[2021] Worth hosting a new server?

That's true - but doesn't only apply to official servers only, but also to most of the well-known community servers with unique concepts. Ecostasia when they do a big run, Green Leaf, Maiestas Haven or SnepServ as a now half-year longterm server.

The concept of Eco works the better the more players you have. Having a multitude of servers doesn't work out as good as having less with more players. Servers typically get a broad resident player base by doing stuff with unique concepts and being good at that.

Ping isn't a big issue in Eco either. All official servers have a broad US playerbase that has that ping and even australians with 400+. Yes, the latter have issues, but you can still play very well. US ping is a non-issue for the vast majority of players.

Well, your mileage may of course vary, I was just referring to the simple fact that we do have australians playing there with the mentioned ping that, as I said, have issues, but can cope with it well enough.

Australia not having a official server is simply due to the fact that there isn't nearly enough players for such a server. The australian community in Eco is still extremely small and we couldn't get the amount of regular players to fill such a server even to 1/4th of what is required for best gameplay.

Additionally, the price for a server similar to the EU official servers there is about 4 - 5 times as high if available at all, which is also one of the reasons there is no official US servers at this moment. We had some a way back, but their usage was very low (most people playing on private servers for the US) and the price for the required servers in the US is just 3 times the price in europe as well. As a indie studio those costs do matter and the price hence needs to be worth it for the usage of the servers, which it unfortunately wasn't as they weren't used a lot. Often, similar servers are not even available, as Eco servers are best hosted on powerful desktop hardware which is a thing that is not offered widely outside of european datacenters - for reasons unknown to me.

To be honest, mixing US and EU players leads to a good performance utilization around the clock on the official servers and to very nice debates with different cultural views as well - something that adds a lot to Ecos concept, when you not only need to take into account different opinions from the same general cultural region but also opinions from over the pond where stuff works differently culturally.

I do have potential good news for australians though: Eco will get official asian servers in the future, which should have a way better ping for australians. Very likely at least one will be a english speaking one as well.