PickleCraft was founded in early 2012 by Pickle15 himself.

The Beginning:

It all started from an old Minecraft server listing website that I was developing at that time. Before the website went public, PickleCraft was a small private server for me and some friends I used for testing the listing site’s functions. When the website went live, I forgot to remove the server from the database and didn't bother removing it later on.

The server at the time ran on Amazon's AWS free tier, which performed quite well considering the very low specifications of the machines Amazon gave out to its users.

As the site became somewhat popular, people began to join the server. Soon enough they were inviting their friends and the server slowly out grew the low specification AWS server to the point it was unable to handle day to day operations.

The Ups:

Around this time, my old friend, Asacavanagh joined on as "co-founder" and we started looking for the cheapest ways of expansion we could considering neither of us had a well-paying job. About 3 weeks later we moved the server to a VPS hosted by 'VolumeDrive' with a contract that offered about four times the hardware specifications than the free Amazon server did.

Six months on, we were receiving generous donations from our loyal members, which numbered approximately 45-50. With these donations, we continued to expand and were able to afford a high specification dedicated server hosted through 'RazorServers'.

Over the next couple of months, we added additional Minecraft servers and maps (Creative, FTB, Tekkit, SkyBlock and more). We even experimented with other game servers particularly Source engine games such as L4D2.

The Downs:

Around October 2012, the server began to come under DDoS attacks. These attacks were coming in waves that at times lasted several days. At the time, we hadn’t anticipated any of these attacks or any attack at all nor did we have any idea why we were being targeted.

The End:

The server over the next couple of months received DDoS attacks on a massive scale for us (600mB/s on our 1000mB/s connection). The on-going attacks forced our host to null-route (next best thing besides physically disconnecting the cord) in order to protect us, their equipment and other customers. Unable to defeat the attacks, nor afford a protection service, PickleCraft was forced to shut down four months later in late February of 2013 which we called "The End".

A New Beginning:

So, now you’re probably thinking "I'm here reading this 'About' page for a server that is closed?" Well, not exactly. In the last couple of weeks (late July, 2013), Asacavanagh and Myself have been discussing what to do. We've decided to try again and this time, hopefully we'll be able to right the wrongs of our previous venture and carry on with a successful server.

How will it go?

Who knows, it could flop within the first month, but we won’t know without trying.

Updated July 2013

---