“Minehut Is Dying” – Thoughts on the AFK Rewards Update

“Minehut Is Dying” – Thoughts on the AFK Rewards Update

This is an opinion piece by Carolyn, one of the administrators. Gamer Dorks works in partnership with Minehut, and Carolyn is an active member of the Minehut and Minehut Partners communities. This blog post is nevertheless designed to be unbiased and based on reason.

On September 11, 2025, Minehut, a Minecraft server network designed to host servers and connect players to servers, announced a major update. The update has many interesting changes, some made to improve user experience, others to improve the longevity of the company. However, this update also has one extremely controversial change: AFK rewards are no longer allowed in servers. This doesn’t need to be controversial, since it’s a universally positive change. Let’s break down my reasoning.

Is Minehut Dying?

Probably not.

I have not heard any reports of server activity being down. I have visited various servers that had active players before and have a similar number of active players now. The only difference now is that there will be fewer fake players on servers. And all that does is make player counts more trustworthy.

Many players care more about server activity than player counts. If a server has many players on it but nobody is actually playing, they’ll leave. Many will join a server just because it’s popular, but few will stay if it feels empty.

Is it Minehut's fault?

Minehut reached record player counts for the first time since 2022 earlier this year, with upwards of 10,000 players on the network at once. There are multiple reasons for this, but one major reason is hype. The Minecraft Movie came out in April, and when that came out, many players got back into Minecraft for a little while. That hype is dying down over time, and so player counts are going down with it. Not just in Minehut, but across all Minecraft servers.

September is starting, the season of panic, that various games or internet services are dying. September is back to school season, players from across the world are going back to school and have less time to play Minecraft. Just as people have less time to watch YouTube in this season, so also they have less time to play video games like Minecraft. This is normal, and happens with every video game and Minecraft server.

Is this a bad thing?

Player counts don’t really matter. Do you play games to leave them on and walk away, or do you play games to have fun? Do you host servers to watch numbers go up, or do you host servers to have fun? Presumably, you play games and host servers to make an enjoyable experience for yourself and others. If you don’t, reconsider why you’re here. If you just want to make money, if you just want to see numbers go up, go get a job selling health insurance, don’t make a Minecraft server.

The only servers that are “killed” by this update are servers that had no real value to them to begin with. Low effort servers that only exist to make money. And who would rather play on one of those than a server with real effort put in to it? I wouldn’t, and I doubt any of you dorks would either.

And as low-effort cash grab servers are hurt by this, well-made Minecraft servers flourish. Player counts will finally be accurate, giving servers without any kind of player spoofing a fighting chance.

Conclusion

This is really not as big a deal as many people think it is. There are other explanations for lower player counts, and it’s questionable whether it even matters in the first place. Servers owners will adapt to this change. They’ll forget about it soon, and when they do, the server ecosystem will have improved. Because player counts are trustworthy, and we’ll no longer be forced to add a game mechanic that nobody actually finds enjoyable.

“Y’all are just mad you have to make good servers now”

Thanks for reading! This is an opinion piece created by one of the administrators at Gamer Dorks on a topic that she cares about. This is the first of its kind, so let us know in our Discord if you want to see more.