Thoughts on Overwolf?

Yeah, true.

Anything that serves ads without being able to block them is prone to serving malware.

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Agree, there should be an option to pay sub to remove ads.

Not sure how you reached that conclusion but okay, I mean the likelihood of a malicious software doesn’t depend on whether it allows you to block ads but sure you do you and believe in whatever you like.

Look at how many times ad networks have been caught serving malware. Even if the software itself is not malicious, if it serves ads from an ad network, it can still spread malware. If you can’t block the ads, you’re exposing yourself to potential malware. If you can block the ads, problem solved.

See, for example here: https://www.malwarebytes.com/malvertising/, or here: https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-malware-malvertising.html, or here: https://www.comparitech.com/blog/information-security/malvertising/, and many other places.

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As far as I know overwolf holds the right for such clients/sites in regards of WoW and can take them down.

They only have the rights over curseforge database. A lot of addons are distributed on multiple places, so it’s not such a big problem.

Alternative is buying premium and support the Addon Devs. Or refuse but don’t expect them to be doing their addons forever on the sides. Or make the addons yourself. Or support the Addon Devs yourself through patreon or whatever (which will never happen).

I just know overwolf contacted WowUp etc. So there’s something at least.

A lot of addons are abandoned precisely because of this. Someone wrote an addon for personal use and people wanted to use it. Of course I wouldn’t even think of maintaining it, reading suggestions, requests, etc.

Yes, because WoWUp pulls from multiple sources, one of them being curseforge(the so called scraping). And curseforge is the biggest place for addons.

I see.

However people will have to either pay the Devs themself or deal with it that soon all addons will be part of overwolf. If I were an Addon dev and people would tell me to not go there while also demanding my stuff for free I would tell them to take the nearest pointy object and ram it up their…

People better get used to it that the Devs will go to overwolf

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Yes, most people don’t work for free.

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i do like it more over the twitch integration as i have no intrest at all in twitch its moer streamlined to the adds

I’m very much doubting anything worthwhile will trickle down to addon devs. Hardly any of the distribution markets net anything worthwhile for anyone but the biggest names. The rest are only there because everyone looks for stuff there, not because it’s worth it for them financially.

I’m supporting a few already. Pretty darn sure the big ones net more money from supporters than they ever will from Overwolf.

Overwolf does not own the addons. They own CurseForge, and the client. They can control distribution through those, but they still do not own the addons. The vast majority of addons are also developed by single individuals in their free time, and don’t even have any donation links or the like.

Again, there are a few big ones like DBM, BigWigs, etc, which do have a patreon and paid developers, but the vast majority do not, and those won’t ever see a dime from Overwolf.

If you want to support the developers, doing so via patreon is far more effective. Then continue using WowUp to avoid the ads.

…except most people developing addons. The vast majority of addons are made available for free, and don’t even have any way to donate to the developers. A couple of big ones do, but that’s about it. They’re still a minority - an important minority, but still a minority.

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See my previous post. It’s one thing to donate an addon which you wrote for personal use, it’s entirely different to maintain, patch and add features which you don’t personally need. One is a hobby, the other is a full time job.

We will see. The Devs will tell us. If they don’t then they get the money.

Very very unlikely. Also you can still support them. That’s called extra sugar on top. However a random few supporting them can’t be compared to everyone else auto supporting them through ads or premium.

Has literally nothing to do with what I said.

Edit: Done. F my phone.

Are you aware that at the moment DBM has just under 2000 paetrons? Assuming that every one of them is only paying the very lowest amount of $1 (which is highly unlikely) it still sums up to a very nice amount, an amount I, here in my country could make a really desent living of.
And that pretty much goes for those few big ones that matters to OW. The rest, as stated get very little if anything today and will continue to do so with OW.

Yet, the vast majority of addons are maintained for free. The vast majority of them don’t really receive many bugreports or feature requests, and the majority of those are things the developer will fix for themselves anyway. For simple addons, there’s very little work to maintain them. I have a few which I created around 8.1, and the only change I had to do for them is to update the ToC, and even that was completely optional. Heck, I have an addon I created in WotLK, and it still works as-is.

Most addons aren’t overly complicated, and will work fine for the duration of an expansion at least with a simple ToC bump. And as a maintainer, it’s so very easy to say no to feature requests. You’re not obligated to work more on them than you’d do for your own needs. It’s only a full time job if you make it to be.

Lets take an example: DBM. It has 1295 patrons as of this post, which is $1295/month at least.

Now, lets compare that to Overwolf, which says that mod authors will get 70% of its revenue. According to the information I could find, that 70% of revenue is split between the top 25% most popular mods, across all of Overwolf, including apps built on Overwolf. That puts WoW mods at quite a disadvantage, because the top apps are those that are built on Overwolf, and do a whole lot more than mere WoW addons can do. For example, Gosu.ai, one of the most popular ones, has over 1M users. The latest DBM release has 680k downloads (the closest thing we have to estimate its users), not much more than half of Gosu’s.

With those numbers in mind, 90% of WoW addons will never make the top 25% cut. Even the most popular ones will be facing fierce competition. For most addon developers, Overwolf will not be paying them a cent.

Thing is, by paying Overwolf premium, you’re more likely to support developers who have nothing to do with WoW. Overwolf can, and likely will (if they haven’t already) make deals with some of the most popular WoW addon developers, to include them in one way or the other, but even then, only 70% of your subscription goes to mod developers, and even then, only part of that to WoW addon developers. You could take that money, donate the same amount split between your favourite addons, and they’d be better off, because there’s no 30% overwolf cut, nor other non-wow mods to compete with.

If you want to support addon developers, do so directly.

isn’t it great I have updated half of my addons myself and other half does not come from curseforge.

I am not going to install any random software into my system just because they want to advertise me random junk.