He could have, and perhaps he should have. Then this mess could have been avoided and Blizzard wouldn’t be looking into it.
But he’s still responsible for his actions.
His actions may not have hurt anyone, but they did inconvenience a lot of players who relied on that data, many of whom were NOT goading him on and demanding he update his addon, but were simply using it for the benefits it provided.
Why should those individuals be inconvenienced when they did nothing wrong?
Problem solved for them 
He only half arsed removed them, they are still there for anyone to download and install thru his github. Which is where the clone of the mod got them.
You’re acting like this is an easy fix for everyone when it isn’t.
Patching back in the code that the author removed is not something every player is going to know how to do. Nor should they have to know how to do it, because this shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
And now you know why Caelin is on ignore for me. Lol.
Anyone who defends this creator, when he’s literally ONLY doing this because Echo lost the world first race, AKA he’s throwing a temper tantrum, needs to look up what a temper tantrum is.
Honestly, it’s not that hard. All he did was remove the LUA dat files for each expansion. If takes a couple of minutes to DL and copy them back into place. Once the data is there, the dungeons will function just like they did before. It might seem difficult but it’s really not.
Imagine that I am actually hurt over that. Oh wait you can’t see it 
For folks who know nothing about coding or how addons function, it is hard, and that’s most people. You might know how to do it, and in that case, congrats, you can get addon functionality back until the author breaks the addon again and removes the code for you to copy (which he’s likely to do once he learns that folks have found a way around his paywall). But for the vast majority of players out there, they’ve got no idea what they’re doing, and it’s intimidating.
Hell, I have to describe in step by step details to some of my friends how to back up their addon data so that when they reset their UI they don’t lose everything, and that’s an extremely simple thing to do. Simple for me. Not for them.
No they can’t. Code is code and it is yours to sell. The only grounds Blizzard would have is if it actually hurt their game then they could sue. Other than that their only option is to break the addon and cause it to stop working. They have no actual legal ground to stand on. It’s a deterrent. If literally everyone charged for addons Blizzard would have to break them all and then there would be no addons and the player base would revolt.
Just because they put “you can’t sell addons” in the ToS doesn’t give them the legal ground to enforce it in a court of law.
Disclaimer: I’m not your lawyer. And that’s not legal advice.
no, theyre not
I’m techsavvy, but I honestly admit I’ve no idea where to get the files to circumnavigate a paywall such as this. I’ve never had a reason to look in to it. So i’d be one of the many people affected. Spoiled by the clicking of 4 buttons in to an addon manager.
I don’t even really use or need add-ons. Rarity is nice and stuff like that. But it isn’t needed nor would it ever impede my gameplay. People have become to reliant on these new ways.
I linked it above. You can grab them (at least for now) directly from the mods github. Just navigate to the Shadowlands directory and download them. If you are unsure exactly what you are doing you can find quick 5 minutes videos on youtube about how to use github.
I saw on reddit someone created a cloned version that you can download thru WoWup if you provide the clone’s github location.
It’s good to be the non addon, mouse clicking, key turning casual.
…just don’t buy it.
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/EnormousSnivelingKitten-size_restricted.gif
Oh, I mean thanks. Personally, right now i’m not put out by this change whatsoever really. But once it does actually affect me i’ll look in to that. Thanks~
At which point he can get them from any of the dozen people who actually pay him or he can turn it over to any of the thousands of people who actually know how to write scripts. There is no way it ends with him making anything even IF somehow Blizzard doesn’t outright block him.
Ya’ll think Blizzard cares about this? And ya’ll actually think their legal department is looking into this?
lol, good grief.
Except those files will not be open for public distribution and sharing them would be a no no. But honestly, I doubt it will even go that far. The fact that he left the files on his github shows that he was acting impulsively and probably will revert the changes.
I am sure he was just acting out in frustration over being mocked in his stream while losing at the world first and this is his way of lashing out.
They’ve done so in the past, they’ve also straight up killed add ons in the past. I’m not saying they’ll do it for this, but I wouldn’t say it’s out of their reach.
Personally… I get the position that the creators are in on this. They pour countless hours of work into this and would like to see some return on that work. On one hand fair enough. On the other… purposefully sabotaging your add-on to spite the players is a great way to demonstrate that you’re a child.
All he had to do was explain his position, maintain the add-on at its current level of info (possibly have a free base version of it), then have a all bits and bobs included version behind the paywall. Similar to how raidbots does it. I doubt anyone would’ve cared. But making it so that if we update our current MDT, then it literally just deletes all of the information??? Dude… wtf is wrong with you.
Just input your own data. Jesus Christ…stop being such babies.
I think the issue most have is without the dat files, there are no mobs for you to plan the route around. I mean it is like playing pool but without any pool balls.
He CANT make sharing them a no/no (or to rephrase he cant do anything but ban whoever does it if he finds out at which point someone else would do it instead). There is literally nothing he can do legally to punish someone for leaking them to a mod creator. Part of the ToS he agreed to is that anything he writes can be copied so long as credit is given to the original author so there is nothing he can do to anyone who gives away information that is freely copied. That overwrites his legally questionable sub service.