The project, our ambitions, our decisions.
"Great evolutions require great changes."
In this manifesto, we will cover several points:
MineStrator is a company I launched in 2017 with the ambition of pleasing administrators who lacked real service in a field that was criticized, where innovation seemed to have given way to a sense of frustration.
My personal goal was simply to earn a decent salary by working on what I am most passionate about: video games and servers.
At 20 years old, I had no idea that this project would drastically change my life. Today, we are a company with 8 employees, 8 people working full-time to offer you exceptional service, never taking the sector for granted, even after all these years.
Thank you for trusting us, thank you for changing my life, and thank you for allowing me to go further every day than I ever have before.
A key step in our evolution, we had wanted our own infrastructure and equipment for years.
Despite numerous opportunities in the past, my decision to wait for the right moment proved to be fruitful and wise.
We invested nearly €750,000 in acquiring new equipment, developing our network, and researching and developing our future service lines.
This migration allowed us to deploy many internal tools and open doors that were inaccessible during our adventure with OVH. We greatly thank OVH for all the years of collaboration and their exceptional product quality, which allowed us to start and grow. However, their pricing decisions and product developments beyond our category pushed us to move forward with the migration earlier than planned.
This decision to migrate earlier than planned, in late September 2023 instead of November 2023, was not without consequences.
Despite several years of research and development, we were caught up in the reality of large-scale production. We faced delays in equipment delivery, delays in providing protected transit, and various bugs and outages in server deployment.
This inevitably impacted service quality during this difficult period in October 2023, but we persevered.
Today, in January 2024, we have deployed an indescribable amount of patches, fixes, and additional investments over the past few months to improve the reliability and resilience of our infrastructure.
With the stability worthy of what we had in the past with OVH, we now enter phase 2: software & hardware improvement.
Since late 2022, we have been working on a complete overhaul of the MineStrator backend to align with our future ambitions. Throughout 2023, many critical points in MineStrator's operations were updated, either voluntarily or out of necessity.
We have been experiencing growing success year after year, and this success has a direct impact on the functioning of our systems, which must be constantly adapted and optimized to handle the ever-increasing influx of clients.
The influx of clients increases our needs, combined with our flagship game, Minecraft, becoming increasingly complex and resource-intensive, forcing us to adapt our internal policies and products.
Our goal has never been to produce low-cost services; others do that very well! Our goal is to provide a service at a fair price that reflects the trust our clients place in us.
The core of our time-consuming investment internally is dedicated to developing the new panel, which is a complete overhaul starting from scratch. We have also decided to move towards an API-first development approach (for those in the know).
Despite an internal technical limitation regarding the current panel, which is just waiting to be replaced, we strive to provide it with corrective updates and fluidity improvements based on client feedback.
We intend to drastically change our product vision after the upcoming pre-"new era" updates and open ourselves to other categories related to our clients' adjacent needs.
Over nearly 7 years of existence, we have made many changes to our offers and have tried to bring innovation that seems to have been well received by our clients.
One of our notable successes is the MineBox offer, which, despite its high pricing to limit entry, has not had any trouble finding its market and loyal clients. For those who are unaware, the MineBox offer is designed not to impose the rule of one offer = one instance (one server) but rather to propose one offer = resources to allocate.
This change in product vision has led to a change in client behavior, allowing them to create servers according to their needs and adjust server resources based on their players' requirements within the limits of the MineBox they own. This public beta has allowed us to better study client behavior and continuously develop this product until it reaches a maturity level that finally allows us to release it to the world with all the interest it generates.
How do we see things for its public release? "Very simple," say the optimists. "Very difficult," say the pessimists. So, as a realist, I would say it will be a major change and a significant risk for our company.
We sincerely want to allow anyone to access the flexibility offered by MineBox, but some significant obstacles stand in the way:
Therefore, we will bring drastic solutions:
Furthermore, given our changing product vision, a name change for this offer range might be appropriate.
We will soon be offering the MyBox natively as a replacement for our existing offers, which will enter an EOL (End of Life) stage over six months.
After the EOL launch and the new offer launch, we will announce all the details for our clients.
We hope to offer clients with a next-generation offer the possibility to convert their offer to a MyBox with similar specifications and pricing. However, we will not remove the old offers after the six-month period; they will simply no longer be available for rent. Clients with an old offer can keep it.
Our goal is clear: we give ourselves six months to adapt the product to clients and educate them on this new way of consuming.
More information will follow soon in future announcements on our Discord. Additionally, we plan to expand our products and centralize orders. For example, today, to order web hosting, you need to go to WebStrator.com, create an account, and order a service. We want to merge the projects to create just one platform, one account, for all your needs.
We remain vigilant not to fall into the trap of wanting to offer everything without mastering it. Web hosting is something we master, just like gaming hosting. We will take the months and years necessary to develop new products. Quality over quantity remains our motto.
You will understand that our orientation for the future is now to develop products that we master, based on an infrastructure that we own, to satisfy our clients who are increasingly reluctant to make concessions in a constantly expanding market.
MineStrator is becoming more than just a large Minecraft server hosting company. It will eventually become a central platform in cloud services with a gaming focus.
The years of experience and the evolution of the parent company, OctoGency, allow us to envision a different but equally bright future for our clients as well as our achievements.
We have recently reached key milestones that allow us to consider sustainable actions within the company despite the risks that innovation entails. These actions would be impossible without the trust and loyalty that our clients place in us.
We consider that, given our high-end services, the demands and expectations are very high, hence the honor of informing, communicating, and answering your questions. Feel free to come discuss this manifesto with us on Discord; we will be happy to respond.
"Great evolutions require great changes."
"Discoveries require experimentation."
Thank you for reading this manifesto,
Happy New Year and have a great day,
Best regards, the entire OctoGency team.
