Ajour and CurseBreaker Addon Managers No Longer Maintained

[Locruid]

The only way to beat Overwolf is NOT to use them and download manually.

Something I been doing for awhile.

NOTHING will change until it hits their revenue then and ONLY then will it change

[rrayy]

I hope Blizzard gets annoyed by this as well cuz then they'll send out the lawyers to do (hopefully) good things for once.

Blizzard isn't going to do anything and there is nothing anyone can sue Overwolf over. It's Overwolf's data and API. How dare they stop people from stealing it?

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The main concern is the note at the end that this will likely break all other addon managers. That would be a huge mistake by Blizz. Blizzard has incorporated some addons into built-in functionality over the years, but every class has 5-10+ addons that are essentially mandatory for end game gameplay. Although I've done it before in a pinch, it's too time consuming to manually go check every installed addon for a new version everyday and upgrade them. Curseforge by itself going away is nbd, but if this breaks all addon managers as it sounds, that's huge.

Addon maintenance had already become a problem as more addon devs have moved on to other things as wow's popularity has dwindled. But this is a move only someone that has never played wow at all would make. If someone were making a list of how to discourage past players from returning to wow or to how to push current players away, this would be in the top 5. In the past whenever addon managers have temporarily not been working, every raid I've been in has started with an hour+ delay while half the group manually upgrades all of their addons to the same latest version.

Blizzard has zero to do with this. Overwolf is protecting it's program and API.

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First, they create a monopoly for addons. Then comes the paywalls. It's just a matter of time before they lock down addons by limiting download speed to 1Kb/s and 1 download per hour unless you buy a premium sub. They are monetizing addons and people do nothing to fight back. it's sad

Not going to happen. Nothing is behind paywalls. People need to stop with the conspiracy theories.

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I do support multiple WoW Patreons as well as multiple site that I use, including MMO Champion. https://i.imgur.com/Ob2ljIh.png

A quick search had people making at least a little off their addons with moderate download volumes so I'm still perfectly happy to continue supporting people that way too. The last number I saw was over $1 million in payouts from CurseForge through the rewards program in 2021 though so not entirely insignificant numbers.

As an aside, I would be interested to see numbers for the like of DBM, Details, WeakAuras etc. as well as more transparency on the program in its entirety from Overwolf but I still don't think they're in the wrong here for changing how access to the API works. Nor would I blame any addon developer for choosing to take their addon out of the API if it had a chance to impact their Rewards Program income.

Overwolf is not in the wrong. Those addon mangers were basically stealing from Overwolf. They should create their own databases if they want to make an addon manager and stop stealing from others.

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Overwolf is piece of shit software that shouldn't go near any working computer.

It works just fine. Not the softwares fault people aren't capable of shutting it down after they are done downlooading their addons.

[glowpipe]

Not going to happen. Nothing is behind paywalls. People need to stop with the conspiracy theories.

Nothing is behind a paywall yet. Do you think overwolf bought curseforge because they like addons and wanted to save the "modding community" out of the kindness of their hearts?

Overwolf bought this for one reason and one reason only: Profits. They are in this for the money, nothing else and they will absolutely do whatever they can to maximize those profits. Limiting download speed and downloads per hour for non paying customers is a really easy way to get more money fast.

[rrayy]

Nothing is behind a paywall yet. Do you think overwolf bought curseforge because they like addons and wanted to save the "modding community" out of the kindness of their hearts?

Overwolf bought this for one reason and one reason only: Profits. They are in this for the money, nothing else and they will absolutely do whatever they can to maximize those profits. Limiting download speed and downloads per hour for non paying customers is a really easy way to get more money fast.

They aren't going to do that. They have a system in place that already makes them money. Since this is not a big part of their portfolio, it does what it needs to. But people love their conspiracy theories I guess.

[Toby451]

"World of Warcraft is on a major downward trend... how can we capitalize on that to make money?"
"How about we make it so people can't download addons easily without installing our spyware client?"
"Great idea!"

People that have been teetering on the edge of leaving the game are going to just leave.

just truly lol if you believe this.

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The main concern is the note at the end that this will likely break all other addon managers. That would be a huge mistake by Blizz. Blizzard

Has nothing to do with Blizzard.

[Lahis]

They aren't going to do that. They have a system in place that already makes them money. Since this is not a big part of their portfolio, it does what it needs to. But people love their conspiracy theories I guess.

You think they would be the first company not to fuck over their customers?

HAH!

[rrayy]

You think they would be the first company not to fuck over their customers?

HAH!

Nobody does that. Only entitled customers think that.

[FossilFree]

Time for Blizzard to take over and implement their own addon manager. Bethesda does this already, it shouldn't be terribly difficult. I don't know why Blizzard wouldn't want the profit over some rando company anyways.

[Delekii]

Blizzard isn't going to do anything and there is nothing anyone can sue Overwolf over. It's Overwolf's data and API. How dare they stop people from stealing it?

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Blizzard has zero to do with this. Overwolf is protecting it's program and API.

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Not going to happen. Nothing is behind paywalls. People need to stop with the conspiracy theories.

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Overwolf is not in the wrong. Those addon mangers were basically stealing from Overwolf. They should create their own databases if they want to make an addon manager and stop stealing from others.

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It works just fine. Not the softwares fault people aren't capable of shutting it down after they are done downlooading their addons.

So... how many stocks in Overwolf do you have?

[Animaneth]

Curseforge's job could easily be reproduced by maintaining an addon database on some github repo + writing a custom client to pull from that and present a nice UI, but addon devs won't do that because they think they deserve money for their half baked shit

The whole thing is a travesty. We shouldn't have to pile up dozens of add-ons on a game made by a multi billion dollar company to make its UI not suck.

What you are pointing out is akin to what Cocoapods used to mean for iOS developers. And github started complaining and throttling requests for it... so no. As soon as it gets some attention and becomes useful GitHub will start throttling, How many people will wait an hour for the first time installation? No person will.

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They may not have yet. But is anything stopping them from simply telling addon authors they can only post their work on Curseforge and if they are caught posting it elsewhere they forfeit any earnings from Curseforge? I'd have to guess Curseforge is the author's biggest source of income from addons, so some/a lot may accept these terms.

if they bring the lawyers to court, they can make use of the Apple vs Epic precedent, where one of the outcomes was forcing Apple to throw away the anti-steering provisions (that will go into effect by December)

[Walkerbo]

This sucks.

I have been using Ajor since launch, it is a light weight, well designed easy to use addon updater.

The greatest advantage to these 3rd party updaters is that they will updates all addons, not those that are just housed on Curse.
Ajour not only updated Curse addons, it also updated addons from WoWInterface, GitHub, Wago and Towlong Yak.

Now I will have to go back to updating addons not found on curse manually.

Again, this really sucks.

[Twdft]

It works just fine. Not the softwares fault people aren't capable of shutting it down after they are done downlooading their addons.

How about making a software light, safe and non-intrusive enough that we wouldn't have to think what dangerous shit it might do if we leave it running.

I don't have a problem having to see an ad or two while updating my addons. But for the love of god not with that fucking pile of elefant dung that overwolf is.

[Al Gorefiend]

Shout out to the pros who got good on the default client

[kaminaris]

How about making a software light, safe and non-intrusive enough that we wouldn't have to think what dangerous shit it might do if we leave it running.

I don't have a problem having to see an ad or two while updating my addons. But for the love of god not with that fucking pile of elefant dung that overwolf is.

It was already done, its called cursforge app on overwolf. People really need to stop believing random bullshit they read on internet.

Overwolf is 100% safe, period. if you don't believe me, you can sniff the connection yourself.

[Aleaa]

As soon as it is possible to monetize something, it is and then suddenly people come out under their rocks and whine that these companies and the people that did just fine for free now deserves and should be entitled to $$$$$$

Same crap all the time, why? Its amazing how fast these defenders show up.

Also, really, how much does it cost to store maybe 100 megabytes of data (whole resp)? Even a basic phone can transfer terabytes of data without issues every few days. Internet is becoming more centralized and more costly, like its pretty much the agenda. But you can still host things your self. Nobody remember FTPs? Whole file structures there. There seem to be this mindset that everything need to hosted at Microsoft or Amazon for stupidly high cost, you can do just fine with cheaper options. You dont need to maximize your 1gbit connections for 500KB-files

Also people complaining about the work, how inefficient are some of you? Once this whole deal was sealed i just put short cuts (links for some of you) in my interface folder that links directly to the download. Once the files are downloaded its just right click and unpack.


So sad the way internet is going

100mb of data for what? database or space used for file store? 1 popular addon use 6.5 gb of space. If you talked about 100mb of addon list this is alot.

[bluspacecow]

Can someone explain this is in more details? From what I read those 3rd party addon managers were using Curse servers / resources to download the addons, so Curse was taking the costs of hosting, but at the same time Curse was getting no money from it. Why is it unfair that they want to limit this? And on top of that they aren't doing a hard block.

Or am I missing something?

Sure. After reading the entire post I believe a lot of people are missing some details of the change.


* The new API will be phased in across many months. There will be a couple of months where both the current old API and the new API will exist so programs can use either
* Addon authors will have a third party project distribution toggle on each of their projects. This will allow third party addon managers to download that files for that addon project.
* Projects with that toggle ON downloads won’t count towards the rewards program
* Existing projects will default to having this turned ON by default so for existing projects where the addon author doesn’t change it third party addon managers will continue to be able to download
* New projects won’t have the third party download option turned on by default. They’ll automatically be in the Curseforge Rewards program and hence unavailable to third party updaters. Thus ruining discoverability of new addons on third party updaters.
* Addon authors gets plenty of warning about option , what it does and how to set it. Per project they get notified that this option is on , why it is on and the implications to their project if they turn it off

Realistically the projects that will turn the third party download option OFF for their projects are that it's in their best interest to do so. These will be the larger , more popular addons , the ones in the Top 10 of must installs. And most of those already have alternative sources of obtaining their latest versions - they aren't exclusive to CF (AFAIK).

If you set those addons to update from other sources in WowUP nothing will change for you come March.

[Lahis]

It was already done, its called cursforge app on overwolf. People really need to stop believing random bullshit they read on internet.

Overwolf is 100% safe, period. if you don't believe me, you can sniff the connection yourself.

And what about the ads they shove on our faces? Are those also vetted?

[T-34]

And what about the ads they shove on our faces? Are those also vetted?

Blizzard has no problem with referring people to Wowhead if they have a problem with a quest and Wowhead is horrible infested with adds.
And Blizzard doesn't vet the adds on Wowhead. Furthermore Wowhead has a virtual monopoly on "questhelping" in WoW and Blizzard doesn't seem to have any problems with that.

As long as Overwolf just "requires" people to watch adds in order to download/update add-ons then I can't see why Blizzard would interfere.
And I am a person who blocks all adds, both on my pc and my phone. And have done so for a long, long time.

[bluspacecow]

And what about the ads they shove on our faces? Are those also vetted?

They use a third party curation service for their ads.

I forget the name of it sorry but they are vetted and curated.

[Lahis]

Blizzard has no problem with referring people to Wowhead if they have a problem with a quest and Wowhead is horrible infested with adds.
And Blizzard doesn't vet the adds on Wowhead. Furthermore Wowhead has a virtual monopoly on "questhelping" in WoW and Blizzard doesn't seem to have any problems with that.

As long as Overwolf just "requires" people to watch adds in order to download/update add-ons then I can't see why Blizzard would interfere.
And I am a person who blocks all adds, both on my pc and my phone. And have done so for a long, long time.

There are no adblocks for the client.