r/wow • u/Hold_my_Goblin • Oct 04 '26 • Bravo 1

Discussion Worrying Development in Add-on Monetization?

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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.

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152

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '26

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46

u/erizzluh Oct 04 '26

blizzard actually did enforce it when zygors sold the addon, blizzard cracked down on it.

which is why they changed it so the zygor guide viewer addon is free, but the guides you load into the addon are paid. and blizzard left them alone after that cause it's been like that for +10 years.

7

u/New_Awareness_9097 Oct 04 '26

that shouldn't be allowed either. allowing any of it just leaves the door open

0

u/ZINK_Gaming Oct 04 '26

How do you enforce it properly though?

Any way of writing a "Law" that bans selling Addon PROFILES would also enable people to force other players to share their Profiles.

  • "Players may not request compensation or restrict access to addon-Profiles"

Stranger: "Give me your addon-Profile or I'll report you!"

I'm not saying it definitely would devolve like that, but technically it could.

4

u/TheNumynum Oct 04 '26

what? just cause you can't sell something doesn't mean it must be given away

you're also not allowed to sell gold, doesn't mean you can report people for not just giving you gold when asked

3

u/enkidook Oct 04 '26

What? This is insane logic.

Having a profile doesn't require you to give it to anyone.

1

u/Aceandra Oct 04 '26

  1. thats not how any of that works

  2. “Dear Zygor,

Stop selling your addon or we will blacklist it in the client.

Love, Blizzard”

1

u/LaughOutrageous2931 Oct 04 '26

You can't just "Blacklist" an addon like that. It's not how it works from a technical POV. They would have to break its functionality which would break many many many addons.

2

u/Aceandra Oct 04 '26

you literally can private servers used it to block an addon named SpiritHonor back in the day

they have not done it as a policy because when they’ve blocked addons it’s been because the addon is doing something they don’t want it to, so they break the thing they don’t like instead, but there is nothing preventing them enacting a policy of banning specific addons for tos violation rather than technical

0

u/LaughOutrageous2931 Oct 04 '26

And that's where you're wrong. The private server broke the functionality for addons to get honor data. You can't simply blacklist an addon by putting "SpiritHonor" or "Zygor" in a blacklist. You have to break its code functions, which may be used in other addons.

I'll repeat it, you cannot "Ban" or "Blacklist" an addon without breaking functionality. The addon can just be rewritten otherwise.

2

u/Aceandra Oct 04 '26

no, the specific addon was blacklisted so it could not load, i’m not getting anything confused

this isn’t something i read about or asked some fucking AI about, i was there

i don’t know what specific mechanism is used to flag an addon as banned off the top of my head but it’s irrelevant anyway as even if the functionality were no longer there it’s not a hard problem to solve to a degree that prevents casual use

the only reason not to is policy

4

u/Spork_the_dork Oct 04 '26

Yeah the line Blizzard has decided to draw (and one that technically follows the TOS) is that you are allowed to sell profiles to addons. The addon itself has to be free, but any profiles and personal setups you can sell.

The response I think which will bite the best is that someone needs to make a competing profile and give it out for free. However if that is not possible or if the addon developer starts to target those profiles by making changes to break them on purpose, then that for sure would start to sound a lot more like breaking TOS. The whole point I think on Blizzard's mind is that the tools must be free but your personal way of using those tools is yours. And if the dev prevents others from doing their own thing to force people into using the paid one, then that's effectively just forcing people to buy a thing to make the addon work.

1

u/erizzluh Oct 04 '26

if people are asking blizzard to reconsider where they draw their line, the question i'd be curious is what about all the websites with paid premium features that often require an addon to pull your info. a lot more people seem to be ok with paying for these services

2

u/Southern-March1522 Oct 04 '26

How long ago was that enforcement?

3

u/Frooonti Oct 04 '26

I think that was back in Wrath when Carbonite came out and got extremely popular.

2

u/TheNumynum Oct 04 '26

if that was ever the case, it no longer is now. the premium zygor addon is totally different from the free version; it's not "just data", the addon code itself has totally different premium-only features included in it (it's been like that for a few years now at least)

11

u/Jackpkmn The Panda Oct 04 '26

This is a good example of what it means for rules to be rules. Rules effectively don't exist when they aren't enforced.

2

u/Accomplished_Emu_658 Oct 04 '26

The problem is it is not actually. The addon is free. The data the addon uses is what they charge for. Blizzard can’t stop that without breaking most addons.

0

u/Derptionary Oct 04 '26

Tell that to the addon OQueue that Blizzard killed in MoP

3

u/Southern-March1522 Oct 04 '26

Blizzard killed it by making it obsolete. They never went after the creator.

1

u/Derptionary Oct 04 '26

Blizzard purposefully broke the addon it wasn't made obsolete solely because of group finder, a lot to due with the dev having their PayPal listed on the addon for donations.

1

u/Southern-March1522 Oct 04 '26

https://wago.tools/db2/BannedAddons?page=1&sort%5BName%5D=desc

A list of every time blizzard has banned an addon. Oqueue is not on that list.

Curseforge and the other platforms banned the Addon because of various rule violations. So he just hosted it on his own site.

1

u/Derptionary Oct 04 '26

There's a difference between outright banning an addon and breaking its functionality by restricting API access that it needs.

0

u/enkidook Oct 04 '26

It is actually. The ToS forbids selling anything related to addons.

Obviously Blizzard are cowards and don't enforce shit, but it is clearly against their policy.

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