Sound like the older folks in my office when I explain to them how Twitch works and individuals make money.
It’s not an “ideal” job by any means but one can technically make money off WoW addons if they desire; TukUI / ElvUI is a prime example of this and with the emergence of Patreon and others it’s totally viable to fund projects in this manner.
This particular addon has well over 1.3 million LoC pushed; that’s a ton of code for what is essentially a “hobbie” and this is IMHO a fairly serious project to the individual at hand.
They have 10 reported contributors and the author effectively has the lions share of commits (over 90%); I have doubts many individuals without the author’s assistance would be capable of jumping in to add new features right away either.
I get it, folks got upset about a paywall; that’s against the addon development ToS as far as I am aware anyway, but no developer should have their life threatened over something like this.
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It’s not a job if it is against the rules. If the donations are enough to provide a living, it’s still not a job. You are making a living off of donations that happened because of the hobby you shared. It’s just another form of welfare. Same with patreon. Twitch streaming is more like a job because it is a partnership with twitch, but patreon is just donations lol. Privatized welfare systems.
Considering the stunt he pulled, the backlash he was getting, and the blatant breaking of the TOS, I’d come up with any excuse as to why I was reverting it as well.
Is there any proof behind this admission, or are we supposed to take it at face value?
No, the point is that you shouldn’t see addon making as a way to make a living. Because you can’t. That’s the whole point of it. You’re using Blizzard’s tools to make something, and they own everything about it. For people who want to make money doing something like that, Blizzard isn’t the way to do it.
Job Noun - a task or piece of work, especially one that is paid.
Verb - do casual or occasional work.
“she jobbed as a waitress until her first role in a movie”
The moment you receive compensation it’s technically a job, regardless of what your own personal opinion is; donations are still taxed and appropriate documentation needs to be filed.
As far as against the rules go, the only thing against was stripping / removing features via a paywall; the author of the addon could make it so individuals can only rightly download the addon from their own site and monetize that via ad revenue without breaking TOS.
Donation =/= compensation. There is a difference between the terms.
So he used a loophole that shouldn’t exist to profit off an addon and turn a hobby/welfare into a business. That’s why people are taking issue. Leave it as welfare, because that’s all it is allowed to be by the rules.
You beat me to it! lol
Getting paid to do it it’s a job 
too late now. multiple functioning forks out there. would rather not have anything method related on this system, anyways.
Donation Noun - something that is given to a charity, especially a sum of money.
You are correct in terms of compensation, I misused the word of compensation; technically speaking they are both the employee and employer so they are not entitled to compensation but instead a wage they can take from their LOB.
At the end of the day though all roads lead to the fact that addon development could in theory be a viable “job” by definition.
We can agree to disagree all you want, but as someone who makes money in the Software Development industry I can definitely say that building WoW addons with an appropriate organizational structure could produce income; how much no idea and it’s definitely risky if you wanted it to be your only job.
The moment the author wanted to make money from the addon it went from a Hobby to a business; IRS will be more than happy to inform you that when it comes to tax season.
Well, it’s a shame people have taken it this far. Honestly, as an avid MDT user myself, I have stopped by his stream a few times and thanked him for his work and passed my Amazon prime sub to him.
If he is hurting for cash or needs to raise funding for something I bet he would have received lots of donation if he added a note with the recent update and said “donations really help the cause” or something like that. I absolutely would have tossed him my Amazon prime sub right away.
People make mistakes all the time, it’s life. He shouldn’t be threatened, that is wrong.
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The discussion was a theoretical one of how much time one is putting into something that may cause someone to want or feel like they need compensation to justify continuing it. The point is to put yourself in the shoes of an addon author who is dumping tons of their free time into something that does not reward them with anything tangible for it.
The context around the status of Blizzard game v addon authors is arbitrary to the discussion. I understand why you’re saying what you’re saying, but to any author who is sinking in enormous amounts of time for a depended on addon that reality doesn’t matter to them. The reason we are seeing stuff like this crop up occasionally is likely given to how big WoW is and how integral addons have become part of the game and the fact is those authors are picking up Blizzard’s slack and they are doing it for free and are only doing it out of their own passion and love for the game.
It’s a charity, you’re right. There is no employee, no employer. Just donations and good will based on existing passion. If the passion no longer exists, why should the money exist? That’s why people donate, not because he offers something others don’t(they do now), but because he is passionate about creating a good product.
Go get a real job if there’s no passion left. It’s an addon. It’s a passion project. It’s a charity. It’s welfare.
You can’t just call anything a business. Otherwise drug dealers would have jobs.
They do have jobs. They work. What they do is illegal but I challenge you to find the word “legal” in an accepted definition of the word “job”.
This community has been the embodiment of death threats, harassment and other types of negative and suspicious behavior since day one.
Why the concern now for one person?
Wows community was stained years ago.
I swapped to manbaby which is the same thing and am happy with it, if they keep it updated I wont be going back to MDT its one thing to go for subs and patrons but to throw an absolute fit like a baby is silly so hopefully the manbaby one stays updated so I don’t have to use this guys stuff
Except he explicitly agreed to not charge for the addon when he agreed to Blizzard’s rules of addon making.
That said, I thought the thing that spurred the author to blank the maps was people dumping on him for his guild losing the world first race, not outright death threats for not updating the addon during the race.
Still, that wasn’t the right thing to do – he should’ve reported the threats to blizzard/discord/twitch support/the police and blocked whoever made the threat.
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LOL. I mean. So to you being a mafia boss is a job? Organized crime is a profession now? Come on. Get a grip on reality.
Why is it you think people are only concerned about it because it’s being aimed at this guy? How about “Death threats and targeted harassment are wrong so I’m just going to say so when I see something about it happening”? Does that work for you?
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Doesn’t seem like much of an apology when you spend the majority of it explaining how you feel victimized by the backlash of your douchery.
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