I’ve always been curious about this, since every day a new server pops up for some hyped game. DayZ, Squad in Brazilian mode, GTA V servers, etc.
What I also notice is that this costs money for whoever plans to keep the server running, like the cost of the VPS, and sometimes you even have to pay a fee to have the server with a certain number of slots, as happens in GTA V Online through FiveM.
But what about profits, do they actually make any money? I’ve never bought anything in a game, much less in something that isn’t official. I don’t see any advantage at all in having the shiniest outfit, a nickname with glitter and so on. To me, whoever ran one of these servers shouldn’t be making anything, that it was just for their own fun, and that’s when I realized I was wrong:
44 employees, 15 thousand in costs per month
Now try to imagine the monthly profit 