How the server lists are ordered

1. The three lists

The app shows servers in three separate tabs. The three tabs are distinct lists and are ordered in different ways.

Partner. Servers whose operators have a paid agreement with us. Every server in this tab pays us to be listed there. The Partner tab is our advertising space. Some partners pay an additional amount to be placed at the very top of it — see section 2.

Featured. Servers we picked ourselves, because we consider them worth playing and because they work well with the app. Nobody pays to be in the Featured tab — not with money, not with free hosting, not with cross-promotion, not with anything else. That is how the tab works today. If that changes, this page will be updated accordingly.

Custom. The servers you added yourself. We do not rank, sort or filter this list at all. It remains entirely under your control.

2. How the Partner list is ordered

As the list works today, three criteria decide the order. They are applied strictly one after the other, not mixed together into a score. The first criterion decides. Where it does not apply, the second criterion applies, and only then the third.

1. A bought position — the strongest of the three. A partner can buy a fixed position at the top of the list for one calendar month: position 1, 2 or 3 as things stand today. It is first come, first served: we allocate the positions that are available in the order in which payments reach us, and one partner can hold at most one position per month. A bought position takes precedence over the criteria below. When the month ends, the position is released and can be bought again.

2. Our own sort value — set by hand. Every listed server carries a number that we set ourselves. We base it on three things: how well the server works with the app, how reliably it can actually be reached, and how complete and correct its listing is (name, description, images, working addresses). It is our judgement, not a measurement, and it cannot be bought.

3. Random — the weakest. Servers that are still level after the first two steps are shuffled. The shuffle is re-rolled each time the list loads, so it comes out differently each time you open the app. This is deliberate: servers on equal footing appear near the top in turn, instead of one of them remaining at the bottom permanently.

3. How the Featured list is ordered

Two criteria decide the order, following the same approach without the paid element:

1. Our own sort value, set by hand, exactly as described above.
2. Random, re-rolled every time the list loads.

There is no bought position in this tab, because nothing in this tab is for sale today.

4. What does not affect the order

None of the following moves a server up or down:

• How many players joined it. We do count joins — see our Privacy Policy — but that count never feeds into the order.
• What you did before. Which servers you opened, how long you played, what you tapped. The list is not personalised. There is no profile of you behind it.
• Your device. Phone or tablet, Android or iOS, PlayStation or Switch — no effect.
• Where you are. See the paragraph below.

Two people opening the app at the same moment, in different countries, on different phones, after using the app in completely different ways, see the same list — apart from the random shuffle.

What we do use your location for. We look at roughly where a request comes from, at country and continent level, taken from the network connection. We do not use GPS and we do not ask for a location permission for this. We use it for exactly one thing: many partner servers run in several parts of the world, and we suggest the address that is likely to give you the better connection. That changes which address is recommended for a server. It never changes which servers you see, and it never changes the order they appear in.

5. How many positions are sold, and for how much

The number of positions that can be bought and what they cost are set out in the price list in our partner portal. We keep them there rather than here because they change. The rules that go with them — who may buy a position, what happens if it is not paid for, and when we may refuse or withdraw one — are in our Partner Terms.

Whether a server is listed at all, whether it stays listed, and whether it holds any particular position is our decision. No server has a claim to be listed, to a particular position, or to remain in a list. Buying a position buys the placement for the month it was bought for — nothing beyond that.

6. Why we do it this way

Paid placement finances the free version of the app.

BedrockConnect is free to use, and most people use it without ever paying us anything. That works because server operators pay to be seen. We state this openly rather than obscure it. The Partner tab is advertising. The top of it is the most expensive advertising we sell.

We do not conceal that, and we do not mix paid servers into a list presented as neutral. Individual servers carry no advertising label in the app, and the app does not show which of the top positions were bought in a given month — the entire Partner tab is paid placement, and this page is where we disclose it. The order is built out of factors that can be explained on a single page: payment, our own assessment, and chance. None of these factors relate to you.

7. Changes to the ordering, and to this page

We may change how the lists are ordered at any time — add a parameter, drop one, weight them differently, change how many positions are for sale, or change how a tab works. What is described here is how the lists work today. It is not a promise that any parameter, any weighting, any number of paid positions or any tab will stay as described.

When we change the ordering, we update this page. The date at the top of the page tells you when it was last updated. We are not obliged to announce a change in advance.

One exception, which we commit to. The statements in sections 1 and 3 that nothing in the Featured tab is paid for will be updated before we accept any consideration of any kind — money, free hosting, cross-promotion or anything else — for a placement in the Featured tab. That disclosure will be made before any such consideration is accepted, not afterwards.