As many know Twitch sold its addon support to Overwolf. A company that has a shady reputation with gamers, forcing adds (some in game), reports of malware and information gathering.
Overwolf is also in the process of shutting down other open source options of getting addons, like wowup. Monopolizing the addons. A lot of what they do seems like it would also be against blizzards Tos.
On to why I say its bad for business. Many players have used addons for so long that playing without them is not an option. And over the years the number of addons used has grown for many players making manually installing addons a tedious process. I myself, have been using my addon setup for so long it wouldn’t even feel like the same game without them & wouldn’t even be an option I would consider. Then after recently returning to wow after quitting at the end of legion, The thought of going back to manual install like I did in bc-cata seem to much of a pain to be worth it tbh. And I refuse to use a shady company like overwolfs add ridden client. I would honestly rather go back to playing other games as I have been the last few years. So with addons being a big part of WOW and overwolf positioning them selves as the only easy addon option, despite their negative reputation with most players. It could negatively effect Blizzard/activision as a business. Even if only in a minor way. As I said, playing without my addons or similar replacements is not an option for me. and doing tedious stuff just to play a game I only recently returned to try out, isn’t worth it. it would be enough to simply unsub and play other games. And its possible others people, even just “casuals” may feel the same
overwolf with their shady rep, essentially tying themselves to blizzard/activision as an only option for addons will only negatively impact wow as a whole Imo.
(edit) at the time being and after a lot of backlash, There are no changes at sites like wowup (yet).
I would…but no, not gonna spend time a few days a week to manually check for updates and copy, unzip and do all that again lol. not worth it to me. when places like wowup and ajour exist. but are being given cease and desist orders by a shady company in order to monopolize free addons, locking them behind add revenue. which is against blizzards tos. id rather quit lol. or possibly have blizzard recognize a company disliked by gamers taking it upon themselves to essentially tie themselves to their game is a bad thing for blizzard/activision
I believe its against the ToS to charge for addons. Get some solid proof if Overwolf is trying to put any kind of paywall up (even if its to remove ads) and send it to Blizz.
That won’t work, in any case. Overwolf wouldn’t be charging for the addons, but charging an optional convenience charge to remove ads. Overwolf isn’t required to install the mods to begin with. Because none of it is mandatory – that is, Overwolf in general or, if an option, any ad removal fee – none of it is a “charge for an addon”. It’s just a charge for the convenience of using Overwolf to install your add-ons (which you can do without Overwolf) without viewing ads. Blizzard won’t touch that, because it doesn’t violate the TOS (no-one is making money from add-ons).
Yeah the advertisers is how OW makes money. They pay ow to run ads in the ow app. And they make extra $ by letting you subscribe to avoid the ads. Most mobile app games have that option to.
My PC is pretty well guarded against malware and the like. I may download Overwolf for the convenience, but I will wait and see what people have to say about it and WoW’s addons first. I don’t use that many to begin with, so if need be I will do a manual installation of every single one.
that was one of the main reasons for this post lol. overwolf is making it to where they are the exclusive source of easily updated addons. just dl their client and get all addons, with the price of adds, malware …ect
Addons are use at your own risk, barely regulated, and not part of Activision/Blizzard’s business. People used to accuse Curse (later Curseforge.com) as having unsavory business practices and that their app was full of malware as well.
