Although I run a number of mods, I can count on one hand the ones that are developed enough, and bug-free enough, to justify a payment. And I can handle those via donations.
If mods became for-pay, a lot of mod writers would find themselves with 0 downloads, and those that did get downloads would be under a lot of pressure from paying customers to fix long-standing problems with their add-ons.
The mods in Skyrim are INFINITELY more complex/different than Warcraft Mods.
Warcraft mods are just UI revamps and what-not. Skyrim mods can literally be their own content expansions.
No you don't. Those game files you have on your PC installed. Each and every one of them is legally owned by the publisher of the game.
Skyrim files on your computer are actually owned by Zenimax. Your Madden files? EA. All you have bought is a license to install and play the game, or what ever is in the EULA/ToC of use. Which I might add is considered in most areas a legal binding contract.
Blizzard won't do it - their stance has been pretty clear
Having said that, I wouldn't have anything against paying for quality dev work. I don't use very many addons - but for example Weak Auras is excellent, I use it a lot and wouldn't have anything against purchasing it from a "addon appstore" for a reasonable one-time fee.
On the other hand - some shitty "ad supported" model would make me stop using all addons.
It wouldn't make any sense for Blizzard to do this. How would this work in a game where most of the popular add-ons break with each major patch and have to be revised? That's one reason why Blizzard is unlikely to ever get into the business of selling and supporting add-on stuff.
Right now there's no guarantee that any particular addon out there will even survive through the next patch as is. People would be nuts to buy an add-on under those circumstances. Blizzard does a reasonable job supporting its API since they understand how much it helps their game but API support is a very long way from add-on support. As the API evolves it's up to individual add-on authors to update their work and I'm pretty sure that barring folding functionality into the base UI that's exactly how Blizzard wants it to remain.
Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2015-04-26 at 07:38 AM.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
Yea don't see same happening to blizzard tbh
There is a (admittedly somewhat far-fetched) parallel to mobile app markets in there. Apple/Google can shunt your app out of the store if they so wish - and iOS/Android API's are similarly badly documented moving pile of crap - yet, the app ecosystem is thriving.
I could see addon monetizing working (sorta) in one-time appstore like model... but yeah, don't think Blizzard will ever want to get into the game of running that kind of marketplace.
One of the things that made Skyrim great was all the FREE mods you could download for it. With mods you could spend thousands of hours without being borde. With many of them gone so is Skyrim from my steam library - Bye!
The same thing would happen with WoW if Blizzard did something like this.
I see nothing wrong with it.
Who here downloaded some awesome Skyrim mods and thought "wow, this really could be an official dlc"? And honestly, the people who made those mods do deserve to get something in return. Not only that, the prices on steam aren't that high. Sure, if a whole bucketload of mods became paid for - it would suck, but so far it's a rather small number of them.
Haha at people saying blizzard wont do this and that. Right now, they are selling gold for real money. Would like to hear your explanation on that
There was a UI that did an obnoxious series of emotes/chats when the user went into its options, to advertise itself to everyone in the area. People posting how to disable it had their posts removed.
Monetizing addons would create an incentive to advertise addons in-game.
Selling gametimes with gold makes sense.
Blizzard knows addons are important to the game and the community and wants to keep them available.
See 1) here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1021053914