Almost every game server list ranks by votes, and almost nobody explains how voting actually works. If you run a server, that mechanism is the single biggest lever on your visibility. If you play, it is worth knowing what a vote count does and does not tell you.
The basic mechanism
The rule on this site, and on most well-run lists, is simple: one vote per server, per person, per day.
Implementing that honestly is harder than it sounds, because a list should not be building a profile of everybody who visits. The approach here:
- A visitor's IP address is combined with a secret salt and hashed. The raw address is never stored.
- That hash, the server, and the calendar day form a uniqueness key.
- A second vote for the same server on the same day is rejected before anything is written.
- The counter on the server increments, and the vote row exists purely to enforce the daily limit.
The consequence worth understanding: the site can tell that someone already voted today without knowing who they are. That is the whole design goal.
A vote is a statement that a real person came back to the site and clicked once. That is a weak signal individually and a strong one in aggregate — which is exactly why it works as a ranking input.
Why lists use daily votes at all
Votes are not a quality measure. They measure mobilisation: how many people a community can persuade to spend ten seconds each day. That correlates with community health more than you might expect, because a dead server cannot mobilise anyone.
The alternatives are all worse:
- Player count rewards whoever bought the biggest box, and is trivially faked.
- Uptime rewards nothing anyone cares about.
- Editorial ranking does not scale and invites accusations of favouritism.
- Ranking purely on what owners pay turns the list into an auction, and an auction tells a player nothing about whether a server is worth joining.
How voting gets abused
Being honest about this is better than pretending it does not happen.
- Shared and rotating addresses. University networks, mobile carriers and VPNs mean the address-based limit is approximate. It is a speed bump, not a wall.
- Vote farms. Automated clicking from rented addresses. Detectable through timing patterns — real votes arrive in a human-shaped daily curve, farms do not.
- Reward abuse. Servers offering in-game items for voting get more votes. That is legitimate up to the point where the reward is worth more than the gameplay.
The countermeasures that actually work are unglamorous: rate limiting, timing analysis, and removing entries that show impossible patterns. Anything more aggressive punishes real players on shared networks.
What server owners can honestly do
- Ask once, in the right place. A daily reminder in Discord and a message on join. Not a nag every fifteen minutes.
- Make the reward small and cosmetic. A tag, a small currency amount, a queue position for the day. Never gear, never anything that touches the economy.
- Ask at the moment of goodwill. After a good session, not on the loading screen of the first join.
- Track your own numbers. Votes per active player tells you far more than raw votes. A server with 200 votes from 300 players is enormously healthier than one with 400 from 5,000.
- Do not use automated voting. Scripted votes from rented addresses are the one thing every list actively removes entries for, and a delisting costs more than any ranking gain.
Where this site sells votes, and what that means
Being straight about our own incentives: JoinGG sells boost vote packs on the advertise page, and those votes go into the same total the daily community votes go into — the total the rankings are ordered on. A pack does move a listing up. We would rather say that plainly than describe it as decoration.
What a pack does not do is remove, hide or downrank anybody else, and the paid portion of a server's total is recorded separately so it can be audited or refunded. But if you are reading a ranking as pure community mobilisation, that is not quite what it is on this site or on most others that sell placement. Treat a high position as a reason to look closer, not as a verdict.
What players should read into a vote count
- High votes plus low players means a mobilised community or a manipulated one. Check the Discord.
- Low votes plus high players usually means the owner never asks. It says nothing bad about the server.
- A steady climb is the most meaningful signal on any list — it means retention.
Vote counts are one input among several. Read the description, check the rules, look at the Discord, and treat the ranking as a starting point rather than a verdict. Every entry on the server list carries its own connect address and community links so you can do exactly that — and the rest of what a listing can and cannot prove is worth five minutes before you trust any ranking, ours included. If an entry looks wrong, tell us.
JoinGG is a live directory of community game servers — current status, players online right now, and a copyable address for every listing.
Common questions
- Can two people on the same Wi-Fi network vote on the same day?
- Shared addresses can block legitimate votes because limits are based on IP addresses. On networks like universities or mobile carriers, the address-based limit serves as an approximate speed bump rather than an absolute wall to avoid punishing real players.
- What happens if a server gets caught using scripted vote farms?
- The listing gets removed entirely from the directory. Automated votes from rented addresses generate impossible timing patterns that lists actively detect, and being delisted costs far more than any temporary ranking boost gained from artificial votes.
- How does buying a boost pack impact other server listings?
- Purchasing a boost pack moves your own listing up without directly hiding, downranking, or removing any competing servers. Boost votes simply add directly to your server's total vote tally, which determines the overall ranking order.
Published · 4 min read