Hello everyone!

For over five years now, this server (which started as the Legundo Community Server) has been pretty much exclusively free for the entire community. Last year we introduced the Legend rank, a single unified place to support what we now know as leg.gg and to bring some opportunities for the server to come out cost-neutral on a monthly basis.

Today, we're releasing a whole new lineup of cosmetic features, and with it bringing cosmetic customization and monetization to leg.gg in a way that we hope will be the best for everyone.

So let's break it down!

Cosmetics!

Right of the top of the article - LOOK AT THESE! These amazing cosmetic items made by Sylnin, Jeahnoh, JohnnyHT, and Legundo are a brand new way to represent yourself on Leg.GG in style!

Cosmetics will be applied in the Hub server, as well as any game where they do not interfere with gameplay. Blowout will only have HEAD slot items, and Flower Frenzy currently does not support cosmetics as it's a more survival experience. Our next matchmade game will support both HEAD and OFFHAND item slots.

Starting last week, you probably noticed these two new bars at the bottom of your screen when connecting to the network hub. These two gages track the two new currencies being added at a network-level for Leg.GG, Gems and Coins.

Using these two currencies, you will be able to unlock these cosmetics in the daily server shop to show off and support the server at the same time.

Gems

If you've played basically ANY GAME THIS DECADE you probably understand the concept of a premium currency in a game. It's popular because it makes things easier for developers - we can work in whole numbers and simplified numbers instead of worrying about dozens of real life currencies and conversion rates.

Gems, for Leg.GG, work on a simple conversion rate. 1 Gem roughly equals $0.02, varying slightly as larger packages are purchased which provide additional gems as a bonus for a larger support of the server.

Gems are a premium currency that can be used to purchase cosmetic items in the daily rotator shop. Right now - that's it. In the near future gems will be able to purchase server-wide boosters for games that will boost Coins (our free-to-play currency, earned ONLY by playing) or to trigger server-wide boosts for all players in our long-form games. More info on that coming when those features are announced.

Coins

Coins are, simply, earned by playing. After playing games (currently implemented in Flower Frenzy and Blowout) you'll see a message like this pop up!

Coins are earned by all players, with a bonus for winning each individual game. Currently, if you're playing all of our minigames, we expect players to earn around 2,000 coins per hour. Coins can be used to purchase all cosmetic items, or to trigger server-wide boosts for all players in our long-form games. More info on that coming when those features are announced.

Ranks

What about the Legend Rank?

Well - that's not going anywhere, but it is receiving two new perks. A monthly 250 Gem Bonus, as well as an exclusive Legend Rank Trident which you can see a prototype of below:

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The Gem bonus will apply to all new Legend Rank purchases effective today, and we will be backdating it for all existing Legend players over this weekend - so you should receive your Gems soon. The Legend Trident will be sent to all players once we finalize the animations (Jeah is taking their time to get this right) and will be automatic once the item is complete.

Why now?

Not counting the domain itself, or the sporadic commissioning of art, maps, and other assets - leg.gg costs about $600 a month to run. Between two dedicated server machines, domains, security protections, DDOS mitigation, and the licenses for a lot of the assets used on the server, that's a pretty safe estimate.

As the server continues to (hopefully) grow, we're preparing for that number to rise, but to do that we need to know we can do so safely and not have the server run at a compounding loss month over month.

Additionally - we just hired our first actual Leg.GG employee, Melizsa, who is working as a community manager to help us lead the mods, testers, and builders and to help organize events and act as a community liaison to make our server the best it can be for creators and players alike.

For the past few years, the server has been paid for by the YouTube channel, but the goal would to not have everything I do interdependent on each other in order to safeguard each project. A bad month on YouTube shouldn't mean that the server can't do cool stuff, and vice versa.

Core Promises

Right now, day one, I can promise three things to you with monetization coming to the server.

1 ) There will NEVER be a way to pay for in-game currencies or items that provide a material advantage in gameplay on our server.

You won't be seeing creative flight, or OP armor for the SMPs, or Echo Shards in Extraction ever being for sale in the shop. Not only are they just not allowed by Mojang, but they're just... stupid.

Removing the need to play the game means we shouldn't be developing it in the first place. Any time people can purchase something that will affect the core loot or currency drops in a game, it will affect ALL PLAYERS during that time (think similar to SMP+ Season 5 Boosters).

2 ) If and when we implement random systems, you will NEVER receive a duplicate of an item you already own.

If you spend money, you should get something. We're launching the cosmetics functionality with 6 statically rolled items that rotate daily. You might see a duplicate item in this store, but you can't purchase the same thing twice.

If and when we add ways to randomly acquire an item, there will never be duplicates. If you spend money, you're getting something useful from that money.

If and when random items or monetization features are ever added to leg.gg, a fully up-to-date probability of any random chance items will be available here on the website. You should always know what you're getting into.

3 ) We won't restrict core features of the server behind a paywall into annoying you to pay.

While some features of leg.gg will be restricted to premium (aka Legend or other ranked) members, we will never fully paywall any new games, new expansions, or quality of life features that makes our games enjoyable.

Core features like remote queuing, the full complement of slots of any UIs in the game, automatic collection of idle elements in Extraction Season 2 (oh I guess we're spoiling that today), and other quality of life features will never be removed and put behind a paywall.

There is the potential, down the line, for adding an additional rank above Legend that would enable some features such as private lobbies of our games, as well as the ability to run customizable player tournaments across multiple Leg.GG minigames automatically. That is... pretty obviously I hope... a MASSIVE undertaking that I hope justifies the potentially higher price tag when it becomes available. More info on that probably months or even a year from now when all that work is taken on.

That's it. This is probably the single biggest change to Leg.GG over the past few years, surpassing the migration away from ranks being attached to Twitch and YouTube subscribership and instead becoming their own thing.

Efforts like this will help future seasons of SMP+, Extraction, and new games like Blowout and Flower Frenzy to continue to grow and thrive. I am so thankful for anything anyone chooses to do with the games we've made, and so appreciative of the continued support as we continue to grow.

Onwards and upwards - together.

Legs