overwolf going the wrong way

[Sithalos]

Wowup already intended on creating their own database, but that's happening sooner for the guy developing it and people are only backing him quicker and more because of Overwolf being scum. Most people are going to jump ship than use their shitty, malware filled piece of crap app anyway.

We should all be financially supportive of the WowUp dev, and any addon author who breaks away from Overwolf. The sooner we kick these goons out of the gaming space, the better.

[Ielenia]

API that are made public are meant to be used by third parties for what the API allows. for example Raiderio blizzard API allows them to collect data for Raid/Dungeon/Player Gear Information. The only reason they are able to use this is because blizzard allows their API to do this and if they wanted to they can restrict this information. The same thing applies to Curse if their API is public and they allow the API to be used in this way then they are doing nothing illegal. Now if the API was private then that is another story all together. Curse or Overwolf could also restrict who can and cannot use the API with a whitelist or a blacklist as well.

So what's the problem if they no longer want to make their API public, anymore, if it's no longer working very well for them?

[Sting]

Zygor is the most prominent one.

Well you kinda got me with that one, I stand corrected. How does that work actually, do guides fall outside of the paid addon policy?

Slight edit: The actual addon seems to be free, it would be the guide modules you load into the addon that you pay for? Weird stuff.

[apelsinjuice]

API that are made public are meant to be used by third parties for what the API allows. for example Raiderio blizzard API allows them to collect data for Raid/Dungeon/Player Gear Information. The only reason they are able to use this is because blizzard allows their API to do this and if they wanted to they can restrict this information. The same thing applies to Curse if their API is public and they allow the API to be used in this way then they are doing nothing illegal. Now if the API was private then that is another story all together. Curse or Overwolf could also restrict who can and cannot use the API with a whitelist or a blacklist as well.

well the 3rd partis like wowup is not built on getting the information from APIs, they are just web scraping the sites like curseforge getting the addon links or downloading the addon and then putting it in their own database and client.

curseforge is the main database hub for all the addons that the majority of addon creaters upload to.

[Clozer]

Well you kinda got me with that one, I stand corrected. How does that work actually, do guides fall outside of the paid addon policy?

Na, their guides to straight into the addon folder and are therefore part of the addon. They try to tell you that their addon is free and you only pay for their guides, but in fact, that's nonsense. Blizzard just can not do anything about it or simply does not care. Either way add-ons behind a paywall exist for a long ass time.

[Zyky]

Their fearmongering propaganda is really cute. They must think people are stupid.

A quick glance at their social media proves otherwise..

I mean a lot people will believe them because they don't understand a lot of the technical jargon being spoken.

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The Blizzard TOS stops them. They start saying "You have to pay to get this addon." will be the day Blizzard says "Cease this or we'll take you to court." and Blizzard have not been shy about taking people to court over things.

So the issue with that is there's already people who similarly do that already on twitch, where they require you to be a tier two or three sub in order to get their UI layout or specific Weakauras, this is also technically against Blizzard ToS, but Blizzard has done nothing about it.

[Clozer]

I mean a lot people will believe them because they don't understand a lot of the technical jargon being spoken.

You act like anything they said is not true.

The developer of wowup literally said that the app is done for. But you know for sure better.

[THEORACLE64]

We should all be financially supportive of the WowUp dev, and any addon author who breaks away from Overwolf. The sooner we kick these goons out of the gaming space, the better.

Pretty much this

[Lucetia]

what overwolf is pretty much doing now is fear mongering the little guys out of existence

also its against the tos to charge money to have access to addons

It's one thing to be upset about things and that is fine. Note that the below comment isn't in support of either or, but explaining what the post says since it seems it is going over most people's head since they see certain words and start going off the deep end. It's just to elaborate a bit more on what is likely happening.

Distribute the authors’ intellectual property without their consent

Simply saying that some authors may or may not want others distributing their addon. Addon authors know when they upload to Curseforge that their addon will be downloaded by people etc. While we know if someone uses a 3rd party addon manager it is likely they are using it to download addons for WoW, but the authors don't know that as with any product malicious stuff could go on.

Prevent us from tracking engagement, and therefore you impact authors’ earnings

This is the big one I've seen people cling on to. No one ever said they will be charging anyone for addons. So no they aren't breaking Blizzard's ToS charging money for addons.

What this part means is with their addon they can properly track how many people are downloading the addons. To use a figure to make it easier to understand. Let's say for every download an author receives of their addon from the website or Overwolf's addon manager they get 1 point. Every time someone else scrapes / uses another manager they get 0 points due to how tracking works. Now let's say authors can redeem points for $0.01 for ever point. Now how Overwolf gets this money no one can say but most will likely come from ads / premium packages.

Just like any site there will likely be some premium package that gives advantages. Where it is allowing more than one addon to update at a time, auto update, etc.

There’s a full team working on building and maintaining the CurseForge backend, support, file moderation etc., and you’re using this (and our bandwidth) without consent and against terms of service.

This is likely referring to some services hammer / send more requests than they should and also likely references the above where they want to make it so that downloads can be tracked easier allowing authors to earn.

[rrayy]

Blizzard then has to prove that selling addons is harmful to them. That's why they didn't do anything to all the addons that are behind a paywall for the last 15 years.

There are no add ons behind a pay wall. You can get any addon you want for free

[RayenDark]

Zygor is the most prominent one.

Zygor is technically free. You pay for the script-not the addon.

[Lucetia]

They are being scum, whether you like it or not, they are completely by telling the guy to implement what he's doing with them or get cut off.

They're not "leeches" when Curse has allowed them to use their API for years. Overwolf clearly doesn't like it, but should still respect the people that have been using it. It's complete domination by removing that, knowing that they have 90% of WoW addons using that database. It's only going to do them harm using this stance and it already is, so good.

If you read the post they even mention that Curse has not been fine with this and when it was under Twitch's control they were constantly sending C&D letters. The only difference between the two is Overwolf plans on taking it a step furhter.

[Clozer]

There are no add ons behind a pay wall. You can get any addon you want for free

Zygor is selling addons for 15 years. Already mentioned before multiple times. Their "guides" go straight into your wow addon folder.

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Zygor is technically free. You pay for the script-not the addon.

You mean the thing that goes straight into your addon folder. Like a premium service?

[rrayy]

do you have a source for this? coz my gut instant tells me that they will soon if this keeps up

im not saying that its wrong i just dont believe that they wont, heck i dont even fully believe an acquaintance of mine that works there

They can't because they would be in violation of Blizzard's ToS. Blizzard will stop them.

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Zygor is selling addons for 15 years. Already mentioned before multiple times. Their "guides" go straight into your wow addon folder.

No, they are selling the guide. You aren't buying an addon because you aren't altering the game in any way with it like addons do.

[Zyky]

You act like anything they said is not true.

The developer of wowup literally said that the app is done for. But you know for sure better.

A lot of what they said is not true. The API a lot of addons use is the official Blizzard API, in their words those would be "illegal API". I guess you're just another person who has no idea what they're talking about in this thread. (btw wowup is not an addon so you might want to get your facts straight)

[Clozer]

They can't because they would be in violation of Blizzard's ToS. Blizzard will stop them.

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No, they are selling the guide. You aren't buying an addon because you aren't altering the game with it.




You mean the thing that goes straight into your addon folder. Like a premium service?

.. It's part of the addon. It's a Lua file loaded by the addon. Literally part/upgrade of it.

It's like creating an empty addon without any text and selling the lua file containing all text for moneys and you are like, ok this is fine because I can download the shell for free.

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A lot of what they said is not true. The API a lot of addons use is the official Blizzard API, in their words those would be "illegal API". I guess you're just another person who has no idea what they're talking about in this thread. (btw wowup is not an addon so you might want to get your facts straight)

You must be trolling. There is no way you are serious with this.

THE API THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT IS FROM CURSE(OVERWOLF NOW) TO DOWNLOAD ADDONS. NOT WHAT ADDONS USE TO ACCESS DATA FROM WOW. Dude what the heck is on with you.

Good thing is Overwolf didn't try to scare any addon developer but 3rd party tools stealing data from their site.

[Lucetia]

A lot of what they said is not true. The API a lot of addons use is the official Blizzard API, in their words those would be "illegal API". I guess you're just another person who has no idea what they're talking about in this thread. (btw wowup is not an addon so you might want to get your facts straight)

Um...I think you are confusing some things here. The API they are talking about is CurseForge's. It has absolutely nothing to do with Blizzard's API. Blizzard's API is only used by the addons themselves which isn't the thing being scraped/hammered/whatever. Not sure why you think Blizzard's API is involved at all.

[JerseyGhoul]

Man, clozer on here for six hours straight defending OW. That isn’t suspect at all.

Looked into how generous Curse's rewards program is. Found a thread on Reddit where authors of decently popular (not DBM by any means, but a decent number of daily downloads) were saying they make maybe fifty cents a day in credit, or about $15 a month.

I mean, I guess good that addon creators are making something at all, but let’s not pretend any of these authors are using addon revenue to support themselves. Losing that revenue stream would not affect them in any way.

In fact, if everyone personally gave just a quarter to the author of every addon they used, the authors would likely make about 100 times as much money as they’re getting from curse. They might be able to actually focus on addon creation to support themselves.

But as it is, no. Addon creation is not a job you can "get paid" for. You can almost get beer money for one weekend a month if your addon is pretty popular, but that’s it.

[rrayy]

.. It's part of the addon. It's a Lua file loaded by the addon. Literally part/upgrade of it.

It's like creating an empty addon without any text and selling the lua file containing all text for moneys and you are like, ok this is fine because I can download the shell for free.

Key words "Part of". It does not alter the game in any way as all other addons do. You are paying for the guide. You aren't paying for something that alters the game. That is how it gets around the ToS.

[rhorle]

No, they are selling the guide. You aren't buying an addon because you aren't altering the game in any way with it like addons do.

The guide is part of the package of the addon. You are paying for access to certain parts of the addon which is stated to be against the rules by Blizzard. They clearly haven't been enforcing those rules but charging for guides, AH database, or any other part of an addon is against the rules.

All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on.