Monetization of mods?

[Franzy]

They aren't mods they are addons, mods are modifications of the games system, what WoW has are only additions to the current system
Mods are against WoW's ToU
So no blizzard won't monetize mods unless they make them no longer against their terms.

[bluspacecow]

They aren't mods they are addons, mods are modifications of the games system, what WoW has are only additions to the current system
Mods are against WoW's ToU
So no blizzard won't monetize mods unless they make them no longer against their terms.

A rather frail argument IMHO.

I don't think anyone here is talking about illegal modifications of the game client. It's clear everyone here is talking about Lua addons.

Also by the terms of their own EULA/Terms of Use they can modify any and all legal agreements they have with players - they are not set in stone. They do have a highly paid legal team that can come up with different set of terms of use ....

[stgeorge78]

I think there's basically no chance Blizzard will do this, right now they have an explicit ban on monetised mods in fact.

They created the ban for CREATORS to make money off mods, there is nothing preventing BLIZZARD from making money off mods. And in any case, they created the ban, they can remove it. I guarantee Blizzard thinks about new ways of making money and they are looking very closely to see if Valve if successful and if it proves to be a money maker, then they will do it in a heartbeat.

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Blizzard once said they would never sell items for real money... then they did.

Blizzard once said they would never sell gold for real money... then they did.

Basically, if you are unsure about Blizzard motives... if they can make real money off of it - they'll do it eventually.

[bluspacecow]

They created the ban for CREATORS to make money off mods, there is nothing preventing BLIZZARD from making money off mods. And in any case, they created the ban, they can remove it. I guarantee Blizzard thinks about new ways of making money and they are looking very closely to see if Valve if successful and if it proves to be a money maker, then they will do it in a heartbeat.

Here's my issue with Blizzard charging for addons.

They would need to make some way of preventing people pirating the paid addons.

Which would mean changing the addon/macro system so it's no longer possible to read the code of an addon in plain text. They would need to make them compiled blocks of code or some system like that. They would also need some form of signing system , say an encrypted signature that uses a two part key , 1/2 of which is on the server.

This would absolutely stifle the freedom and creativity that's currently in the existing addon community. Where anyone can look at someone elses and learn off it. Where example code is freely shared around. Where the official addon sites have check in teams to check the actual code of an addon before being offered for download.

Addon authors would less inclined to help each other since if you do someone else makes money off you for free. Blizzard would also need to play cat and mouse with addon pirates offering free versions of addons with special signature forging code. A player will never be sure if the addon package they are downloading is a secret key logger as you can't examine the code of the addons.

[Deadite]

There is zero chance Blizzard will do this.

Blizzard will do anything to make a buck. If they can get some free money from monetizing mods then they would be idiots not to. They are a business not a charity as people like to say around these parts.

[Deleted]

I'm only paying 100s of dollars for content in this game. Kappa

[Leyre]

So for those of you unaware, Valve and Bethesda have come to an agreement to allow Valve to monetize mods for Skyrim on their workshop. To this point as a modder it is almost impossible to profit from your mods directly because they use copy right material. But with Bethesda's blessing and Valve's platform this is now a possibility and many modders have already begun pulling their mods from other free sites to make them exclusive on Steam for all future updates of their mod. If you'd like to know more I suggest watching TotalBiscuit's video on the topic, he does a pretty good job of explaining it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGKOiQGeO-k


So bringing this back to WoW... does anyone else think this is just the beginning of whats to come for games and mods? Will other companies begin to sanction the monetization of mod's using their games for a cut of the profit? Could Blizzard come to a similar agreement with a site like Curse and we'd suddenly find that in order to have access to the latest version of Skada we'd need to cough up whatever the mod author deemed adequate?

In my opinion, just like DLCs and micro-transactions, this will catch on. Once video game companies realize they can make coin by doing nothing more than sanctioning other peoples' work, we will see many more games come out with similar arrangements. WoW is a bit of a trickier subject, the game has already been out for 10 years and has a subscription.

So what do people think? Will we be seeing cash for mods some time in the future?

will NEVER happen, either blizz gets all the money or no one gets anything at all

[Deleted]

I'm not paying money for mods. 90% of mods are buggy, unfinished, and some don't even work properly with the game months after being released because they have a feature or another that isn't 100% compatible with the game nor will ever be.

[Aleksej89]

Hours invested deserve some compensation, but it is a slippery slope...

Hopefully modders will be sensible with prices...

[tinystomper]

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.

ads pay crap. literally next to nothing. if blizz had an app store like package where devs would register their addon and users would buy a license to use it, that would definitely motivate devs to spend the time. of course, this should have been the case 6 years ago... instead, blizz went the other way and declared addons must be free.... which kills development (who would spend hundreds or thousands of hours working on something for free?)

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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.

you'd be surprised how motivated people are when they get paid. new patch breaks your addon? fix it or stop receiving the $$. simple equation really.

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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.

again, surprising how motivated people get when money is the reward. if blizz received a percentage, they could devote a team to support it and have that teams salary easily paid by that percentage. apple gets 35% of the app price. a team of 3 devs would cost about $30k/mon. would the addon-store bring in more then $100k/mon? with 10m players, that'd be $0.01/mon per player on average... it would easily support the team.

[strongyp]

Then turn your Addblocker off and support MMOC.

you do realise that it was the ads on mmoc that introduced that virus a while ago right...

ive got curse premium so i dont see ads anyway

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

And thus a new category was added to Pirate Bay. "Addons-Games"

[MoanaLisa]

instead, blizz went the other way and declared addons must be free.... which kills development (who would spend hundreds or thousands of hours working on something for free?)

Quite a few apparently given how many add-ons are available. If that's killing development you have a very different idea of what that means than I do.

Look, you and everyone else that has developed an addon, did so knowing exactly what the rules were. If people believe their development efforts should be compensated at the same level as DLC content or with a fixed price for access to the software then I would advise developers to stop being stupid. Stop developing free add-ons and start making software that people will pay for. If people want to do it as a hobby or as part of a collective social open source effort then great. Hobbies usually cost money and collective social efforts have their own rewards.

[tinystomper]

Quite a few apparently given how many add-ons are available. If that's killing development you have a very different idea of what that means than I do.

new development is quite different from maintenance. also the scale of the addon would be impacted, as smaller projects are quick and easy with little support required.

Look, you and everyone else that has developed an addon, did so knowing exactly what the rules were. If people believe their development efforts should be compensated at the same level as DLC content or with a fixed price for access to the software then I would advise developers to stop being stupid. Stop developing free add-ons and start making software that people will pay for. If people want to do it as a hobby or as part of a collective social open source effort then great. Hobbies usually cost money and collective social efforts have their own rewards.

actually, i was unaware of blizzard's stance when i first developed my addons. i just figured it'd be fairly pointless as the code was available to everyone.

as for stopping development, well yea... most have. a small handful continue and others that are paid by some 'nameless corporation' snap up 'abandoned' addons to keep them going and keep users coming back.

btw, what are the rewards from 'collective social efforts'?

[NoRest4Wicked]

So I will still go to Nexusmods for all my TES/FO needs?

[Deleted]

Looks like they finally saw sense:

http://steamcommunity.com//games/Ste...32365253244218

But it will happen again, with brand-new games that don't have an already-established modding community to piss off.

[ElDoorO]

The fact I can't make money is precisely why none of the stuff I wrote will ever be publicly released. I have an app that lets me know when my server is back up and my phone pays close attention to that and grabs my attention and let me knows more about what's going on.
I also have one that parses data from alts to help monitor certain things in our raid and my toons and its garrisons.
I also had various and sundry other things long before they became popular among other addons and still some things other addons don't do.

I would have happily sold an iPhone and iPad version for $1 but since Blizzard doesn't want that -- I'll just not give it out then. I'm not interested in entitled people asking
for things or requesting bug fixes because they used it in a way they weren't supposed to. No thanks. It works fine for me and the two others I've manually installed it on for. Since I'm the only one with the code, they can't give it away either.

That's fine if you want free -- just never expect anything exceptional to come in to play. TukUI/ElvUI, DBM, and a few others are as close as you'll ever get to quality mods. Don't expect those to last forever either.

Sorry, my time is worth something to me and I'm not willing to give it to anyone else for free "just because". Y'all can do without and will be none the wiser of what you're doing without. Blizzard will never know as the data is aggregated by a single IP and managed in a database that other sources reference. So when Blizzard changes their tone, I'll consider changing mine. Until then, deal without and, again, you'll be none the wiser.

[Ballrug]

Sorry, my time is worth something to me and I'm not willing to give it to anyone else for free "just because". Y'all can do without and will be none the wiser of what you're doing without. Blizzard will never know as the data is aggregated by a single IP and managed in a database that other sources reference. So when Blizzard changes their tone, I'll consider changing mine. Until then, deal without and, again, you'll be none the wiser.

You're just doing it wrong. TSM Dude makes about $80k/yr from his site.

[ElDoorO]

You're just doing it wrong. TSM Dude makes about $80k/yr from his site.

Weird, I'm not seeing an iPhone version of that or an iPad version -- something you can carry with you. How strange.

Oh wait, it doesn't. No thanks -- not interested in that angle. I also refuse to do ad-supported programs -- it makes them look tacky.

[Mirishka]

So for those of you unaware, Valve and Bethesda have come to an agreement to allow Valve to monetize mods for Skyrim on their workshop. To this point as a modder it is almost impossible to profit from your mods directly because they use copy right material. But with Bethesda's blessing and Valve's platform this is now a possibility and many modders have already begun pulling their mods from other free sites to make them exclusive on Steam for all future updates of their mod. If you'd like to know more I suggest watching TotalBiscuit's video on the topic, he does a pretty good job of explaining it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGKOiQGeO-k


So bringing this back to WoW... does anyone else think this is just the beginning of whats to come for games and mods? Will other companies begin to sanction the monetization of mod's using their games for a cut of the profit? Could Blizzard come to a similar agreement with a site like Curse and we'd suddenly find that in order to have access to the latest version of Skada we'd need to cough up whatever the mod author deemed adequate?

In my opinion, just like DLCs and micro-transactions, this will catch on. Once video game companies realize they can make coin by doing nothing more than sanctioning other peoples' work, we will see many more games come out with similar arrangements. WoW is a bit of a trickier subject, the game has already been out for 10 years and has a subscription.

So what do people think? Will we be seeing cash for mods some time in the future?

Valve has already pulled the plug on this. It was spectacularly disastrous.