From the server's standpoint, running n players has optimistically the same cost whether those players are client-side bots or not (although, bots can be more abusive). In the MUD days (20+ years ago) this was called "multiplaying" and was usually forbidden, partly on grounds of this resource use, but some games did allow it. MMOs 10+ years ago saw an influx of people using GUI scripting tools to implement bots. It's fairly obvious when it's happening and people really don't like it for the same reasons that they often don't like server-side bots in multiplayer games.
So realistically I believe this is a niche idea which might be hard to make commercially viable. But it could be an interesting thing for private minecraft servers.
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From the server's standpoint, running n players has optimistically the same cost whether those players are client-side bots or not (although, bots can be more abusive). In the MUD days (20+ years ago) this was called "multiplaying" and was usually forbidden, partly on grounds of this resource use, but some games did allow it. MMOs 10+ years ago saw an influx of people using GUI scripting tools to implement bots. It's fairly obvious when it's happening and people really don't like it for the same reasons that they often don't like server-side bots in multiplayer games.
So realistically I believe this is a niche idea which might be hard to make commercially viable. But it could be an interesting thing for private minecraft servers.