StrikeMC
A competitive network built alone at thirteen — and rebuilt after it broke.
Why it exists
At thirteen I wanted a competitive Minecraft PvP server that felt premium — fast, fair, and taken seriously. I couldn’t hire anyone, so I became the whole company: developer, sysadmin, community manager, and eventually the boss of a real staff team. StrikeMC grew into one of Asia’s most recognized competitive servers.
The engineering
Every layer is mine. I wrote 10,000+ lines of custom Java: matchmaking logic, custom arena mechanics, and the backend systems tying them together. It runs on a self-managed hosting stack — Pterodactyl Panel and FlameCord on OVH dedicated hardware with enterprise-grade anti-DDoS protection — engineered to hold thousands of concurrent players at peak while sustaining 60+ daily actives with strong retention.
Minecraft servers are a hostile environment: DDoS attacks, exploit hunters, and players who will stress-test every rule you forgot to write. Running one for years is an education in security, capacity planning, and operational discipline that no tutorial provides.
The people part
I recruited, trained, and led a cross-functional staff of 30+ covering support, competitive integrity, and moderation, and grew the Discord past 2,000 members with automated moderation, rank sync, and event systems. Managing volunteers older than me taught me that authority comes from the quality of your decisions, not your title.
When it broke
The part I’m most proud of isn’t the growth — it’s the recovery. A run of severe outages took the network down and cost us the community’s confidence. I rebuilt the entire infrastructure from scratch, restored uptime, and then did the slower work of earning trust back, player by player. The second version was better because the first one failed.