Battlefield 3 PC dedicated servers will charge extra.. for every single player

Planning to rent a dedicated server for Battlefield 3 on PC? Then you won’t be happy to find out that you will have to pay an extra charge on top of your monthly fee for every player slot on those servers – and on 64 player maps, those fees could soon add up.

In news that is bound to hit the most dedicated of Battlefield 3 players on PC right in the wallet, it’s been announced that if you wish to rent a dedicated server for the game, you will also have to pay an additional charge for every single player slot with some providers, while others are charging a flat extra fee no matter how many server instances you want to rent.

NFOservers.com announced that they will be using a prepay per slot system on their forums: “Managed VDS and dedicated server customers will also be able to create BF3 servers after the game is released. However, customers will need to prepay a small amount per BF3 player slot they wish to run (much less than the standard rental fee). This is due to a unique requirement of BF3 that does not relate to the resource requirements of the game,” wrote admin Edge100x. When a forum member asked for clarification using the scenario of “I’m planning to have 7 BF3 servers with 64 slots each one on my dedi server. So, I need to pay a monthly amount for 448 slots (7*64), is that correct?”, Edge100x replied “yes, it would be that slot count times the amount per slot, added to your monthly dedicated server fee.”

For large-scale clans, as the above exchange shows, the charges could become eye-watering. Edge100x admitted: “I really wish that we didn’t need to have it at all,” sympathising with those who pointed out that this could prove an impossible financial burden for dedicated servers run on a donation basis.

Meanwhile, GSP have announced that they will be using a flat-rate extra charge hat applies no matter how many servers you want to run:

There is also a BF3 support fee per physical machine. Unfortunately, we have to charge for this but are heavily subsidizing the cost. In order to support BF3 on your server, an additional £18 (incl VAT) will be charged; this fee applies even if you only want to run one BF3 game server instance. Accounts will be updated as and when we complete server migrations. The fee is only applicable from the Official release date.

This is certainly going to put a question mark against some groups ability to maintain dedicated servers for Battlefield 3 on PC, and seems a strange move which has presumably come from EA who hold approval over all official BF3 server partners.