If, and only if, the Blizzard manager can install the same addons people currently use. That will only be possible if Blizzard hosts them too (which requires buy-in from developers), or comes to an agreement with an existing hoster (which requires money).
For example, DBM is not on Wago, and will not be, yet it is an addon many rely on. If the DBM developers do not benefit from putting their addon on Blizzard’s thing, it won’t be there, either.
That’s a stupid take. There are a number of addons whose developers do deserve to get paid for their work (DBM, BigWigs, WeakAuras come to mind). Forbid that, and the addons will stop being updated. Not worth it.
Mods and addons originally started as something do it by free by a community with no profits nor money. I understand voluntary donations for something that is free, but I don’t that corruption of the system excused in “they deserve to get paid for their work”. This never was work, it shouldn’t be work, it shouldn’t be profitable. They are not being paid for their honest work, they are illegally profiting from someone else property. WOW belongs to Blizzard, it should be Blizzard the only one who chooses who and how to profit from their property.
Of course, they don’t put it because they put it on another host that allows them to illegally profit from Blizzard’s property. Once Blizzard forbid that they will have the same benefit from Blizzard than from Overwolf.
Just because something is given to you for free doesn’t mean that whoever creates it doesn’t deserve to be paid for their work. They put in a lot of effort, time, and so on, to deliver something used by millions. They deserve to get paid, because it is real work they do.
DBM, BigWigs and WA developers get a decent cut from Overwolf, though. They spend an awful lot of time on those addons, and that is work, and as such, deserves to be paid.
It would be nicer if they didn’t have to rely on donations or ads or overwolf to be paid, but that’s not
Illegally? Please, if you have no idea what you’re talking about, just… don’t.
And development will cease. How does that benefit anyone?
No one deserves to be paid if his real work is made at expense of others’ work without that other authorization. Doing your work is not enough to deserve to be paid for it, to be paid you also should own your work or have a contract with the one who owns the work allowing you to do it. That is why there are copyright laws, to stop people to do illegal work based on other people’s intellectual properties.
Of course, that did not mean addon developers should be impossible to get paid. Addon developers should be able to profit but on Blizzard’s terms. Just like Bethesda allow some modders to profit from it only those that Bethesda accepts. Blizzard should allow most popular addons from profit on their mod management, but only those that Blizzard accepts, and forbid any other profit without Blizzard’s permission.
That is what is happening now. Blizzard’s terms allow Overwolf to show ads in their manager, and Blizzard’s terms allow Overwolf to pay a cut to developers. Blizzard’s terms also allow developers to receive donation, or otherwise get paid, as long as the rest of the policy requirements are met.
So, what? Blizzard could change its terms. Why would keep a term that allows Overwolf to profit from Blizzard’s own property when they can change it so they are the ones that profit themselves. And they don’t need to antagonize developers, they can allow them to profit from Blizzard as Overwolf does, they just need to change the terms to only allow addon developers to profit from Blizzard.
It could be, it could be not. It depends on how strict Blizzard does it. I don’t expect Blizzard to do it the same way as Bethesda for their Creation Club because Bethesda makes a contract with mod developers to do a mod, which means that Bethesda literally is buying the finished mod to then sell it to users. That wouldn’t be feasible in an environment like WOW that requires constant updates.
They could just allow developers to profit based on some more neutral terms like the number of downloads and only revoke the option to profit from addon developers who do something Blizzard doesn’t like (which make them lose the profit anyway because in those cases Blizzard changes their API to break those add-ons).
EDIT: Anyway, the problem is not the developers. Blizzard has much to gain if there are developers making addons from its games, but one thing is to allow smaller developers to profit from their work and another different thing is to have companies like Overwolf basing its business on profiting from Blizzard’s property. If the only ones who gain money were the developers and Blizzard it wouldn’t be a problem.
Addons aren’t Blizzard’s property. Developers retain their copyright, but per the EULA, grant Blizzard license to pretty much do whatever they want with the addon.
…and take on all the burden Overwolf currently does.
Why would that be worth the hassle for Blizzard? They wouldn’t be showing ads, so where would the money to pay developers from come from? They’d make it a paid, exclusive feature? So that you have to pay extra on top of your subscription to use addons? Yeah, right. Nope.
Again, we’re talking not about whether Blizzard could - they could -, but whether it would be worth it for them to do so, and whether it would benefit anyone. The answer to both is: it wouldn’t.
Or they could save themselves all that hassle and let someone else - like Overwolf - do it.
Again, for Blizzard to pay developers a cut similar to what Overwolf does, Blizzard needs to find that extra profit first. They need to find a way to profit enough to support the cost of hosting addons, curating addons, paying for the bandwidth, handling licensing issues, maintaining all that infrastructure, and then pay developers on top of all that.
Overwolf takes a lot of the burden off Blizzard’s shoulders, so Blizzard allows them to profit too, because it benefits them both.
Addons are not Blizzard’s property, but WOW is Blizzard’s property and that makes WOW addons a derivative work from Blizzard’s property. That does not get Blizzard the right to profit directly from the addons but they have the right to now allow a derivative work based on their own work.
Like any improvement Blizzard could do on the game, to improve the user’s experience to give themselves a more friendly and safe environment to get addons to try to make users happy to keep paying Blizzard’s services.
That is true, indeed. And I’ll reiterate again: the question is not whether they could, but whether they should.
For Blizzard to provide an in-game addon manager, they’ll need to make it better than the competitors, for both users and developers, or forbid competitors.
Doing the latter is not worth it, because then Blizzard will have to:
Create and maintain the infrastructure for hosting addons.
Deal with all the licensing and copyright issues that might arise. For example, if someone uploads an addon that infringes on the copyright of another company, Blizzard will have to deal with that now.
Pay the bandwidth and storage costs.
Convince developers to continue working on their addons (ie, pay them cuts similar to Overwolf)
Find the money to support all that.
Nope, that’s not going to happen.
Doing the former will require them to do all of the above OR come to an agreement with an existing hoster like Overwolf, which would cost them, too. So not worth it, either.
They’re not going to undertake a massive burden when third parties already provide an adequate service for players. They’re “losing” less money by allowing Overwolf to take on this burden than they’d gain by doing it themselves.
Blizzard talked about this many years ago, the most appealing thing about it was that it would store addons and settings in your account so that you could play your account with the same addons and settings on any computer.
No need to set everything up again whenever you got a new machine.