The 2b2t Minecraft server was founded in December 2010; it has run consistently without a reset since then.[7][1] The founders are anonymous,[8] choosing to remain unknown or known only via usernames; the most prominent founder is commonly referred to as “Hausemaster”.[2][3] The server operates with minimal rules, as an “anarchy server”; except in fixing game-breaking exploits, the server operators are relatively hands-off in administrating the server.[3]

Varying explanations have been given for the origin of the server’s rules-free style. One server operator told Vice that the server originated as a regular Minecraft server, before he and his friends “decided to open it up to see how much destruction could be made and started advertising it on various places on the Internet.”[8] According to 2b2t player and amateur archivist James Rustles, Hausemaster was given the server by its original founder, who founded it on a principle of maximum player freedom in the tradition of a Garry’s Mod server he already owned.[9]

The server was advertised shortly after its creation on online forums such as 4chan, Facepunch Studios, and Reddit, whose users populated the server by the hundreds due to the total freedom it offered.[8] Members from different forums raided each other and their bases on the server.[2] The founders eventually stopped playing Minecraft, though the server remained online due to the large player base that had been formed.[8] A subreddit was created by a player on March 25, 2012.[10] In early 2013, the file size of 2b2t’s world map, which is procedurally generated, was reported to be over 500 gigabytes.[6] This increased to almost one terabyte by late 2015,[11] costing US$90 a month to maintain.[8]

2016–present: Player influx
A graph showing 2b2t’s growth in player count from under 30,000 in 2013 to over 600,000 in 2021
Unique 2b2t players over time according to the server administrator
On June 1, 2016, popular YouTuber “TheCampingRusher”[12] uploaded a YouTube video of himself playing on 2b2t. This caused a massive influx of new players from the channel’s audience, who were at first mostly tourists, as the video gained over two million views in less than four months from its upload.[2][3] This overwhelmed the server and strained the hardware used to host and run it, bringing together a loose group of older players who banded against these new players.[3]

Although the new players, who were labeled “Rushers”, largely outnumbered the older players at the time, the older players had years of experience and resources.[3] Many older players deterred new players by destroying the spawn-in area to make it uninhabitable and extremely challenging to proceed from and repeatedly killing them in-game.[2][3]

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