Blizzard Asserts Rights Over Independent Add-Ons 344
bugnuts writes "Blizzard has announced a policy change regarding add-ons for the popular game World of Warcraft which asserts requirements on UI programmers, such as disallowing charging for the program, obfuscation, or soliciting donations. Add-ons are voluntarily-installed UI programs that add functionality to the game, programmed in Lua, which can do various tasks that hook into the WoW engine. The new policy has some obvious requirements, such as not loading the servers or spamming users, and it looks like an attempt to make things more accessible and free for the end user. But unlike FOSS, it adds other requirements that assert control over these independently coded programs, such as distribution and fees. Blizzard can already control the ultimate functionality of add-ons by changing the hooks into the WoW engine. They have exercised this ability in the past, e.g. to disable add-ons that automate movement and facilitate 'one-button' combat. Should they be able to make demands on independent programmers' copyrighted works, such as forbidding download fees or advertising, when those programmers are not under contract to code for Blizzard? Is this like Microsoft asserting control over what programmers may code for Windows?"
This is rediculous (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is rediculous (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, Blizzard derives increased value from users taking the time to level a second character due to QuestHelper [curse.com]. Many users use Auctioneer [auctioneeraddon.com]. While those are free with exceptional support there are also many that are not free such as Zygors' Guides ($50) [zygorguides.com], Carbonite ($2.50/mo) [carboniteaddon.com], Brian Kopp's Guide/Addon ($59.99) [briankopp.com], Joanas' Levelling Guide ($77) [joanasworld.com], and QuestUp ($47) [teamidemise.com].
You'll note that the paid addons are for quest assistance.
You'll note that Brian Kopp (previously featured on slashdot [slashdot.org]) is now making cash by selling an ingame version of his guide, me thinks this is retribution.
Also, as an addon author myself I can only say "Go ahead, turn off all your API's, see how that works out. I can farm other games".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget Blizzard likes to copy popular addons and make them into their own UI release.
Re:This is rediculous (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You know, I don't think they'll be putting ads in World of Warcraft any time soon. The games on the Battle.net platform which they don't field a monthly subscription from (Starcraft II, etc) are the candidates for this.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is rediculous (Score:4, Informative)
Your post speaks of a complete lack of experience with how addons wind up on WoW users systems.
The minority of an addon's users get it from the authors website. Most get them from 3rd party websites (that may or more likely may not be good about providing some donation link) or they get them through 3rd party addon management programs that allow the user to never have to glance at the original author's website.
Re:This is rediculous (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets try that again:
such requests should be limited to the add-on website OR DISTRIBUTION SITE and should not appear in the game.
Of course its up to curse.com and whoever to actually implement the charge-throughs (or simply not allow direct downloads for addons that wish to charge), but Blizzard themselves isn't denying the fact that users mostly go to curse.com or wowinterface.com or similar.
On the other hand, if curse & friends decide not to bother, it will make it extremely hard for new addons to get exposure if they want to charge.
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From reading comments of these addon authors, it does seem like it's fairly hard to get the 3rd party distribution sites to play ball. They were having a difficult time making it worthwhile via donations already before Blizzard removed their most effective option (a simple in-game mention to donate).
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Simple, just put a little extra functionality in the addon that reminds the user that updates to the addon can be downloaded at www.myaddon.com
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You should read posts by the authors of these popular addons. They can tell you what does and doesn't work. From what I've read, the evidence is that without saying outright "Please donate", you don't wind up getting squat.
Re:This is ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just glad to see them cracking down on obfuscation. Nothing enrages me quite like being handed the source code and being completely unable to do anything useful with it.
Re:This is rediculous (Score:5, Informative)
FTFA or website rather.
Paraphrased because I don't want to open the site up again.
YOU CAN SOLICIT DONATIONS FROM YOUR WEBSITE OR DISTRIBUTION METHOD, BUT NOT IN GAME.
sorry for the caps, but I think you're not smart enough to read small letters.
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I've downloaded dozens of addons, I've never once visited an addon website.
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No they don't. That's never been a right. It happens all the time.
No, it's more like the GPL (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to play with their code and platform, you need to follow their rules or not play at all.
Just as you can't close your code if it incorporates GPL code, Blizzard doesn't want you charging people for your add-ons if you code for their platform.
Re:No, it's more like the GPL (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to play with their code and platform, you need to follow their rules or not play at all.
I was going to call bullshit, but after reading TFA, I completely agree with them in every single point. Misleading summary.
This is not "software development" in the traditional sense. It's a proprietary platform, where everything you do affects many other people as well. This "unlike FOSS" crap is completely sensationalist.
Let's see the 'offending' terms:
4) Add-ons may not include advertisements.
Oh my, we won't have to get adblock for wow! Outrage!
5) Add-ons may not solicit donations.
Add-ons may not include requests for donations. We recognize the immense amount of effort and resources that go into developing an add-on; however, such requests should be limited to the add-on website or distribution site and should not appear in the game.
Same here.
So, what was the news again?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, the news is that WoW (especially high end PVE and PVP) is not playable without a few addons (5 ?), and is really much better if you have a bunch of them (I have 20-30).
Blizzard does not even offer an AddonStore, or an addon update tool.
Blizzard is trying to have it both ways:
1- having a crappy client that is so lacking in so many respects that add-ons are at minimum an appreciable comfort, but really more of a vital necessity; Blizzard is counting on hackers to fill the gaps, which they usually do m
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Blizzard should implement an AddonStore modelled on the iPhone's Appstore, with free and not free addons, and share revenue; and also implement an auto-update feature to keep addons up to date.
Update tool: www.curse.com
As for the addonstore, I already paid three times to play Lich King, not to mention the monthly fee. Why should I pay even more just because the UI sucks?
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- the update tool should be supllied by blizzard, and standard
- payment for addons should be at the devs' discretion. Should they always work for free for you ?
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This is definitely the way of Blizzard. Additional button bars used to be an add on. It's in the client now. Threat data and meters used to be addon only. Now the threat addons use client data for threat mechanics and there is a meter (albiet a sucky one) displayed for every mob. The "-fu" style ingame addon management is now incorporated (again suckily) into the client as well. Those are just a few of the
What an idiotic statement (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't need addons. You may like addons, but you sure as hell don't need them. WoW is perfectly playable without any addons. In fact, I know a number of people who play with a very minimal number of addons for the reason that addons usually break when a new version comes out. So they don't use man, and the ones they do use are non-critical. Personally I use a few, but none that are "I must have it or I can't play." I am perfectly capable of disabling all my addons and still doing just fine.
What's more, WoW has a very good UI built in. I've played more than a few MMORPGs (Everquest, DAoC, EvE, Starwars Galaxies, and Warhammer) and WoW has be far the best UI. It is easy to use, and includes a high degree of built-in customization. For that matter, the addon interface is just another level. The most basic is the point and click menus and such. If you need more complexity, there's macros which require some basic scripting but not much. Need more than that? No problem you can full out program the UI using XML and LUA. What's more, you can share it with the world.
Also, Blizzard DOES take popular addons and make something like them in the game. Biggest one I can think of is the raid frames. Back in the day, there was no display for the whole raid, and thus no easy way to heal a raid. CTRaid became popular for this reason. It was a pain in the ass to use, and kinda flaky at times, but useful to raiders. So what happened? Blizzard modified WoW to have it's own raid frames, and to give addons like CT easy means of communicating things.
Your post just sounds like whining about a game that won't do things "Your way." Well ok, but recognize you aren't the only player. Lots of people may not think that "your way" is right. So if you don't find it fun, go find another game to play. Seriously, WoW isn't the only game out there, not even the only MMO. Some people like other games, nothing wrong with that. However, if your bitch is with the UI, well I'd be prepared to be disappointed. WoW's UI is one of the very best. That was only of the biggest pains when I tries Warhammer. The UI in that game was so rouge as compared to what I was used to in WoW. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't near as good as what WoW had.
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Indeed, nothing new. For example Epic Games has the "no-commercial mods" rule for years. It pretty much comes down to, "if you want to use our tools, runtime (i.e. te game) and content then you are not allowed to charge people for it".
Although, they don't have a "no begging" rule. And actually, I don't think I ever saw a mod for an Epic Game contain any begging.
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At least as far as the GPL v2.... (I am not going into the v3 can of worms.)
The problem is that I don't think that linking has much to do with whether you have a derivative work of not. If someone wants to make a proprietary add-on to a GPL project, I am willing to bet that the question of whether it is linked dynamically to the software or communicates through sockets will have very little bearing on whether it is a derivative work. THis is assuming that "aggregative work" means the same thing as "compi
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If it's linked it's derivative, it uses the GPL code to do something.
This is why we have the LGPL.
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So does a network client. But if I write a network client for MySQL's protocols without using their libraries, then nobody argues that this has any requirement to be GPL. Also no copyright license is ever required to run the software and the GPL makes it clear that is not governed. Therefore ONLY actions prohibited otherwise by copyright law (at least regarding the GPL v2) are governed.
Does Microsoft have a copyright basis to make arbitrary demands regarding all code running on the platform? Can Microso
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So does a network client. But if I write a network client for MySQL's protocols without using their libraries, then nobody argues that this has any requirement to be GPL.
And that's fine and not covered by the GPL. There is a difference between linking to libraries and using a service over TCP/IP and the GPL is clear on that. Of course it does only apply to distribution.
As for MS and Blizzard, I don't know (or much care) what they have the rights to do.
GPL FAQ (Score:2)
I am willing to bet that the question of whether it is linked dynamically to the software or communicates through sockets will have very little bearing on whether it is a derivative work.
Courts take the intent of the parties into account when interpreting licenses or other legal documents. For GNU software, this intent would include philosophy documents published by the FSF such as its GPL FAQ [gnu.org], which states that a program that communicates over a documented socket interface is less likely to be considered "combined".
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IANAL, but I understand that intent is only used in cases where the intent of both parties is clear (i.e. the licensor and the licensee, not necessarily the license author), and where the license is not otherwise clear. So you would seem to have to show that both the licensor and licensee accepted RMS's statements, and if not, vagueness would be held against the licensor.
However, the bigger issue is that I am not sure you need copyright permission to dynamically link to a library anyway, provided that dist
Just to note (Score:2)
In this specific case, I think Blizzard has a strong case because such add-ins combine with the program to affect the screen display, which could be argued to CREATE a derivative work when running, since game displays tend to be primarily expressive. Whether they "can" and whether they "should" are two very different questions.
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And let's be clear. They can't really stop you. What they can do is bar you from playing the game or block your addon from working. There's no real control that they can place of the authoring of LUA code that has calls out to their API.
Blizzard is entirely within their rights to take these steps, and frankly I think I'm happier with this kind of restriction than not, right now. At some point there will be many platforms like WoW, where you can re-write most of the UI of a virtual world, but right now, most
Re:pedantry (Score:4, Insightful)
And you can develop your add-on for WoW and not follow Blizzard's rules as long as you never distribute it.
Your pedantry doesn't really prove anything, though.
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They're communicating with the game client. The client is communicating with the server.
That's a subtle distinction, but an important one.
Good choice (Score:2, Interesting)
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So are you going to complain when there aren't any addons? If someone takes the time to code the addon they should be able to ask for whatever they want for it . It is their labor not Blizzard's. If they do it for their own pleasure and the thanks from the people that use it is enough payment for their labor then the developer can give it away for free.
All this will do is reduce the number of addons available. Blizzard make good games but has their head up their ass when it comes to understanding the pe
Re:Good choice (Score:5, Informative)
No it won't, it'll just reduce the number of addons spamming your message window with "OMG PLZ SEND MONEY". TFA specifically says you can solicit donations on your website for your work, you just can't charge for it or advertise in game.
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Except it happened already. The single most popular quest assistance addon, quest helper is officially discontinued because of this. Author stated his reasons in the update log very clearly - money loss due to inability to request donations in-game.
Frankly, the reason why "asking for money on homepage/download page" is very simple - there are thousands of add-ons for WoW all made by different developers. As a result, the addons are downloaded from large portal sites such as curse gaming or wowinterface, whi
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TFA specifically says you can solicit donations on your website for your work, you just can't charge for it or advertise in game.
So, you didn't read his post, or are you just being obtuse?
He already addressed that point, making it clear that, no requesting donations on the Web site doesn't work (which is rather obvious if you realize that most users of many addons use an addon manager, and never visit the site anyway, much the way Linux users almost never visit the Gnome site or the GCC site).
If you disagree with his points, be constructive and say so. Defend your point of view even, but don't just blindly re-state the premise. That
Their house, their rules. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, when you live under someones roof you play by their rules. It might be kindof a dick move, but it's their API and they have every right to control how it's used. And it's not like this stipulation is unheard of; Microsoft has similar rules surrounding use of their GamerTag API as well as Google Maps with their free API (this is an oversimplification, but in general you are not allowed to use GMap mashups in for-pay websites).
Not to belittle the work of modders, but the fact that they can write add-ons at all is due to the substantial amount of resources that Blizzard has invested not only in the development of the API, but also the game itself and the massive server infrastructure.
I may not like it (I haven't decide either way yet whether it's a good or bad move - I'm very wary of Blizzard ever since the bnetd fiasco [wikipedia.org]). But they are absolutely within their rights to do this.
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>>But it's their API and they have every right to control how it's used.
It's debatable. If you're not actually using any of their source code to make your mod for WoW (and most don't), then there's no copyright law that would stop mod authors from telling Blizzard to take a hike. Writing a program that is compatible with another program (which is all a mod is) is a protected form of authoring. Blizzard, of course, is free to make their programs incompatible, and Google Maps is free to block you if you
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I think we're in agreement. Sorry if implied that Blizzard has some sort of legal recourse (they may, but ianal either). I think what's most likely is that they're going to just start yanking api keys (do they use api keys? i dunno how it works) or otherwise blocking authors that don't cooperate.
Changes don't forbid advertising or donations (Score:5, Informative)
Its their app (Score:3, Insightful)
They can make any demands they want.
You are also free to take your business ( and code ) elsewhere and put them out of business.
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What you are advocating is "might makes right"
Were it not for the restraint of the legal system, I'm sure many companies wouldn't hesitate to rob you blind, literally.
With your stuff, might does make right (Score:2)
If not, the GPL wouldn't work. That's what the GPL relies on: The ability to tell people what they can and can't do with your shit. You say "Ok, you can have the source, and you can modify and redistribute it, however you have to give those modifications to me and everyone else. Otherwise, no deal." You are allowed to do that because it's your code. Take that away, and then it would be a situation of if you hand out your code, people can do whatever they want with it and you can't restrict that.
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auctioneer would probably be as popular.
not that we would stop playing but it would make it significantly less enjoyable.
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I auctioneer suddenly pulled their support somebody else would code up something roughly equivalent within a few weeks. Most addons simply aren't complex enough that they can't be recoded fairly quickly.
I can see a valid concern (Score:2)
In WOW the style and feel of the world is important. Tools like these could ruin that without certain restrictions. Then again, so can't players.
QuestHelper (Score:5, Informative)
I'll chime in here.
I'm the current sole author/maintainer of what I believe is the world's most popular World of Warcraft UI Mod, QuestHelper. About half a year ago I took it over from an abandoned/unmaintained and rapidly degrading state, and I've treated it like a full-time job since. I'm perhaps two or three weeks ago from releasing Version 1.0, which is a huge set of changes to dramatically reduce CPU and memory usage, as well as produce better output from the mod and be far, far easier to maintain and modify in the future.
I used to be fully donation-supported - that means my apartment in the Bay Area, food, gas, utilities, all of that, thanks to the generosity of users.
The funny thing about donations is that a lot of people will gladly donate, but you have to remind them. Depending on how you count it, adding a simple unobtrusive message on logon saying "hey we're donation-supported, if you really like QH please donate" increased income anywhere from five-fold to hundred-fold. That said, even with that message, my income was starting to drop below sustainability levels - I was hoping that v1.0 would fix that, as well as breaking some code in the Wowmatrix client that was actually disabling my donation request.
(Ironically, it seems like the message may not have been noticable enough, as a large number of people have told me that they never even saw it after using QH for months. So it goes.)
Now, I'm not donation-supported. I can't put that message up, and I know from experience that I won't get enough without it. I can keep up the donation box on the actual website, but the fact is that just won't provide enough for me to keep going - most people don't even look at the website. I should mention that I fully believe this is within Blizzard's rights to do - I don't have any grounds to sue or anything - but I do believe it sucks. So I'm going to be releasing version 1.0 (watch for it in 2 or 3 weeks, it'd be sooner but I'm going to GDC and that will eat a week), and then just putting it in a mothballed maintenance release, as the remaining donations I'll get anyway should be enough for that.
I think this is a mistake caused by Blizzard's overzealous legal team. I think, for some reason, Blizzard is terrified at the idea of anyone besides them making money on anything related to their game. I'm not sure why they're banning donation requests ingame but not out-of-game - I think they're just confused. However, they've killed off a good number of UI mods thanks to this, and I think ultimately this is going to hurt them quite a bit.
I'll field questions, as long as they're sanely-written.
If you'd like to donate, I'd love for a little bit extra to cover the 1.0 release - here's the link [quest-helper.com]. Anything you can give is appreciated, of course, though not expected and not required.
Also, if there's any business managers out there who have a clever idea for how to still make a living off this, let me know. I'll pay you with a reasonable fraction of the results ;)
Re:QuestHelper (Score:5, Interesting)
Christ, I thought you were just big headed since I've never heard of your addon.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info9896-QuestHelper.html [wowinterface.com] 3,215,622 Downloads
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quest-helper.aspx [curse.com] 20,949,412 Downloads
http://wowui.incgamers.com/?p=mod&m=6145 [incgamers.com] 49,914 Downloads
(balance this with Auctioneer, which has a paltry 12 million downloads..)
Re:QuestHelper (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure I have more users than many entire MMORPGs :)
Re:QuestHelper (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, all of those downloads occured after I took over development - curse.com did a major site redesign a month or two after I started things up, and as part of that, they reset the download count.
I'm rather proud to have broken 20 million. That's a lot of downloads. :)
Re: (Score:2)
I think this is a mistake caused by Blizzard's overzealous legal team. I think, for some reason, Blizzard is terrified at the idea of anyone besides them making money on anything related to their game. I'm not sure why they're banning donation requests ingame but not out-of-game - I think they're just confused. However, they've killed off a good number of UI mods thanks to this, and I think ultimately this is going to hurt them quite a bit.
I'm not going to deny that this will suck for you, and I do sympathize but honestly ... you're the outlier in the dataset. I would say there are only a handful of people in the world who derive their entire income from writing a lua plug-in for a MMORPG.
The question you ask regarding why they would ban in-game donation requests is fairly simple - they don't want nagware running inside their game. Companies like Blizzard are very conscious of the "in-game experience" and want to control that as much as possi
Re:QuestHelper (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with this, but keep in mind that UI mods are entirely voluntary - if someone doesn't like the donation nags, they can turn off QH. Also, fewer UI mods being available means, on average, a worse experience for players.
I estimate that Questhelper alone is used by 10-20% of the WoW player base. I think there would be more grumbling than you think.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, I'm pretty sure they can't touch me. I indeed doubt there's anything they can do *me*, besides ban my account. Of course, they could also ban the accounts of anyone who uses Questhelper.
It doesn't matter if I can write it or not - what matters is whether people are able to use it, and that, indeed, they have full control over.
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In your opinion. Theirs appears to differ.
Not really, if you've been around WoW long enough to know the history. There's a long list of UI changes that Blizzard has made that directly follow popular addons that filled a gap. The addon developers serve as an unpaid (by Blizzard - actually, they pay Blizzard) test lab.
Imagine if they fired a lot of people from that test lab, including the developers of some of the most popular projects. That will definitely have an effect on the quality of the UI.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, if there's any business managers out there who have a clever idea for how to still make a living off this, let me know. I'll pay you with a reasonable fraction of the results ;)
I'm sure Blizzard would at least give you an interview. Sucks that you might have to move from the Bay Area to LA though. But if their quest UI is so painful that millions of people prefer yours, that's a damn good reason to hire you. I played WoW without any add-ons, but I had to use wowhead constantly to figure out how to do many of the quests. If it weren't for that website and thottbot I would've stopped playing long before I did.
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Oh, they probably would, but if I were going to work for someone else's game company, I'd have companies much further up my list than Blizzard ;)
Doublefine, for example. Man, it's actually really tempting to try getting a job there. And I wouldn't even have to move! :D
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, you're misunderstanding a little bit :)
I strongly suspect I could get a job there. I know my skills, I know my competency, I'm pretty sure I could walk into a job in virtually any place I wanted. I'm just not entirely sure I want to. It would be cool to work there, but I suspect after a few months I'd want to go work on my own stuff again.
Not really fair to them if I already know I'd be leaving, and it seems kind of silly to me as well.
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Doublefine is really one of the very, very few companies that I'd actually go and work for as something *I* wanted to do, not just something that would pay the bills. I mean, work under Tim Schafer? I think the only other two people I'd joyfully apprentice with would be Jenova Chen and Jonathan Blow.
Unfortunately I doubt any of them have three-or-six-month apprenticeship deals ;)
Re: (Score:2)
You might have a better idea than others about this then - my first thought seeing this "random" update, shortly after the battle.net account release, is that Blizzard is working on their own Steam.
A desktop app with cross-game communication, perhaps queueing for BGs/instances outside of the game (maybe even with multiple toons at the same time, and play with whoever one pops for? maybe im dreaming here). They even mention "store" in the battle.net press release, so what are the odds they aren't going to r
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I can't write it into the addon for several reasons (can't nag, can't communicate outside the WoW universe, for two of them.) I could, in theory, write my own updater, but I suspect few people would use it, and I'd have to pay for bandwidth myself, and overall I just don't think it's viable.
Yes, a possibility, but one that I think is an expensive long-shot.
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Re:QuestHelper (Score:4, Interesting)
True. I don't think it will be enough, though if it turns out to be, I may re-evaluate things.
A lot of people seem to be misinterpreting what I'm saying here (I don't say you are, necessarily, I'm just pointing this out.) A lot of people think that I don't like Blizzard's new policy, and thus I'm taking my toys and going home. This isn't actually what's happening. I *don't* like the new policy, but that's not what the real problem is.
The problem is that the new policy makes it so I can't make a living off Questhelper. If I can't make a living off Questhelper, I'm not going to keep treating it like a full-time job.
If someone figures out how to make it work like a full-time job again, I'll go back to it, but I don't actually think it's possible.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We get together and develop a open source updater that uses bittorrent to do updates, every user of the client keeps copies of all the addons and peices are sent to update the swarm. All clients check the addon hoster for a MD5 hash so it can validate the downlaods so bad people cant corrupt addons.
The community provides the bandwidth, you get an advertising platform, and hopefully people stay happy while we give Blizzard the finger.
Re:QuestHelper (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:QuestHelper (Score:4, Informative)
These specific things are not permitted - in general, I can't tie *anything* UI-mod-related to money, in any form.
I cannot offer any sort of in-game incentive to donation. I cannot offer beta versions, I cannot offer unlocked features, I can't even make a little sprite that says "THANKS FOR DONATING" that you can right-click to turn off.
There will be a chunk at the beginning (QH, Carbonite, nUI, Mappy et al), but the bulk of the effect will be a largely-unnoticable reduction in the number of people who bother to write UI mods. I'm pretty sure it'll be impossible to actually calculate, and largely impossible to detect.
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Both of these ideas are explicitly disallowed by the new policy.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Carbonite is far more dead than QH is. Very shortly, your option is going to be QH or nothing.
(That said, try it out again in v1.0. Most of the issues should be fixed then.)
Re: (Score:2)
You're too aggressive about soliciting those donations. Just like I don't respond to beggars in game, I don't respond to begging add-ons in game.
Too aggressive? The only place I can think of that requests donations is the initial login / mod load scroll. I don't remember seeing it elsewhere (although I do want to say that I've seen a message in the config panel somewhere - I can't remember for sure).
I should note that I don't donate to QH. I'm not keen to pay for any WoW addon. I'll write bug reports, recommend it to friends and guildmates, etc. But money doesn't enter in to it.
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Unless things have changed since I last used either mod, which granted has been for a while now, neither nag was all that obtrusive. The QH one was iirc: on login (When you log in your toon the game does it's mod inload and there is a LUA hook to give a message at that point. So actually it also happens if/when you do a /reloadui.) and in the help menu. The Auctioneer was a donation page when you hit the download button.
I did notice them both but then again I'm someone who has looked at the LUA code in
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Last I heard, all they were doing was adding tooltip info. Have they added more?
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For the vast majority of people, this hasn't been true for months. For a small minority, it's still true, and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it - the Blizzard UI code doesn't provide any way for me to fix it, and it's not just a problem with QH, it's a problem with their addon framework in general. I've sent them suggested improvements to solve the issue, but so far they haven't.
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I'm actually coming up with some ideas that may sort of fix the problem, so that might not be necessary, but thanks :) Note that QH would end up using a few terabytes per month, so I'd actually need a lot - it's well past the point where people would be easily donating bandwidth ;)
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Really, the problem isn't hosting - I've already got that for free on curse.com - it's figuring out how to make money off it. I haven't come up with a good way to realistically make money with my own hosting yet. If I do, though, I'll keep this in mind.
Good - Assert control & prevent account hijack (Score:2)
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As you say later that you don't play WoW, it's understandable that you don't know how addons work. They have no capability of communicating any stolen information to the outside world other than through in-game chat. This communication would be visible to the user and such an addon would be quickly be blacklisted. As another user pointed out, the only way they could get around this is to have the user download an EXE, and at that point it has nothing to do with Blizzard because that EXE doesn't even need
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Targetting "Carbonite"? (Score:3, Informative)
Possibly impacted by this also is the bejeweled add-on; I don't believe this was open source?
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Also nUI, which you can see by some posts on the WoW UI board. These are some of the most popular addon in terms of overall downloads. I believe QH may even be the most popular one.
Understandable... (Score:2)
If there are loads of add-ons out there that a lot of people have paid a lot of money for, it kind of limits what Blizzard can do with the Wow add-on API. If they, for example, do something that disables or breaks an add-on that has been bought by 500,000 players for $10 a piece, they'd come under huge pressure to reinstate the
based on what? (Score:2)
There is no contractual agreement between the add-on developer and Blizzard; what legal basis would Blizzard have for imposing any conditions?
Note that FOSS licenses do not restrict what kinds of add-ons you can write for a piece of software or how you distribute your own code, they only impose conditions on you when you distribute someone else's code.
WOW TOS (Score:2)
There is no contractual agreement between the add-on developer and Blizzard
The terms of service of World of Warcraft are a contractual agreement. Without a WoW account, the add-on developer cannot test his work.
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Every add-on developer, by necessity, launches the game client at some point or another. There is a terms of service agreement that can include all of this language.
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Actually, after the awful Glider decision, they do have a lot of legal backing. They start out by claiming that they had to use WoW to create their software, thus breaking the ToS, thus not having a legal right to access the WoW server/content, thus breaking copyright by making an illegal copy in RAM. Then they provide their software which violates the ToS, facilitating other users also breaking the ToS, which amounts to each of those users also breaking the copyright. Leaving the original user open for
Don't like it (Score:3, Informative)
I may be in the minority (everybody loves free, right?), but I think this is a bad move. I really don't see it as fundamentally different from Apple deciding that all iPhone apps must be free.
Banning users from charging for their addons is questionable. Banning users from even mentioning in-game that their addon relies on donations is just stupid. If you are familiar at all with WoW addons, you know that the author's site is in the minority of the places people get the addon from. There are a lot of 3rd party collection sites, and there a lot of 3rd party addon installers that install and update the addon for you. Basically, this is like if a different group made Windows Paintbrush and tried soliciting donations on their website. How likely is that that people will go there, see it and donate? Now imagine it was far more useful than paintbrush.
The reason this is colossally stupid is twofold. First, if someone makes a commercial addon, other addon creators will see it and realize it's possible to clone. If it's a really good addon, they will clone it and release it for free. Sounds familiar, no? This is basically a large part of the way OSS works.
The second reason is that addons become work, if the addon is at all complex and popular (aka useful). At some point, you're spending a lot of time supporting the addon that could be spent doing other work for money, playing WoW, or just actually enjoying your life. As codebases age, they definitely fall out of that "enjoying your life" category. This is why donations can actually motivate you to work on an addon when you would have otherwise abandoned it.
The people who take a simplistic view that "other people shouldn't be making money off of Blizzard's hard work!" either do not understand or are too dogmatic to consider the reality. Addons add value to WoW. Blizzard makes money off of addons, be they free or pay, through increased subscriptions. There are numerous users who would stop playing if addons weren't around to make up for the deficiencies in WoW's UI. Addons also very frequently serve as their research department, as you will often see a new version of WoW incorporate the concepts of a popular addon.
This will result in many popular addons being discontinued. It will result in many addon authors losing interest in the game (I used to build addons even once I had lost interest in actually playing.) It will result in many players dropping out of the game because of lack of addon support (WoW updates and UI code changes typically mean that an addon will stop working within a year of being abandoned).
This is financially bad for Blizzard. However, if it's only 0.01% of their income, they will likely not care. I guess the new policy will be a good form of market research to see just how important the addon community is.
BTW, this has already been discussed [worldofwarcraft.com] in much more detail by the people who actually make addons. For those who aren't in the community, I'd recommend you read it to see how it has already killed some popular addons that relied on donations.
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Just my $0.02 worth.
I've been using questhelper ever since it was released - I didn't realize how much effort you were putting into it, so reading your note here really helped put that into perspective, so I'm going to send you a donation.
I suspect that if Blizzard is not going to re-evaluate parts of their decision, your only viable option is going to be to remove questhelper from sites like curse, and host them yourself so you ensure people see the note about donating. The downside is no automatic downlo
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I think you clicked reply on the wrong comment. I'm not the author of QH. However, I have read a lot of his replies and he's already addressed your points. Taking your addon off of these sites and such is basically like taking your website out of google's search results. It's a death sentence. This is especially true since only a small percentage of people donate. A small percentage of an even smaller number drives it down to not being sustainable.
Crap... there goes my UI (Score:2)
Half of my UI components that actually work well request donations.
Under this design, the developers will be more encouraged to move on to some other project or game that doesn't care. In many cases I suspect that they will quit the game altogether as the mod they wrote was generating more money than they were paying out to blizzard and kept them playing in profit.
What about mod promoting sites like Curse or Wowinterface that solicit money? Are they allowed to continue?
Oh well. I suspect this is so blizz
I suspect... (Score:2)
...that since MANY of the add-ons that are produced by the playerbase end up in the game as a "feature", they do not want anyone to have the ability to say "Your Honor, I can prove this line of code is mine for I have the sales receipts to prove it...", or something along those lines. Simply put, Blizzard does NOT want ANYONE asserting ANY rights, in any way, shape or form, in regards to their cash-cow. I'll cite an old example..
Way back when, Ultima Online had volunteer "Counselors", players that would be
distribution requirements (Score:2)
Um, this part is wrong:
"""
But unlike FOSS, it adds other requirements that assert control over these independently coded programs, such as distribution and fees.
"""
The GPL DOES put requirements on distribution. Maybe the poster should start actually reading these licenses instead of assuming what they say.
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The only reason windows gets away with that crap is because MS is a monopoly and can rightly (in the might makes right sense at least) say "screw off, it's not like we have to do squat for you. Competition? never heard of it".
Blizzard is overreaching here and needs to be put in place before it, to, becomes too big to resist.
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Yeah ... illegal, not so much.
It's a private game for which you pay a fee to play. They set the rules. They could turn off the add-on API tomorrow if they wanted to. It's their game.
Oh, and MS is under no legal obligation to provide an SDK or API, just so you know.
Although your analogy is flawed in hundreds of ways (apples, meet oranges), the short answer is that until the court system says otherwise, software EULAs are valid and they can assert whatever rights are in the contract you agreed to.
As for stupi
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And when Blizzard gets declared an illegal MMORPG monopoly, maybe they will too.
Did I mention ... Apples, meet oranges?
- Roach
Compare to Xbox (Score:2)
its as if microsoft trying to assert rights on programs that run on windows platform.
What about Microsoft trying to assert rights on programs that run on Xbox 360 platform? No wait, it does.
Windows and gaming (Score:2)
When was the last time you found Windoze entertaining?
Solitaire has been part of Windows since 1.0. And one of the main advantages of Windows over GNU/Linux is that Windows can natively run more games.