However that also gets rid of my control who I allow on the server.

Not true. It’s as simple as setting up an auto-ban once a user joins, which many early servers did. You could also have signup disabled, registering manually with some auto-generated password, email it to the user, and have them log in to change it.

But if you can see passwords, I would not support allowing you to advertise here. In fact, the Launcher is still vulnerable using an MD5 hash with no salt (there was a server whose database was compromised, and at that point we realized that whoever had access to the usernames and passwords could potentially find the passwords even with the hash). I would highly suggest fixing the hashing (adding a salt at the very least). Even if you are trustworthy, which we have no way of verifying (no offense to you, but this is how the internet works), but we certainly can’t trust whoever sees your server as a soft target to hack.