I have noticed that as well, although I worry the biggest cause may be because they stopped playing.
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Your argument is a straw man. In particular:
- No one has to pay third parties for addons distributed at CurseForge.
- No one has to use the Overwolf app for addons distributed at CurseForge.
- The most popular addons at CurseForge are also available elsewhere (see below).
For example, the top three at CF by popularity:
- DBM is also at WoWInterface and Wago Addons
- WeakAuras is also at Wago (obviously) and GitHub
- Details is also at GitHub, and was on WoWInterface up to BFA.
Conclusion: The problem isn’t as bad as you make it seem.
I think the ratio between developer effort and user enjoyment has also shifted which might discourage people from continuing/starting to build addons.
For example, addon devs now have to support three simultaneous versions of the game. It’s not as bad now that 1.14.x is more harmonized with 2.5.2 and 9.x.x, but regardless, its a bit more that can go wrong in an addon when it has three distinct environments.
Meanwhile, the players don’t get any added enjoyment from the extra developer effort. You are either playing one version of the game or the other, not both simultaneously. Add to this that there are fewer players in general (or so it seems, I really don’t know), and that means even fewer people to download an addon update and enjoy it.
Even for someone motivated by altruism or simply the fun of creating something… it has to be unexciting to see fewer downloads.
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those are still there and in force. no addons charge for use or include advertising.
you are not forced to do anything - you can browse to any addon hosting site and manually download the mods you want. youll still get advertising, but use an ad blocker if it annoys you.
blizzard has no legal grounds to dictate terms to a third party site thats hosting addon code - none.
my work, my code, my decision what copyright gets applied to it - basic copyright law in nearly all countries, the author get auto copyright and all rights reserved unless they state otherwise.
which is practically none so its a moot point
so were agreed that you appear to be attempting to resolve an issue that only impacts 1% of developers? so its not exactly something thats going to impact the users in any great way either?
no one is going to turn a single mod into a business its not exactly practical, but if they can then why shouldnt they be allowed to?
esports is a thing. if you can get paid to play (if youre good) why shouldnt you be able to get paid to write an addon?
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authors are players too - if we start no longer enjoying the game as much then we spend less time in the game, which typically goes to less time writing code.
i only play enough to get my mains stuff done now then i log out, its become too much of a chore, and practically no fun any more. i have no real incentive to think of ways to make my mod any better, not unless some other user requests a feature/change and i like the idea or have the time to do it.
playing the game now feels too much like a job, and im playing to get away from that. if i cant get away from it then im not going to play as much.
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I’ll rephrase my suggestion. Blizzard should change the game so that it only runs addon code distributed through Blizzard, and that distribution mechanism ensures addons are universally available to all players equally.
Addon developers would of course maintain full control over what addons they wrote, maintained, and whether they wanted to submit them into the service. They should be credited for their work and I think it’d be neat if there were in-game ways to express appreciation. But if they did choose to participate, they would have to follow the rules.
The 10,000 pound gorilla as far as intellectual property to protect here is Blizzard and its massive investment in the game and its playerbase. Third parties should not be able to corrupt that experience by leeching onto it and introducing requirements for malware, etc. If those third parties don’t want to play if they can’t do that, fine, but keep them away from everyone else.
There is no possible way that Blizzard is going to get involved in the distribution of addons, period.
They make the API available for creating them, but they’re won’t answer questions about it or support it in any way beyond that.
The “malware” you’re afraid of for the most part doesn’t exist.
The addon environment technologically forbids running arbitrary code outside of the game environment and nothing in the game environment can communicate with the computer’s systems.
I think you’re looking for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
The malware I’m talking about is Overwolf, which IIRC has been accused of highly invasive personal data scraping, aggressive display of advertising, and I believe at one point even using user machines to mine crypto. Why Blizzard would allow their game to become linked with that I don’t know, although given Blizzard’s latest press maybe it’s a case of like seeking like.
What? Blizz has no control over that.
Conflation. There’s nothing it can’t fix.
It would be awesome if Blizzard provided a safe space for distributing AddOns. However, I suspect they will never do this out of concern for liability.
Meanwhile, your repeated protests about the Overwolf app are overblown – not that I’m defending the app itself, but both manual and automated downloading is possible for popular AddOns distributed from several sites (Git, WoWI, Wago, …)
Blizzard has 100% control over whether addons are allowed at all, the terms they are allowed, and whether they can be served via third party. They could separate any need or usefulness of Overwolf from their game overnight if they chose, and I think they should.
I agree there are currently good non-overwolf options, and that many fine addons are hosted on other platforms. The scenario I am discussing is after the Overwolf API changes obsolete the existing tools, and if enough addons remain Overwolf-only so that players will need a solution for them.
While I agree it is “possible” to download addons manually in the most literal sense of that word, I do not agree that it is actually practical to do so which is why I think we are headed towards a future where Blizzard is helping to inflict Overwolf into a substantial portion of its playerbase, and I think that stinks.
The API changes don’t effect how authors get their updates onto Curse.
Okay, that’s fair. It could be an inconvenience if several moderately-popular AddOns were on CurseForge only.
I already did the top three earlier. Here is 4-10:
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#4 Raider-io is on GitHub (and also through their own companion app)
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#5 Questie is on GitHub
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#6 Pawn is on GitHub and WoWInterface
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#7 Bagnon is on GitHub and WoWInterface (and several plugins are on Wago, too)
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#8 Atlasloot is on WoWInterface
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#9 Plater Nameplates is on GitHub and Wago (and at least up to BFA on WoWI)
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#10 Mythic Dungeon Tools is on GitHub and WoWInterface
I’ll stop there. I wasn’t sure what the outcome would be when I started, but it appears that nine of the top ten (all but AtlasLoot Classic) are available via GitHub. I believe this means that third-party downloaders will still fetch them despite anything Overwolf may do.
Furthermore, many of these were also on WoWI or Wago or both. But, as Gello said near the top of this discussion, its a shame that users don’t know about these alternatives.
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OK, thanks Dahk, I’m going to take your last post as a good sign of hope and leave it at that. I’m honestly surprised so many are already available off-curse. Maybe things really will work out OK if that direction sticks.
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I’m not a fan of Overwolf, but it’s entirely under your own control whether or not it runs beyond the time it takes to update your addons. It’s a user setting.
If you’re having issues with that, it’s PEBKAC issue, not a software issue.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply with that. If you mean that it’s a PEBKAC issue in that an expert could theoretically create a virtualized sandbox that Overwolf was installed into and that is instantiated only for as long as you want it to perform its stated functions and has no access other than to a single addons directory, maybe that’s possible.
Otherwise, for 99% of users, once they’ve run a closed source installer a single time, they are at the mercy of the software installed being legitimate and in accordance with its stated descriptions and agreements. Which, for most reputable companies, works out most of the time (although see for example past problems like the rootkits installed with Sony DRM, etc.) My concerns are from posts I’ve read accusing Overwolf of not being one of those legitimate companies. I’m not up on the whole history of it, where it came from, if there was a change of control, when it may have stopped, etc., I just know these are accusations I hear regarding few other companies and personally this not something I want to have to become an expert on and manage mitigations to protect from it.
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I second this.
It is quite reasonable – indeed, a feature of the keyboard-chair interface – for users to reflect on a company’s reputation and make informed decisions when installing software.
Given that Overwolf received criticism for its actions prior to the takeover, I can understand why some people would want to promote addon authors to make their content available through alternatives.
Fortunately, as I demonstrated earlier, alternatives already exists and are used by the majority of the most-popular addon authors.
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it already works that way (without any need for blizzard). what mods are you unable download with a web browser?
the mod landscape has matured over the years but not once (in those 17 years so far) has blizzard even tried to become the distribution point for addons - if they havent up to now, whats going to make them try now?
the simplest reason is copyright. blizzard in no way want the possibility of hosting stuff that doesnt belong to the author because them hosting it means they are responsible for copyright violations (and need to have proper take down procedures in place, similar to dmca stuff)
thats staff, time, and money, they have no incentive to spend on because there are already plenty of hosting sites out there that already do it. whats in it for them??
i dont know of any downloader that was actually malware but then i never used one for over a decade, i just manually downloaded the handful of mods i used every now and then.
you dont have to install their software if you dont want to, it just makes the job easier for you if you do - but you are not being forced to use it (and never have as far as im aware).
do i also need to point out that if youre going to call the hosting sites leeches, you should be calling the players leeches as well - they want their free stuff just as much. no one has clean hands in this.
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Your response to Arkayenro is irrelevant:
- They did not say they were charging users to install their work(s) from CurseForge.
- You did not address their main point, that hardly anyone offers compensation for their work(s).