I feel there is a severe lack of development on the plugin side of things. We all know Pixelmon heavily drove plugin development etc at the beginning. However, most people are aware of Spigot and its premium resources.
I think that would be a great addition to Sponge that will encourage bigger and better plugins for everyone to enjoy.
I think that is the last thing the Sponge community needs or wants.
What i always took that section as a joke
This will not happen.
The closest thing you will see, is private commissions.
The Sponge staff see âPremium pluginsâ as more drama then itâs worth to our community, and to our moderators time.
Things in the premium plugin community just get redistributed and decompiled anyway, and filled with malware on offsite forums tarnishing both the reputation of the original plugin author, and the sites associated with the premium resources.
Also, considering that we are a modding community, modding commercial software, itâs on shaky legal grounds.
I can understand from that point of view. The sad truth is Sponge is dying when it comes to plugin development, nothing new, things getting outdated and issues not being resolved. I know I am not the only one who can see it or feel this way. I am very thankful for what Sponge has done and has given the modding community. I just donât want to see it die.
I disagree on principal that Sponge plugins are dying vs the popularity of Minecraft.
The reality is that API 7 isnât released, so there has been some reluctance to update to snapshot API revisions.
Some plugins will die over time; itâs only natural that devs move on, what we are seeing at the moment is just bias compared to when we were first starting a few years ago, because since there werenât plugins already existing to die when breaking changes occurred, as Sponge hadnât been out long enough.
That + Pixelmon being a driving force behind Sponge usage being C&Dâd.
And I donât see how introducing Premium Plugins would prolong itâs life if it were.
I canât concur with your evaluation (âSponge is Dyingâ). Whilst some plugins are abandoned (sometimes after years), new plugins continue to appear, and I know more are on the way. Weâre a smaller community than the bukkit-related ones, but SpongeAPI has a lot more to offer than they do - including Forge compatibility, right out of the box.
But the real way to show itâs not fading away is to use it, develop for it, and spread the word. Sponge is getting close to full feature parity with the other minecraft API⌠and does a whole lot more besides.
Sponge may be a bit sleepier than Spigot, but boy is Spigot a toxic place to be, and I know a large part of that is the elitism that paid plugins foster. Not to mention a huge number of premium Spigot plugins, when decompiled, reveal example code copy-pasted from the tutorials. Thereâs also the unfortunate fact that allowing the sale of plugins plays fast and loose with the EULA; the juryâs out on whether plugins for separate APIs like Bukkit or Sponge count as âMinecraft modsâ, but if they do, then itâs directly illegal to sell them. Paid development is different - with paid development, someone is paying you to create something, but with a premium resource, someone is paying you for a copy of something you already made.
Of course, if you have an issue with the number of plugins available, there is nothing stopping you from learning Java and appending to that number. 
I will also note that every time Iâve seen a push or even suggestion of paid plugins, most of the big members of the community have pushed back with a no. Itâs just not something the people using Sponge wants. Itâs a modest community full of fun people who donât have a goal of ripping people off or anything like that, mostly because it would be rather difficult to do that on a platform thatâs entirely free.
If Sponge did get paid plugins, I could say the backlash could spell disaster for the community. I had quite a lot of backlash from an income-fairness agreement I considered publically and I canât imagine what kind of hell would break loose if Sponge suddenly publically supported paid plugins.
Sidenote, Pixelmon received a C&D, not a DMCA, for 5.1.2 and its launcher. And though Pixelmon work is now stuck, some users, like me, will be staying on Sponge to do further work in development, documentation, testing or support.
Anyways, there is a reason why Spigot is frowned upon here: it reeks of rivalry. I like Sponge because it allows for far more developer-user interaction, where the user is pushed to do their work; by testing and reporting for issues. It allows for features to be added to everyone, and as such, they normally are far more modular and flexible (see GPâs meta options, or Nucleusâ module setup). Users that want an addition are expected to contribute, and that gives far more value to the overall result. Though competition would be welcomed, at least such plugins allow for ample customization to fit practically every use-case due to the amount of contributors.
Most importantly, it is a small community, perhaps slower than Spigot, but it is a far closer one. It is a community initiative. Premium sections would jeopardize what so far has been an open-minded, proactive and welcoming environment where users and devs are encouraged to work together for everyone, not just themselves.
@stephen92 As for existing issues with existing plugins, most developers go out of their way to help and support users - just contact them directly, be it by discord/pms/githubs/etc. From experience, people do jump to help others here. If the plugin is new or abandoned, it entirely comes down to a devâs available time and desire, and that is something we, as users, should understand.
just adding⌠last i knew spigot does not support mods ⌠only vanilla minecraft or have i been mislead and wrong on that partâŚ
only platform i know of to use modded 1.8.9 and newer minecraft has been spongeforge.
while plugins are good to have for servers⌠is alot of players using modded minecraft which in my thoughts requires a few extra plugins to properly run and spice up the community
You are correct, but it doesnât really change anything.