Announcement on the official forums
Which sucks for these guys. Also, apparently, for this guy, who plans to cease development of a mod which, though donation-ware, has supported him as a full time job. Possibly because his addon has more users than most MMOs.
Speculation is that this was sparked by Carbonite, the most popular for-pay addon, recently offering a free in-game ad-supported version, and some have pointed to a new terms of service that went live that includes a reference to in-game advertising through Massive’s in-game ad service.
Note that this is not, in and of itself, concrete proof that World of Warcraft is about to slap Mountain Dew billboards in Darnassus – the TOS above is actually for battle.net, which already sells advertising. Paul Sams of Blizzard has already clearly stated “Uh, we’re not THAT stupid” when Massive originally announced the Battle.net contract; the reason why the battle.net TOS shows up in World of Warcraft now is due to Blizzard moving their account system to a unified structure under battle.net. Still, given how insanely large the World of Warcraft market is… never say never… although many subscribers might . Even with a juggernaut like WoW, there is only so much that you can ‘monetize’ a player base before they revolt in disgust.
But, moving back to the original topic – what is motivating Blizzard’s addon crackdown? Probably a few reasons:
No more obfuscated code: the reasons of which would hopefully be clear. If an addon figures out how to exploit some bug in WoW’s LUA sandbox, it’s hard to replicate if you can’t see the code. Yet at the same time, without obfuscated code, selling addons is fairly pointless. Clearly, Blizzard decided addon safety trumps addon sales.
No more in-game advertising or donation solicitation: the reasons for which are somewhat less clear. It may have been that Blizzard wanted to shut down adware like Carbonite simply so that no player thinks Blizzard is selling ad space to, say, Transdneister Gold Farmers LLC. Perhaps they don’t particularly like the idea of addon users making money from a secondary market created by WoW. It’s difficult to say until we get a clear statement as to their intent, which hasn’t happened yet (but given QuestHelper’s high visibility, we may see shortly).
No more addons: the alarmist view seen in some of these discussions, that Blizzard simply wants to shut down addon development by making sure no one can collect donations. This is silly for a couple of reasons. First off, if Blizzard wanted to shut down addon development, they could simply remove the ability to load external addons in the next patch. It’s not that difficult. Second and most importantly, a lot of WoW’s value comes from those addons, and it’s an effective force multiplier in client development that later games have sought to emulate. Much of Blizzard’s live team patching of the client is ‘inspired’ by successful addons, such as MobHealth, ScrollingCombatText and Omen, all of which are now at various levels of implementation in the game’s basic client.
My view on the subject?
Prohibiting in-game advertising via addons is extremely justifiable. If anyone sells in-game advertising, it should be Blizzard itself. Not that they should. But for others to is pretty clearly skeevy, on a level with web sites that yoink news stories from RSS feeds and wrap ads around them pretending to provide their own content. (No link provided – I don’t feel like rewarding them with page views.)
Prohibiting direct sales of addons is somewhat dicey but justifiable, mainly due to what I wrote about code obfuscation. Still, simply making code obfuscation against the ToS would have the same effect and be less chilling.
Prohibiting in-game solicitations of donations isn’t as justifiable. It’s difficult to see what Blizzard gains by this, and it’s very easy to see what the player base loses. If the fear is that addons will become obnoxious with donation nags – this is a self-correcting problem.
Selling in-game ads in World of Warcraft is apocalyptically bad. To the degree that if they actually are planning on doing such a thing (which mind you, I don’t believe they are), I hope that Blizzard’s subscriber numbers fall at such an alarming rate that they immediately yank them back out. I am extremely tired of game companies selling advertising in games I already paid for ONCE. Selling advertising in games I pay for ON A MONTHLY BASIS is not acceptable. Period. End of sentence. There is no justification. None. If you don’t make enough off my subscription fee, raise the subscription fee. I will not pay a monthly fee to be a pair of eyeballs for you to make still more money off of.
Not that Blizzard has already done that or anything.
#1 by hitnrun on March 23rd, 2009
I don’t think the iPhone apps are prohibited under this since they’re not mods. Blizzard is more than within their rights to close down anything making money off WoW, but this is clearly about things that effect the actual game.
And I really doubt any of this has to do with Blizzard killing off potential “competition” for their upcoming “ADIDAS Presents General Marcus Jonathan (Standing Under This Banner You Fucking Newb)” ad campaign, or a plan to charge for their own mods. As strange as it seems to MMO enthusiasts like us, the general public already considers MMOs to be an over-monetized scam as it is. I doubt Blizzard is going to do anything to rock the boat and encourage people to give their competition a shot when they’re making a hundred million a month, give or take, from this one product.
#2 by Iconic on March 23rd, 2009
@D-0ne
That’s called a “lease” or a “rental.”
#3 by Mark Asher on March 23rd, 2009
So what is the law? I can’t sell WoW t-shirts without an agreement with Blizzard. That’s clear. But I can write code that needs WoW to work and have value, and that doesn’t need Blizzard’s approval?
I don’t think Blizzard is worried about competition. I think they are worried about their product being damaged. Why do I want to see in-game ads? I know some of the comments have said that the in-game nags for donations were minor, but that’s for now. Some modder feels he isn’t getting enough revenue, he increases the nagging. I don’t really see how Blizzard can open the door to in-game adverts and expect to control it.
I think this is more of a case of the modders shooting themselves in the foot. It wasn’t enough to ask for donations at the websites. They had to start asking in-game. Did anyone really think Blizzard was going to think that ok if it became the norm?
#4 by Jeff on March 23rd, 2009
I don’t understand why Quest Helper guy is stopping.
Can’t he just ask for donations when we download the latest version?
#5 by Wanderer on March 23rd, 2009
You did not, however, answer my question: Why is it necessary that some addons be limited to only people who can afford to pay for them in order for the addon community to reach its full potential?
There is no dearth of addons; quite the opposite, in fact. The community is thriving. People have created addons to do just about anything you can imagine. What, exactly, are we missing that we will magically get when we can only have addons if we pay for them? How will the game be better for all of us when we not only have to pay our fifteen bucks a month for WoW, but we have to pay for QH and Omen and DBM and FooBar and all the other addons we depend on? How will the game be more fair to everyone when some people can have good addons because they have another thirty or forty or fifty bucks a month to spend paying for them, and other people can’t afford the same level of WoW experience? How will the game be better when addon code is obfuscated, so that we can’t tell if it’s going to mail all our gold to I.G.E.? (I’ve seen something like that happen in another game) How will addon makers be better off if they can’t learn by studying other people’s addons? How will it be better if addon writers become adversaries instead of colleagues, jealously guarding their secrets to protect their profits? How will it be better for all of us if, when an addon is no longer maintained by someone who doesn’t find it worthwhile (or gets run over by a bus, for that matter), nobody can do what the QH crybaby did and pick it up and continue it?
Pay-to-play addons benefit a handful of people, and those people only: the ones who are selling them.
In the long run, turning addon writing into a business instead of part of the hobby will hurt the players, it will hurt the non-commercial addon makers, and it will hurt Blizzard, possibly to the point where they just get shed of the whole problem by getting rid of addons completely. That doesn’t sound like “full potential” to me.
#6 by Mark Asher on March 23rd, 2009
Yes, but he wants to be able to pop up a donation nag message in the game, or something like that. Maybe every time you complete a quest, Questhelper will ask you for money.
Basically, the modders who have been getting donations say they will get fewer donations if they can’t ask for money in-game. This is probably true.
#7 by Jeff on March 23rd, 2009
Okay, I get that. But with something as popular as quest helper it certainly won’t kill all his income. Why the “I’m taking my ball and going home” reaction? Sure it must be nice to turn writing a mod into a full time job, but it can’t take all THAT much time to keep a mod up to date, can it?
#8 by Iconic on March 24th, 2009
@Wanderer
Your post is nonsense, and I’m not sure who it is that you’re trying to argue against.
The only thing that most people seem opposed to is the concept of not allowing people to charge for their own work and/or ask for donations within the addon that they wrote. Allowing people to profit from their work is an incentive for them to provide new addons, so taking away that incentive naturally is going to limit the kinds of projects that people are willing to commit to.
Blizzard is trying to cover its own butt, and that’s predictable corporate behavior. That doesn’t mean that it has no negative consequence for the players or the addon community.
#9 by D-0ne on March 24th, 2009
Completely different that a software license agreement. You really don’t understand how one sided a software licensing agreement is do you? You actually compared it to a automotive lease agreement… BWAHAHAHA!
#10 by Phoe on March 24th, 2009
Blizzard has the same rules lined out in their War3 editor, that no one can ask for or receive money for maps created in the world editor. But DotA makes a lot of money, and they haven’t cracked down on them yet(possibly because DotA is the reason War3 is still played). So who knows, maybe it’s just a lot of hot air being blown at the community.
#11 by IainC on March 24th, 2009
Either you’ve misreported the rules for the WC3 editor or they aren’t the same rules. You can receive money for mods as long as you:
A: Make it available without a compulsory fee
B: Don’t have it ask for money ingame.
So you can still take money for modding as long as you let people have the mod for free if they like and you only ask for cash out of game.
#12 by Wrathshield on March 24th, 2009
As an add-on user, if I choose to use an add-on and the advertising bothers me ………..uh…………I just delete it and use something else?
But, does WOW have some perceived control over all this, legal, TOS, copywrite, etc? I will watch how it plays out.
#13 by no hands on March 24th, 2009
@Wrathshield
You’re making the assumption that all users of add-on X with ads for porn site Y know that add-on X is responsible for those ads. I am less confident that even half of the users of an add-on will understand that all they need to do is remove the add-on, and suspect that many will complain to Blizz, who will then spend Z dollars in support informing these people that no, Blizz does not approve of kink-site Y, did not put this ad in the game, and only supports user-generated kink found in Goldshire.