FAQ

Getting started#

What is Vastopia, in one paragraph?#

Vastopia is a platform for making and running your own multiplayer online game. You build your world in the Vastopia Editor — sculpt terrain, place NPCs and objects, and define items, skills, loot and quests as data. When you are ready, one click packs your game and deploys it to a live multiplayer server. No engine code or netcode is required to get started. See the overview.

Do I need to know how to code?#

No. Most of a game — maps, NPCs, items, skills, loot, dialogue and quests — is authored visually or as data with no programming. When you want something custom, like a unique boss or a world event, you can drop in C# server scripts with editor autocomplete. See Scripting overview.

Can I make a classic old-school MMO with it?#

Yes — that style of game is what Vastopia is built for. Skill training, XP curves, loot tables, crafting recipes, shops, banking and NPC combat come out of the box, with visual tooling and managed hosting instead of hand-edited configs and a self-run server. The MMO template enables all of those systems at creation; Quest and Arena (Diversion) start smaller. See Templates and gameplay systems.

How is it different from Roblox?#

Vastopia is MMO-first, with a dedicated desktop client, full server-side scripting in C#, and direct creator payouts rather than a proprietary in-platform currency you cash out of. You keep creative control and a share of what you earn (see the revenue share below).

What engine does it run on?#

Three pieces, one engine family:

You never open Godot yourself; the editor is the whole authoring experience, and the client is what players download.

How old do I have to be?#

You must be at least 13 to use Vastopia at all, and between 13 and the age of majority you need a parent or guardian's permission. To receive creator payouts or purchase a hosting subscription you must be at least 18 (or the age of majority where you live). The full rules are in the Terms of Service and Creator Terms.

Pricing, hosting and payouts#

How much does it cost?#

It is free to start building and publishing. The Launch wizard in the dashboard offers Free — Community Hosting at $0/month, which runs your game on Vastopia's shared community server with no payment required — best for testing and smaller games. Paid tiers give your game a dedicated server in the region you choose. Tier names, limits and prices are shown in the dashboard at launch time; join the Discord for the latest on hosting tiers and creator terms. See Launch and hosting.

How does billing work for paid tiers?#

Paid hosting is billed through Stripe on a recurring basis, monthly or annually, until you cancel. Annual billing is prepaid at a discounted price; the dashboard shows every tier as a per-month figure (the annual price divided by twelve) so you can compare, and flags the saving — roughly 17 percent — when annual is selected. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period unless you cancel before renewal, and cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period. If a payment fails there is a grace period, after which the game's servers may be taken offline. See Billing and lifecycle.

Does Vastopia handle hosting and multiplayer for me?#

Yes. Every world is a real multiplayer game from day one. Publishing provisions a game server and a content CDN, and the platform handles networking, accounts and persistence — you do not set up infrastructure. Hosting is shared-infrastructure unless your plan says otherwise, and tiers carry technical limits (players, compute, storage, bandwidth) shown in your dashboard. Your server scripts run on that infrastructure, so they must not attack third parties, mine cryptocurrency or degrade the platform for other games.

How do I earn money from my game?#

Players buy V-Coins, Vastopia's virtual currency, and spend them on items you sell through the shop tools. Each sale is between you and the player, facilitated by Vastopia. You set your own V-Coin prices within platform limits; the server-side price recorded at purchase time is what the player pays and what your share is computed from. See Shop, revenue and payouts.

What is the revenue share?#

Vastopia retains a platform fee of 30 percent of each sale; the remainder is credited to your earnings balance. The fee shown in your creator dashboard at the time of a sale is the fee that applies to it.

How do payouts work?#

1. Complete Stripe onboarding from the dashboard, including identity verification, and keep your country and account information accurate — your country determines your verification requirements and tax paperwork, and cannot be changed after onboarding without re-onboarding.
2. Earnings from each sale are held as pending for 30 days as a buffer against refunds, chargebacks and fraud.
3. Eligible earnings are paid via Stripe to your verified account.

Vastopia may reverse or offset earnings connected to refunded, charged-back or fraudulent transactions, and may pause payouts while Stripe requests more verification (its requirements grow with your volume). You are responsible for your own income taxes and any VAT/GST obligations; where the law requires it, tax information (W-9/W-8 or local equivalents) is collected and earnings are reported.

What am I not allowed to sell?#

Items you have no right to sell; self-purchases or coordinated purchases to launder funds or inflate metrics; off-platform sales of in-game items, currency or access; and anything that directs players to buy outside the platform. Games may not let players wager V-Coins or items on chance, and purchasable loot-box-style mechanics need Vastopia's express written approval. Item descriptions must be accurate, and mechanics designed primarily to pressure minors into purchases are prohibited.

Who owns what I make?#

You own your content. By publishing you confirm that you own or have licensed every asset in the game — including anything imported from outside Vastopia and anything a collaborator contributed — and you grant Vastopia the license it needs to host and distribute the game. Starter assets and the Vastopia asset library (including AI-generated assets) are licensed to you for use inside Vastopia games only; they cannot be extracted, exported or resold elsewhere.

Does Vastopia review games before they go live?#

No. Games are not pre-reviewed and publishing is not an endorsement. You are the first line of moderation for your own game, using the dashboard's warning, mute, kick and ban tools (see Players and moderation). Vastopia may remove or suspend a game that breaks the content standards.

What happens to players if I unpublish?#

Players lose access to the game and to the items they bought in it when it goes offline. If your game has meaningful recent revenue, give players reasonable notice before shutting it down permanently; Vastopia may refund recent purchases in a game that is abruptly withdrawn and offset those refunds against your earnings. Deleting your account unpublishes your games unless you transfer them to another creator first.

The editor and your files#

Where are my files?#

A project is a plain folder of files — JSON, INI, Godot scene text, C# scripts and a few small binary blobs. There is no database. By default new projects are created under Documents\VastopiaProjects\<ProjectName>\; you can choose any location in the New Project wizard. Inside, assets/ holds everything the client sees (maps, models, icons, interfaces, assets/data/*.json) and server/ holds everything the server runs (server/data, server/modules, server/scripts, server/schemas). project.vastopia at the root is the project descriptor. See Project structure.

Editor-wide settings (theme, keybinds, linked model folders, source-checkout paths) are not in the project. They live in the editor's own user-data folder — on Windows, %APPDATA%\Godot\app_userdata\Vastopia Editor\ — in editor_settings.cfg. The standalone game client that Play Local downloads is cached in the same folder under downloaded_client\.

Are my projects backed up?#

Not automatically by hosting — the terms are explicit that hosting is not an archival service and that you should keep your own backups of your source content. Two things help:

• Cloud project sync uploads your project source to the platform per game and lets you download it on another machine (latest upload wins). See Cloud project sync.
• Because a project is an ordinary folder, any backup tool or version control system works on it.

Can I use the editor offline?#

Partly. The sign-in screen has a Continue Offline button: you can open, edit and save local projects with no account. Publishing requires sign-in, and so does Play Local, because it deploys a test server on the platform and connects the downloaded client to it. The New Project wizard still works offline — the bundled starter templates are always available, and the platform's template catalog is fetched only when you are online. The cloud asset library and cloud project sync also need a connection.

Can I work on the same project from two computers?#

Yes, through cloud project sync: upload from one machine, download on the other from the project wizard. It is latest-wins, so finish and upload on one machine before you start on the other. Linked model folders and editor settings are per machine and do not travel with the project.

Can I script the client?#

No. There is no client-side scripting in Vastopia: the client is a renderer and a data-driven form widget, and every custom behaviour is a server round-trip over a fixed set of packets. You can open, close, fill and update interfaces from server scripts, and buttons send their actions back to the server — but there is no client-side timer, tween, animation or styling primitive, so something like a live countdown costs one packet per second per player. Interfaces are authored in the GUI editor and driven from server scripts.

What language are server scripts?#

C# on .NET 8. Scripts live in server/scripts and modules in server/modules; each script file compiles on its own, shared logic goes in a module, and the Script Editor gives you autocomplete for the engine API. For full IntelliSense and a real compile check, generate the companion project described in IDE setup.

Can I use AI to build my game?#

Yes. The Vastopia MCP server lets an AI agent such as Claude Code author content directly — create maps, items, NPCs and scripts, place things on maps, and push builds — with or without the editor open. IDs are allocated by the tools, and the client and server copies of each entity are kept in sync for you. See AI-accelerated creation.

Testing and publishing#

How do I test my game?#

Press Play Local in the editor's top bar. It saves your project, builds the content pack, deploys a test server on the platform, downloads or updates the standalone client if needed, and logs you straight in. Play Live does the same against your launched production game once it is live. See Test your game.

Why can I not see Dev Test?#

Dev Test and Dev Client only appear when the editor runs from source with the client and server repositories checked out; the installed editor hides them. Creators use Play Local and Play Live.

What does publishing actually upload?#

A build is three artifacts: the packed client content (.pck), a zip of your server/ folder, and game_config.json. The Publish tab creates a version, uploads those directly to storage, finalizes the version and deploys it to your test server. The dashboard's Builds page lists every build you have pushed, and the Launch wizard promotes one to live. See Builds and versions and Push to Test.

Can I let a few people try the game before launch?#

Yes — beta builds with beta codes. See Beta access.

Can I roll back a bad update?#

Yes. Builds are kept, and the dashboard can roll a live game back to an earlier build. See Updates, patches and rollback.

Still stuck?#

Check Troubleshooting for verified failure modes and fixes, the Glossary for terms, and the Discord for hosting and creator-terms news.