribe to see all the bells and whistles.
Subscribers will also get priority whenever bugs and in-game issues are being looked into.
More info coming soon…
Update: Note the date 
