Let's clear up some things about GGServer

2017-03-15

We get a lot of hate directed to us because we aren't as transparent. Let's fix that.

I've been a developer at GGServers for about a year now. In that time I've gotten a good sense of how things work behind the scenes at the budget Minecraft server host. I've (this is going to sound canned but it's genuine) dedicated myself to improving the state of the technology running everything. I've had to put up with hate and abuse from unhappy customers, some justified others not so much. One thing that some people have pointed out is how opaque commununications from us can be -- hell, in the four years we've had our Twitter we've tweeted less than 1,000 times (250 tweets/year on average).

Let's make something clear -- We are still a very small company. Like, really small. We have five dedicated support staff, answering tickets of various technical depth. These people unfortunately are not "full-time". They don't come in to an office 9am-5pm, answer your tickets and go home. They're spread out. When we say 24/7 support, we don't mean your ticket will be taken care of immediately, we mean that our support system doesn't go down. We -- I -- Get it, you want your question answered right away, and properly. We've gotten a lot better at replying to things quickly, and typically manage to get the entire ticket queue handled every week or so.

Let's talk about server downtime. It sucks. You can't access your servers, can't pull your files to move to another host. Currently, we have on person in our limited staff who has access to our hosting provider, and he is busy very often. Our previous systems administrator just sort of went AWOL, leaving us a bit stuck in terms of responding to server downtime. I was just recently granted the title of sysadmin, and am still waiting on our provider to grant me access to our hardware. And to be clear this does not mean I get a keycard to datacenters where I can walk to a rack of servers, pull ours out and tinker. It means I have as-close-to-hardware-as-possible remote access, where I can troubleshoot servers as if I was using a monitor plugged into it, but I never physically touch the bare metal. But it does mean I can get servers up and running properly. Once our provider allows me access. Hopefully that clears that up a bit.

We try to limit our interactions outside of tickets for two reasons. One, we can log everything that is filed in our system. Two, and most importantly, we're not quite sure what we can and cannot say. There's a fine line between being transparent and divulging company secrets. I feel comfortable saying what I am because I don't feel anyone could gain a competitive advantage knowing these facts. I would love to get access to the Twitter account and start using it to our advantage but it's going to take a while.

Anyways, if you guys have any more questions or comments, keep it civil and I will do my best to answer.