You got to ensure GDPR compliance, the computer itself is up to date, you need someone to check to ensure it’s working regularly, answer support requests etc…
If it takes someone a two hours a week at €20 a hour, your looking at over €2000 a year and that’s before the other resources. There is also a good chance that nobody in vstep knows SSE well seeing it’s been at least 5 years since an update
There isn’t a return of revenue really, it’s hassle for the company so why bother?
I know this mentality doesn’t seem great, but as someone who’s worked in software engineering and has had to kill things like this, I can clearly see why. Software engineering is hard and for smaller teams you need more of a coherent approach
It took me an hour to set up my server and I had no idea what I was doing. Stormforce did a guide about it, it's available on the forum. As I wrote earlier, I really don't think not knowing SSE is a good argument. Believe me, if I can do it, anybody can.
I spend less than an hour every month to "maintain" my server, and this is only because I change the maps and ships according to what people want. This is of course not a task required with official servers. So basically recurring hours would be 0 every week. Only task would be to reset the server if it crashes. From my experience in over 6 months, it happened once because of a power outage. Took me 5 minutes to put it back online.
As for actively monitoring the servers to make sure they work, why would you do that? Vstep already have an email address, we will send them an email if a server crash. Again, no recurring cost here.
You also said there isn't a return of revenue, and this is not only wrong but also narrow minded. Reaching for a new customer is generally 12 times more expensive than keeping a current one. Vstep should try to do anything to keep the few players left. I don't think it's a wise strategy to believe that players still around today will be there forever. What I am seeing is players are getting desperate and quit because of the delay. My server help the community to stick together and to retain some players. Keeping an official server online would keep players active and engaged more than a private server, so it's an increase in sales potential.
Honestly if you don't believe it's worth bringing one or two official servers back to life for a few months, then I don't understand why would you bother with Nautis Home at all. Too much work and costs, and no guaranteed sales anyway, right? Kill that project already!
It seems you overestimate the costs by a long shot in an attempt to find an excuse for not doing it.
About the GDPR compliance I don't know anything, so I will only say that a law shouldn't stop a project as small and simple as running a little server. I just don't see how it would make running a server impossible.
Finally, I think you reached pretty far with the "keeping the computer up to date" argument. I mean come on... updating a computer shouldn't stop you from doing anything. It's not even difficult to update a computer. Again, I feel like you are looking for excuses instead of considering the project seriously.
