Controlling The Addon Community
Before I get going on this topic, anyone who hasn’t caught the latest news out of Blizzard concerning their new policies towards addons should check out this summary at MMO Champion. I’m going to break some of these bullet points down from the perspective of not only a WoW player but also as a professional software developer.
The New Rules
Some of these rules make absolutely perfect sense to me. I’m actually surprised some of them even had to be mentioned or reiterated. Unfortunately, there are a few rules here that could eventually be game changers in the addon scene and not in a beneficial way at all:
Add-ons must be free of charge.
Their first pitch is a fastball, isn’t it? This is the most important addon policy so I’ll devote the most time to it. I’m 100% positive that this is a direct response to the Carbonite addon. Carbonite had a subscription model for their addon in addition to a free version that served up ads inside the addon itself.
I’ll touch on the ads in a few points but the idea that the makers of Carbonite, or any other addon, can not sell their work to the general public is, in my opinion, ridiculous. I would argue that the vast majority of addon developers have no interest in charging for the tools they have developed but to not even have the option to be compensated for their time and effort is a controlling maneuver by Blizzard.
The ultimate result from this will be a decrease in addon developers. Programmers are a proud lot who believe in an open and fair system for them to work within. They’re not all driven by money, of course, but they are motivated to work on products and for systems in which they feel their work has a fair chance to be used and appreciated. Blizzard isn’t showing much appreciation for its fans by dictating what developers can and can’t do with their addons.
And let’s not forget about people who sell leveling guides and tools that include addons to help you level as well. BRK mentioned these guides specifically on the latest WoW Insider Show as people who will be furious with these changes in policy. He, as well as myself, have something of a vested interest in these guide makers as they help fund our blogs through their advertisements we run and the commissions from sales that we get.
Add-on code must be completely visible.
I think this part is a beauty. What better way to insure that no one ever charges for an addon than to force addon developers to make their code visible by anyone (including their competitors). Again, this is a way for Blizzard to control and mediate the addon community.
Add-ons may not include advertisements.
This is one rule I’m in total agreement with. Blizzard has already setup a system, with the game launcher, for serving their own advertisements inside WoW. For them to allow addons to do the same thing would undermine one of their sources of revenue.
The problem I have with this is that they’re also eliminating paid addons. I think it’s proof that Blizzard wants to be in total control of the addon marketplace (down the line). What if they start selling ads inside certain features of the game? What if they have an in-game ad inside their new Equipment management interface?
Add-ons may not solicit donations.
This is, by far, the most outrageous item on this list. There are some obvious workarounds to this since they clearly can’t prevent you from asking for donations on the download site of an addon. The trouble is that most people download their addons from centralized sites like Curse so it’s much harder for the addon developer to get a “donate now” button in front of the eyes of their users.
Blizzard Entertainment has the right to disable add-on functionality as it sees fit.
And here’s where the rubber meets the road. Blizzard is basically saying here that if you don’t like playing in the sandbox they reserve the right to haul out all of the sand. This also ties into any conspiracy theory you might have about Blizzard taking the concepts (and code) from existing addons and putting them into the User Interface themselves before shutting down the addon’s access to those same interface components.
The Fallout
The developer of one of the most popular addons around, QuestHelper, has already made plans to shut development down as you can see from the image I added to this post. I haven’t heard anything about the makers of Carbonite pulling up shop but it seems pretty obvious that they’re Blizzard’s #1 target in this mess. They’ll probably get a cease and desist letter from Blizzard and possibly even have their addon blocked in-game.
The Future
I have to admit that the idea of making my own addon has been something I’ve thought about every since I first started playing WoW the first time around. None of my ideas have been very elaborate, or come to fruition, so I don’t think I’d be in a position to consider charging for anything. But the stance Blizzard has taken regarding the commercial viability of addons makes me leery about dipping my toes in these waters at all.
It wouldn’t be a big shock to me to see, in a year or two, an iTunes-style system controlled and managed by Blizzard for addons. With an addon “store”, per se, Blizzard can dictate what kind of addons they promote and allow inside their game as well as take a monetary percentage for each sale of an addon.
Blizzard is in the business of making money. Everyone understands that and no one with half a brain would dispute that they shouldn’t be rewarded for their efforts producing their product. But why does Blizzard feel the total opposite about addon developers?
Related posts:
3 Comments
Rilgon Arcsinh on March 23rd, 2009
What I think Blizzard needs to do otherwise is to provide a place to host addons for free.
Essentially a Blizzard-run version of WoWInterface?
Nance on March 23rd, 2009
I intentionally don’t mention the Open Source movement in my post for a reason. As far as I know, WoW addons are not released under any license that requires they be distributed at no cost. People are used to them being free so they associate addons with free software/open source and run away with that argument.
And, to Rilgon, a Blizzard run version of WoWInterface is exactly what I think they should do.
Brajana on March 23rd, 2009
I don’t see most of these changes as bad things. I understand Blizzard asking people not to charge directly for addons. It’s their game, they’ve allowed people to extend it, but they never intended people to make some sort of profit from it.
Now I understand that donations and these fees are usually there to cover costs like hosting.
The only one I really disagree with is the disallowing of asking for donations within the addon. You’re right that most people don’t directly visit creator’s web pages, and thus might not be reminded that if you value someone’s work, it’s nice to show your appreciation monetarily. I think they should be allowed to at least add a line of text saying, “Hey, if you enjoyed this, please check out my site and donate!”
What I think Blizzard needs to do otherwise is to provide a place to host addons for free. This will reduce the costs encountered by addon developers in the first place, and they will have much less reason to solicit donations or charge fees.
I also know that a lot of time is being put into the development, and people feel that they should be paid for their work. Well, I say that no one starts writing addons to get paid for their work. They start it as a hobby because they enjoy programming and provide a tool which would be useful to them and their fellow players. If you hate spending your time writing addons… well by all means, you shouldn’t be spending your spare time writing them!
I may not be an addon developer making any serious addons like QuestHelper, but I’ve contributed to open source projects and never felt like I should get paid for something like that, and that’s sort of what I see this becoming.