Is paying somebody with real money for an addon allowed?

Hey,

I’m a bit confused about this. I know RMT for ingame goods / boosts are illegal and perma bannable offense, but addons are not “ingame goods”. Can I pay somebody to design a UI for me without getting banned in the process?

Yes lol. Will you get arrested for driving over the limit just because you bought a car?

3 Likes

Since when is boosting bannable? A big portion of players do it every tier

RMT = Real Money Transfer.

Boosts bought with RMT is bannable, and against the ToS.

1 Like

I know what rmt is. But fair enough

As far as I am aware people cannot ask for payment for creating UI’s/Addons/Addon packs etc. however thay can ask for donations for their work.

I would guess that in this case the answer is a categoric no it isn’t allowed. If said creator already had this UI out there which people could download for free and you wished to give them a donation it would a different story.

I meant the real money boosting, sorry if it was confusing.

It wasnt. I knew what you meant. I didnt actually know real money transactions were banned

If that’s true then the answer is probably no then :frowning:

That’s basically patreon, clever way to circumnavigate this limit.

2 Likes

Having had a quick look on the mod section of Twitch, as an aside I still don’t like that Curse morphed into Twitch, there are indeed Patreon accounts linked for some addon creators. However this has always been the case and even before Patreon was a thing if you looked up the main page of an addon on Curse/WoWinterface there would be a link to allow you to make a donation to the addon author to ‘thank’ them for their work and allow them to continue to do so.

2 Likes

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.

Paying someone to design and implement an addon which then is free of charge for anyone else might be acceptable. The “no charge for services related to the add-on” part is debatable. I assume that’s more about services related to an existing addon, not initial development of it.

In practice, if you pay for the development of the addon, and then it becomes free of charge for anyone else, that’s kinda like an initial, up front donation, which is fine.

I’m fairly sure Blizzard will not care about this particular case, as long as the end result adheres to their policies. But to be safe, you can email and ask them at WoWUI@blizzard.com.

4 Likes

If you be specific with addon with name - it’s easy to know.

Most addon make sustain money from premium support and websites.

This is the main reason why I didn’t give Blizzard access to my PayPal account, because how else would they know?

You are not allowed to exchange addon code or game data for real money.

Zygor and a few others have been into trouble with Blizzard a few times for this.

There are like a million mods for WoW, I’m sure that you may find what you’re looking for in the end without having to pay anything.

Most of those because the addons aren’t free of charge. This case is different: only the initial development would be paid for, the addon would be free of charge after, complying with blizzard policy.

In the first case, and addon is sold (against the policy), in the second case, initial development is done via donations in advance (seemingly not against the policy).

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.