[hunterb123]

The subtle advertising:

> This is probably thanks to cheap hosting offerings from companies like Hetzner (insert link).

Conflicts with their own data:

- OVH 24,417

- QuadraNet 9,927

- GPORTAL 9,339

- GMO Internet 5,466

- Hetzner 5,327

For those not in the game server hosting scene, it's because OVH offers a robust DDOS system for free for their servers. The price is not much different either. OVH is by far the leader for ALL game servers due to DDOS protection, price, and value. Hetzner is good, but OVH is a league of it's own.

[der_rod]

You have to take the quote in context:

> However, Germany ends up taking the prize for most Minecraft servers per capita, with a whopping four servers for every 10,000 people. This is probably thanks to cheap hosting offerings from companies like Hetzner.

Hetzner is a German company, OVH is not. And while OVH has a presence in Germany, if we run this query on Shodan: https://www.shodan.io/search?query=product%3A%22Minecraft%22... OVH is #8 while Hetzner is #2. So I'm not sure why you'd think this is advertising, they're merely providing an example for Germany.

That being said, GPortal is also a German company and #3 overall, but they're a dedicated provider of game servers, rather than commodity servers. Conspicuously absent is Nitrado - also a German company - probably because they run most of their servers on non-default ports, whereas GPortal assigns each server its own IPv4 last I checked.

[hunterb123]

> Hetzner is a German company, OVH is not.

> That being said, GPortal is also a German company and #3 overall,

Gportal (Ociris GmbH) is #1 in Germany, by far. 8,291 (24.2%) vs 3,380 (9.8%)

> but they're a dedicated provider of game servers, rather than commodity servers.

Why does that matter? The statement is about Minecraft servers and why Germany is popular.

Seems if you were going to name drop one to support that reasoning you'd use the most popular one.

Heztner is neither the leading Germany Minecraft provider, nor the leading overall provider, both by a wide margin.

I appreciate you joining HN to comment and clear that up though.

[der_rod]

Why they chose that example I can only speculate, perhaps it was the first name they recognised and just used as an example because they were familiar with it?

I just really didn't like the assertion that this was supposed to be some sort of advert, rather than an arbitrary pick. It certainly isn't an affiliate link or anything.

[hunterb123]

> I just really didn't like the assertion that this was supposed to be some sort of advert, rather than an arbitrary pick. It certainly isn't an affiliate link or anything.

Feel free to speculate one way or another, I'll do the same based on the data and reasoning provided.

You don't need an affiliate link to advertise btw, referer headers do just fine.

I really wasn't slamming them for advertising, just noting it was and that it didn't fit their reasoning as to why they were plugging them.

If you feel it was an arbitrary selection, that's fine. I was just expanding on the statement as to why it doesn't fit the data. I assume you concede to that right?

[hardwaresofton]

Are you in the game server hosting scene? Curious how you came by such an insight

[hunterb123]

I used to run a few big private game servers, yes.