Slashdot Mirror
Blizzard Asserts Rights Over Independent Add-Ons
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?"
When I used to play WoW, I used many addons that made up for Blizzard's shortcomings in the UI. If the authors want to charge for these addons Blizzard should have absolutely no say in the matter. The developers are improving Blizzard's product to a more playable state, Blizzard should be paying them.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
I am happy about this change with WoW. I personally never saw a point in paying for an addon to the game. Although some of the addons look good that you pay for I am glad to see this change. Ah well just MY opinion.
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
Blizzard is looking out for the players. They don't want some addon that throwing advertising or in game donations on a large percent of their user base.
Christ, I thought you were just big headed since I've never heard of your addon.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info9896-QuestHelper.html 3,215,622 Downloads
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quest-helper.aspx 20,949,412 Downloads
http://wowui.incgamers.com/?p=mod&m=6145 49,914 Downloads
(balance this with Auctioneer, which has a paltry 12 million downloads..)
On the other hand your major competitor Carbonite, which in charging for the add-on and obfuscating their code has two separate issues with the new policy, will go out of business, while you can still remind people of the donations when they download updates.
That's a nice lesson for anyone looking to earn some money: Write extensions for things which people already pay for or which are used by people who are used to paying for software. I've written add-ons for open source software and the total amount of donations is in the low triple digits, despite well over a million downloads.
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.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Start a subscription based newsletter. New releases get announced to donating newsletter subscribers first, along with links to download "BETA" (wink wink) releases using the subscribers info (too many downloads from one subscriber and they lose their subscription to your newsletter. Actually have the older releases for free download, so it can be shown that you are not charging for the product. Your newsletter is another product. The people that support you are your real time beta testers, nothing to do with the ability to download your "current" product... Hope you find a way to make it workout.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
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.
1) Blizzard probably doesn't want masses of users to be put at a disadvantage because they can't afford to buy the best add-ons.
2) Blizzard probably doesn't want to deal with people suing them because these little business take hits every time there's an engine change that severely breaks an add-on or makes it irrelevant.