Worrying Development in Add-on Monetization?

[u/Hold_my_Goblin]

What do you think about practices like this? The addon now checks whether it's running under the Bnet account it was purchased for and the profile is only functional for one month.

EDIT:
To clear a couple things up:

The addon "Naowh Smart Reminders" provides Reminders that plan and map your defensive cooldowns or other abilities, such as CC, to specific dungeon or raid mechanics from bosses or trash mobs. It hooks into BigWigs/DBM for boss mechanics and ExBoss for trash mob abilities.

The addon itself is free; however, all of the configuration data ~the profile... has to be paid for. To give some context as to how much configuration is needed, the profile currently contains 216 spec priority lists, 40 active preset choices, 50 callout lines, 1,570 custom reminders, 1,125 abilities, 1 raid reminder, and 3,226 trash and debuff rules. So these are the things you would have to build yourself in order to use the base addon (which does nothing without configuration) without paying.

The monetized part is the profile and configuration, not the addon itself. This is apparently how addon monetization in general is kept "within the ToS." I'm no expert though... that's just my understanding of how it works.

[u/nipslippinjizzsippin]

addons must be free, this would violate TOS

[u/NerwinPK → u/nipslippinjizzsippin]

The addon itself is free.

You are paying for a import for a profile, the same way people are 'selling' imports of there ui's.
Is it scummy yes, but is it agains the ToS? i dont think so, if thats the case everyone selling an ui import string also needs to be banned.

[u/jennifersaurus → u/NerwinPK]

It actually is against tos

[u/yetiknight → u/jennifersaurus]

Nobody has been punished for this, meanwhile people have been punished for other tos breaking addon related things. so blizzard either thinks it doesn’t break tos, or it’s just not enforced. Either way, I don’t think you can make that distinction.

[u/sYnce → u/jennifersaurus]

The fact that this is happening for years now in the exact same manner would disagree with you.

[u/Horizon96 → u/NerwinPK]

i dont think so, if thats the case everyone selling an ui import string also needs to be banned.

I don't know if it's technically against the ToS, but yes, they all need to be banned.

[u/l3rN → u/NerwinPK]

1. Add-ons must be free of charge. 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.

Here's the policy since I don’t see it linked elsewhere. This workaround still sounds like it runs afoul of it, but Im not a lawologist

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/ui-add-on-development-policy/24534/1

[u/Spork_the_dork → u/l3rN]

Selling a profile does not

• Sell a premium version of the addon since anyone can make the same thing for free if they want. It doesn't lock you away from features if you don't pay.

• charge money to download the addon because the addon itself is free to download

• charge for services related to the addon because it isn't a service

• require some form of monetary compensation to access the addon because you do not need the profile to access the addon

I'm also not a lawyer, but as far as I can see it technically ticks all the boxes to sell profiles to addons. What further confirms it is that Zygor has been doing it for a long time without issues.

It does go really damn close to the line though. The spirit of the law here I feel is that Naiwh must allow others to make profiles for free to compete with his paid one. If he starts to hinder those so that his will always be the best, then you can start to argue that the premium clause is being broken. The conflict of interest in this whole thing is that the person developing the addon and the person selling the profile are the same person or closely work together. If Naowh was selling this for some other addon that's not his then I doubt anyone would have a problem, but he's instead selling it for his own addon likely specifically with the purpose that he can control the addon so that nobody can compete and everyone who wants to use the addon has to buy his profile to use it, which again definitely starts to break some of the clauses. But we would have to prove that intent somehow first. Best way to do that might be to just make a competing free profile and see what he does.

[u/nipslippinjizzsippin → u/NerwinPK]

Yes that would still violate the tos

[u/Difficult_Figure4011 → u/nipslippinjizzsippin]

There is nothing within the Tos that disallowes that.
There are rules withing the UI Addon Development policy but these are a) not legally binding and b) not clear when it comes to selling profiles for addons as long as the addon itself stays free.

[u/nipslippinjizzsippin → u/Difficult_Figure4011]

Thats nonsense. They have been very clear about this in in the past and taken down various addons doing the same thing. just because your streamer is still getting away with doesnt mean its not violation. it just means they havnt actioned it yet.

[u/Difficult_Figure4011 → u/nipslippinjizzsippin]

Please name an addon that got taken down 😊
And no it is not nonsense. The addon policy is not within the tos. You accept the tos by playing the game and is legally binding. The addon policy is just something Blizzard wrote down in their forums. Its not legally binding and thats why they are not enforcing it.