For those who aren’t aware, starting next reset the “primary” place to get addons for WoW will be through Overwolf. Overwolf is known for drawing unclosable ads over your video games. The only way to not get ads is to pay for the service. I’ll leave the malware arguments to someone else since those reports seem debatable, but the service does absolutely draw ads over your game, as well as provide ad popups when the client is allowed to run.
This change of hands to Overwolf seems like it runs pretty hard afoul of Blizzards UI policy: UI Add-On Development Policy
Particularly the elements:
Addons may not include advertisements
Addons must be free of charge
Addons must not negatively impact the game or the players
Technically, it is the client that is in violation of these policies and not the addons, but I think it’s probably reasonable to presume that any addon that is exclusively available through Overwolf and gets a share of ad revenue is endorsing and benefiting from these violations.
To be clear, I love this game, I love my addons, I donate through patreon to developers, I am a developer (not of addons). But I don’t want to be extorted to paying a subscription fee just to not have to see ads while playing Warcraft. I can certainly manually download items or write my own update script, but (1) most WoW players are not also coders who will have much of a choice in the matter and (2) the makers of Overwolf are already sending their legal weenies after other developers who used their API and who knows how long it will be before scraping is off the table or the items are moved to dynamic addresses or put behind account authentication walls (especially if it’s impacting Overwolf’s ad revenue).
I’d love to know Blizzard’s stance on this before this game turns into something with commercial breaks.
For addon dev’s who support this, please know we all want you to continue your great work, but forcing the bulk of players into watching ads in game to compensate you is not acceptable.
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Because of their stated UI policies? Because most of their players experiencing ads in game is not how they envision their product succeeding?
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They have nothing to do with the addons though, it’s not their place to big brother it.
Mind you I don’t like what I have heard about overwolf, but that is up to the addon authors as to whether or not they choose to place their addons there or set up a repository elsewhere.
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You have been able to test this with WoW? Or some other game?
Activision is probably upset that they didn’t think to have pop-up ads any time you log in.
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It also happens in other Blizzard games where they extend a dialog box’s frame to include a separate part in which they display an ad.
Give me a second, I’ll try to find one of the other threads about Overwolf that had screenshots of what this looks like.
/moo 
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If you pay $15/mo. you shouldn’t have to look at any ads. That is exactly WHY I pay for games. I don’t put “free” games on my phone either; if there is no ad-free option I don’t install it.
If everything becomes ad-based I’ll just unplug and stick with my board games.
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This Mythic Keystone Dungeon has been brought to you by iBUYPOWER gaming computers!
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First of all, Overwolf already said it’ll be like the old Curse app where it’s just ads in the app itself. Nowhere else.
Secondly, go use Wowup.io or Ajour and avoid Overwolf altogether.
They aren’t blocking the API. Yet.
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I used to use their comps. They were good back in the day.
Which is nice if true, but it would be nice if the Blues would lay down what their position on this is so that the community knows there is a line in the sand somewhere.
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Ah. Well here is a quote from them about WoW.
“YES, WITH AN OPT-OUT. WE WANT TO MAKE MODDING A LEGIT PROFESSION, AND WE WANT TO FIND WAYS FOR MODDERS TO MAKE A LIVING. WITH 70–80% OF AD REVENUE GOING TO CREATORS AND DISTRIBUTED BASED ON MOD USAGE, WE WANT TO LOOK INTO INCORPORATING IN-APP ADS IN A WAY THAT IS NOT INTRUSIVE. YOU MIGHT REMEMBER THE ADS ON THE OLD CURSE CLIENT, BEFORE THE TWITCH ACQUISITION, SO WE’RE THINKING ABOUT ITERATING ON THAT EXPERIENCE. BUT, IN PARALLEL — FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT WISH TO SUPPORT CREATORS, WE’RE THINKING ABOUT WAYS OF OPTING OUT. CLEARLY, SUBSCRIPTION WILL BE ONE OF THESE OPTIONS, BUT WE’RE ALSO THINKING ABOUT AN OPT-OUT WITHOUT PAYMENT.”
“THAT SAID — YOU’LL NEVER SEE AN AD IN-GAME, JUST IN-APP. YOU’RE DEFINITELY NOT GOING TO SEE ANY ADS INSIDE WOW ADDONS OR ANYTHING WONKY LIKE THAT.”
Sorry for the caps. That’s how they decided to write the quote.
However, the article does note they have been found selling personal information in the past. Between that and the rumors of malware, I am highly suspicious of this change. I do remember the old curse client though and if they are being honest the ad part doesnt sound that bad.
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I mean those are basically already in the Bnet launcher
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I couldn’t find the older forum threads with the screenshots of Overwolfs in game advertising.
But if you search on “Overwolf game ad”, the first result is Overwolf’s own branding site with a video on it showing how they insert ads directly into a live game window in many games, including Hearthstone. And not static ads, but videos.
/moo
Well, that’s just incorrect.
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Easy fix dood, open Overwolf > update your addons > close overwolf
Problem solved
Don’t use the Overwolf app or its overlays. You don’t even need to install it. Just download directly from Curseforge.
Or install them manually.
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