Considering Overwolf’s recent decisions to restrict their API and move addon distribution towards a closed garden that restricts third party downloaders and favors their own app and/or advertisement, could there be a concerted discussion/effort to move addon hosting away from Curse and towards a more community friendly (as in, the community of creators and users) platform?
Overwolf’s most recent roadmap will steer the Curse API towards turning creators themselves against third party downloaders by excluding third party downloads from counting towards financial reward programs.
Would it make sense to migrate towards a non-profit environment like Github? Or if financial incentives are a consideration, even Nexus for a more addon-centric platform? The likes of Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Stardew Valley, Witcher or Cyberpunk already thrive there, and third party tools like Wabbajack are embraced fully and contribute to Nexus’ reward programs.
It seems to me that it would only require a few large projects (say, the likes of Titan, Bagnon, DBM…) to move over to initiate a wave.
wowinterface.com existed before curse (I was posting to eqinterface.com before WoW existed), it has an active and very knowledgeable developer community, it has more responsive mods than any version of curse has ever had. Unfortunately it’s mostly ignored by users and I don’t know why.
WowUp.io isn’t a bad choice. I post my actual addons on the TukUI site and WowUp polls that site and several others to aggregate them in one place.
I have issues with CurseForge but they’re more related to the abysmal tech support and their utter disregard for developers (without which there would BE no product for them to monetize).
If things go south there, there are alternatives as have been mentioned, all of which meet the basic needs of distribution of addons and updates thereto.
the only reason i use curse(forge) is simply because i can eek out a small monetary payment off them. its not much but at least its something.
no one else ever wants to think about paying me for my time and effort (my work - because it is work) but i always see people wanting it all to just be handed over for free. why?
A few replies into this, you can see there are going to be wildly divergent opinions.
So to the OP, my reverse question is this: even if a magic wand made CurseForge suddenly disappear, would you anticipate the wow addon community to consolidate on a single tool? Or would it more likely splinter, and be decentralized for at least a few years before there was a ‘winner’?
I think the latter is much more likely, even in the magic-wand scenario. Now lets go back to reality. CF is not going away, so any new option would have to compete with it as well. This further diminishes the chance of the entire community moving all at once to the same thing.
I don’t see where the OP’s statement that a new platform should be more developer and user friendly is supported by any new user friendly ideas. It seems to be focused on developer friendly.
I used to get Add ons from both curse and wowinterface. Ran my addon updaters every day before playing WoW.
Decided that administering Addons was not playing the game and dumped wowinterface.
It had some good Addons that curse didn’t have but curse always had some Addons that had similar functionality.
IMHO, I believe that most users will use the site that has the most Addons, regardless of a couple of Addons being only available on another site. Moving the developer community to a new site would need to happen fast.
I am reminded of the exodus of authors from wowwikki a few years ago. They didn’t leave because a new site offered some categories of authors better support They left because wwowikki policies offended the vast majority of authors regardless of their motivations for being an author.
They left quickly, and were United in their decision and the reasons behind it. They were able to establish the majority of the wowwikki content on a new site in an incredibly short timeframe.
I don’t get that same universal sense of dissatisfaction from the addon developer community that existed in the wowwikki community.
My impression is that established communities tend to consolidate and migrate as a group rather than cluster, so long as another runner-up solution already exists. To wit:
In the same vein, when Planet Elder Scrolls kind of died towards the end of Oblivion’s lifecycle, everyone and everything that mattered was onto Nexus within a year, in time for Skyrim to come out.
Others have mentioned WoWInterface as such an existing alternative hosting space, and it is also a staple of WoW modding going back over a decade. WoWUp.io is also a decent runner-up.
Agreed. Furthermore, Wowwiki remained above Wowpedia in google search listings for many years, resulting in parallel development of both wikis. Only a year ago did wowwiki finally close its doors to editing.
If addons remain on Curse, there will similarily be users who go there for quite some time looking for updates. Those users will be confused – angry even – when they don’t seem to be getting adequate support from the addon authors. (“This addon is updated at XXX” won’t be enough to stop the rage.)
Now some addon devs will shrug it off, but some won’t feel like giving users the cold shoulder. Those are, I suspect, the same people who are most likely to be willing to move their content elsewhere.
So the inevitable outcome is that they will feel pressured to keep the addon alive in both places… and that will kill any momentum to encourage users to depart Curse.
Disclaimer: I’m speaking in hypothetical terms and this should not be construed as an opinion for or against Curse.
Blizzard’s addon terms (stickied above) already contain anti-monetization clauses such as add-ons must be free of charge, must be completely visible, can not contain advertising, and must be freely accessible to and viewable by the general public. If that’s not explicit enough, they could add another term expressly requiring that any addon offered for use with WoW must be hostable by any party. At that point anyone who wanted to provide a superior updating service could do so as they saw fit.
“freely accessible to and viewable by the general public” simply means that you cannot make it difficult for someone to inspect the code. This is a security precaution.
This wasn’t interpreted to ever mean that addons cannot be monetized. Indeed, later in the policy it says:
By no means is Blizzard suggesting that there is an unlimited public license to redistribute addons, nor that addon authors should not attempt to monetize their work.
It would be a surprising turn of events if Blizzard suddenly tried to claim ownership over existing addons, just to be in a position to grant a public license to redistribute them. That would be a slap in the face to authors who feel their content is “all rights reserved”, either explicitly or by default.
So I have to disagree with your suggestion. If the community wanted to boycott CF, so be it. But theft of intellectual property is not a valid solution.
I don’t think Blizzard should ever claim “ownership” of third party addons, but they can certainly set the terms under which they can interact with Blizzard’s game.
If there comes a point when the distribution venue has become a mechanism to undo all the protections originally created for the benefit of the game, its players, and its publisher, they are certainly within their rights to adjust the terms as they feel necessary. Just as any and every addon developer would always have the right to not participate.
Personally I do not have any interest in encouraging anyone who wishes to make money from addons. The bulk of addon developer effort for the bulk of the game’s history have all been purely for love of the game; we’ll do just fine if the tiny fraction that don’t feel that way drop out. And in the unlikely event that leaves any truly necessary functionality uncovered, then it would fall back on Blizzard’s shoulders, where it probably should have been all along vs requiring players to view adds on a 3rd party website to get it.
It could possibly work if Blizzard did something like this: “From this date forward, your continued use of the API to build and update WoW addons indicates your acceptance of the new policy. To opt out, cease distributing new builds of any addon. The policy will not apply to addons written and abandoned before the policy comes into effect.”
Still, it might not be in Blizzard’s interest to alienate addon developers. Consider that such a policy move applies to all developers, not just the ones who seek monetization, so it could be more than a few that are miffed if Blizzard ever considered such a thing.
Thus, I find it highly more likely that Blizzard, out of self-interest, will remain ‘neutral’ in this.
legally they cant claim ownership, not possible. i also expect that most countries have restraint of trade laws (mine does) so blizzard would most likely fall foul of those if they tried to include verbiage stating that no money could be made by any means related to an addon.
it really doesnt matter anyway - hosting sites have no contract with blizzard, nor did they agree to the ToS, only the author did - the hosting sites can make as much money (typically from advertising impressions) as they like off our work and blizzard cannot legally do a thing about it.
curseforge at least shares some of the advertising revenue with the authors, instead of leeching off them like some of the other hosting sites (and blizzard). its not much but at least i dont feel like im being completely abused as slave labor.
the money isnt the primary goal anyway - its essentially recognition that what youre doing is actually good and worth something to other people - tokens of appreciation never hurt. plus i know the hosting site is making exponentially more off it (but they also have bigger overheads).
curseforge does need to get better, its got some pretty crappy issues that need fixing but its the only one that pays, and its still the primary one people go to for addons, so there isnt much incentive for authors to go elsewhere. even if they stopped paying authors none of that would change.
sorry but thats laughable. its the 17th year anniversary this week - default interface changed much since then? the API has holes you got drive a container ship through because its not really written for us, its written for the devs.
Are you kidding? It may have the same art style but they have added a great many features over the years, including many that started as addons and proved popular enough for Blizzard to consider some form of it as baseline.
its still the same old interface weve been replacing with mods for the last 17 years though.
sure, but thats not the default interface, and the game would have become stale if they hadnt added them (and they still have a long way to go in terms of adding “features” if they truly believe in their “bring the player, not the character”, mantra).
sadly everything theyve added has ended up with mods to change it into something much more functional. they can add features, they just dont seem to overly care about the interfaces to them.
none of this is really relevant though. authors arent going to change their hosting provider unless there is some significant reason for them to do it - and there currently is none.
github is already an option if an author wants to use it - i do but i dont post my code there as im leaving it as all rights reserved - or they could use any of the other free hosting sites if they wanted.
how are you going to incentivise authors to move their mods to the location you want them to be in?
I personally am not going to do anything. I would like to see Blizzard back the original terms it has always had for addons: no charge, no advertising. Players should not have to pay third parties, or be the product themselves, to play this game. If one day Blizzard wakes up and realizes its game is serving as a mechanism to force players to install potentially damaging software from Overwolf, and be served ads from them, it should take any necessary action to stop it.
I think extending the current term requiring all code to be open and visible to include allowing all code to be freely redistributable by any party would get things back on the right track. Any developers in it purely for the money would find another market. The remaining 99% would go back to considering this part of playing the game they love, not a business opportunity.
A lot of addon authors have stopped updating there addons . I think its because of overwolf/ Curse , I do not think its ever been this long after a patch that 90% of the addons I use have not been updated .