Overwolf seeks to restrict Third party add-on managers

Community General Discussion
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It would appear that Overwolf has made a roadmap to restrict their API so third party add-on managers can no longer pull from the Curseforge website, which is where most add-ons are hosted.

I can understand them wanting to do this simply for more ad revenue and data for them to sell which means more money for add-on developers too, but given their bad history I for one am not very fond of them as ‘the only option’ for an add-on manager.

I don’t see add-on devs rallying against them because again, they get money if they just remain with Overwolf as we saw when it first came out. Addon devs did say if there were issues that they would move off from it, but given six months ago it had quite a big security issue: https://swordbytes.com/blog/security-advisory-overwolf-1-click-remote-code-execution-cve-2021-33501/ which took them quite a while to be able to fix meanwhile leaving people that were using it quite open to attacks.

Overwolf also has a long loooong history of shady practices including data mining and targeted advertising. Some examples from their website:

Overwolf merges ad experience with positive gaming experience. We use smart ad placement and timing to reach buyers’ KPIs. Ads are shown while users wait for the game to load or while they browse team stats.

An article showing Overwolf harvests your data for targeted ads: https://news.softpedia.com/news/overwolf-software-bundled-with-teamspeak-harvesting-user-data-for-targeted-ads-528693.shtml

“When you download our client and/or register, we collect Personal Data provided by you, such as your username, email address and profile picture. If you register through a third party log-in/ account registration service (such as Facebook, Gmail, etc.), we collect your basic profile information from such third-party log-in/account registration service and your profile picture.

We also collect Personal Data when you use the Services, such as games you played, language preference, referring site, pages viewed and the order of those pages etc, or contact us with questions or complaints. When you visit our Site and/or use the Services, we automatically collect your IP address, operating system, connected device, hardware details and other information about your use of the Site and/or Services. We can receive aggregated data containing impressions, revenue, video stats, as well as confirmation of user completions.”

“We share the Personal Data we collect with our service providers and subcontractors who assist us in the operation of the Services and process the information on our behalf and under our instructions, as well as with our business partners and affiliates who may offer you products and services, based on your preferences (if you indicate your desire to receive these).”

I understand the creators of these tools rightly deserve to be compensated for the amount of time and effort they put into making these tools, but using bloated program with security vulnerabilities that put their users at risk disguised as “a software platform designed to help developers create extensions for video games” is 100% the wrong way to go about it.

I really hope these creators can find a better way to monetize their time and effort such as patreon donations & other services that don’t interact with the actual tool instead.

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I use WowUp atm so I am directly effected by this, however, it is indeed Overwolf’s purview to take steps to protect their investments.

As you’ve discussed, third party addon creators could make their addons available via github or another platform which will then feed into alternative third party solutions, but the reality is, you will probably need to either install Overwolf or just install your addons manually.

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Manual it is, I will never install that software or allow Overwolf access to my data.

Terrible company with a terrible track record of data handling and developing software with major security flaws.

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A few weeks ago my domain registrar sent me a reminder to extend the domain I registered back then to make an addon manager, meaning this is pretty much 1 year since the big Overwolf drama

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Again?

Oh well.

I don’t play any more.

I’d just like to take the opportunity to say that Overwolf’s still a piece of garbage and I’m still not going to install it under any circumstances. I hope they go bankrupt. One less scummy company in the world.

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Overwolf will make addons Curseforge exclusive as a condition for addon devs to be able to put them on Curseforge at all. So wowup and other managers will just die out.

I despise Overwolf but ngl I use too many addons to do manual updating. I really do hope it won’t come to that I have to use Overwolf.

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I’m past the age where I accidentally install bloatware for convenience. If I’ll have to update manually, so be it.

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I’ve only ever done manual updates where possible. No changes I didn’t expect, thank you.

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From Overwolf’s point of view I can understand that they pay and maintain the cursefore database/server and people are using their site to scrape and profit themselves in some cases.

On the other hand people like the clean minimalistic, don’t have to opt out of everything addon managers that have popped up.

I used Curseforge without issue, I open it every day before I play wow, update and close it.
It does not stay open in the background because I don’t give it permission to. I did have to go through and change all the privacy settings to protect my data, however this is not something I find unusual when it comes to setting up a new desktop based launcher/addon/manager.

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Bad Puny, bad!

This is a hate thread.

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overwolf can go … themselves

i woudl rather update manualy then instal their piece of garbage.

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I’m sorry

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The data from your initial account creation, and first login through the app however are not protected from this which is why it’s not initially all off, so either way they do get at least some data on you no matter how you go about it.

Though of course the whole data stuff isn’t the only concern, given the history of the Teamspeak overlay security issues and than the most recent one six months ago which is the main one since they took over after Twitch for WoW addons.

To me it feels like there’s quite a few addon devs/authors that actually want to make a living off of making/updating it and I don’t really think that’s a reasonable outlook for public mods for a game they’re not allowed to be monetized.

In reality those that use said addons should just be supporting on Patreon or donating if they can/want to.

So far one of the reasons they want to remove third party apps access is for ad revenue, the rest of what they claim as which you put ‘scraping’ is not actually correct since third party sources have access to the API so they just simply go through that route.

Fact of the matter is, you can’t just run Curseforge - it launches Overwolf with it, requiring it to run since they took over. The other is, of course people tend to use browser based adblockers so an app on your computer is a great way for them to get around that and push ads at those not interest. Which, again was another issue in regards to security previously though that was also true for wowhead.

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They can’t use my data, I opted out.

You have to set up privacy on both Curseforge and the Overwolf app. Yes Overwolf runs in the background when you open Curseforge, it does not hide this fact. Both require you to set up your privacy and not letting it run in the background. When I close cursforge it closes the background overwolf.

Every desktop app tries to run in the background and you always have to tell them no.

Overwolf do not have a good reputation. Personally I find the app no better or worse than the Twitch App we previously had.

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Hello there,

I’ve been playing this game for a long time, and (in my experience) it has never been in such a bad state before as it is now. I know Covid-19 has caused content delay, but although I like the story of shadowlands, the game systems are dissapointing (hello domination shards, m+ ratings and gearing).

The current happenings at Blizzard are being taken care of partly ingame, nobody really expected to happen. They are rewriting dialogs, NPC names and other game parts to be PC and open to all sexual minorities (Wowhead comment section is blocked under posts regarding this issue, hello free speech). Personally I’m really happy for people finding their happiness in their ways, but why do I have to be in the frontlines of their MOST PERSONAL issue when I’m only trying to relax while playing a video game? That’s really troubling for me and I feel offended for instead of having content, I have “PC” hotfixes ASAP, which noone asked for and pressured to feel guilty if I think otherwise (and by that I mean it is not my free time I want to tackle with these issues). Your walk of shame Blizzard should be made up by real deeds and determintation, not pushing PC bullsh*t on us pressuring us to feel guilty for not wanting to be burdened by these issues 0-24.

The reason I write this is that you put so much work into the above and literally zero to the one that really affects all your gamers: Overwolf. If you want to be taken seriously, take care of YOUR COMMUNITY and step up against Overwolf, show us you really care and not just trying to be a best student of the current bolsevik PC horror that really doesn’t affect the ppl.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not saying that any type of abuse of any rights of any number of ppl - even just one - is acceptable, because it is NOT, but I don’t play for this game to be face that stuff continously and feel pressured guilty for not wanting to do so).

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I install and update addons myself, no 3rd parties involved. I never seen the appeal for these programs and things like this give me even less interest in them.

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I used that OW bs for some days early SL and i could not stand it. Now i use Ajour, its simple and does its job much better

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Huh, you don’t need to sign up for an account to use the app.

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With how widespread adblockers, ghostery and other extensions are for browsers, I doubt they’ll make that much more from forcing people to manually update their addons.