What the hell? I don't see Blizzard selling addons via Battle.net. Most of the stuff they've copied from the addon community so far has been watered down to the point that many people still prefer to use non-Blizzard addons for those features instead.
Also, labeling Glider as an addon made me scratch my head. I've never seen it but I imagined it as a standalone application (primarily at least).
The iPhone App Store concept (developer submitted, free or pay to play, revenue sharing) converted to WoW is one that is feasible. I'm sure Blizzard has seen the revenue possibilities that are there, consider the revenues from 3rd party Addon installers with ads expanded to the entire player base - even the Blizz forums have ads now. Why not monitize addons and with it maybe even limit some of the issues they have with shitty addons causing crashes or support issues.
Seriously, comparing WoW's business model with Apple's for the iPhone doesn't work.
Blizz already has a brilliant revenue stream. Only if they seriously thought they could increase their earning bracket monetizing addons will we ever see that and frankly I very strongly doubt that.
The AppStore on the other hand is a very large chunk of Apple's revenue model. And Apple does a lot to actually protect against certain forms of openess, such as scripting to protect that model.
But regardless why are we discussing a poorly formed speculation of a biased lawyer which was posted on a fan site on April 1st? Certainly that wasn't a legal opinion :P
Blizz already has a brilliant revenue stream. Only if they seriously thought they could increase their earning bracket monetizing addons will we ever see that and frankly I very strongly doubt that.
Activision-Blizzard is actively looking at more ways to milk Blizzard's cash cows. They're already in the process of combining all account management and login systems for current and upcoming Blizzard games into the Battle.net system so that they can use it to shovel ads and whatnot at you. They said as much at Blizzcon too, so I'm not just wearing my tinfoil hat here :p
Their making an "addon store" is something I'd still be skeptical of though.
I just hope you realize by now that Blizzard's "Apple Store" for addons was an April Fools joke. Probably you do, but just poking a stick at the poor horse.
Activision-Blizzard is actively looking at more ways to milk Blizzard's cash cows. They're already in the process of combining all account management and login systems for current and upcoming Blizzard games into the Battle.net system so that they can use it to shovel ads and whatnot at you. They said as much at Blizzcon too, so I'm not just wearing my tinfoil hat here :p
Their making an "addon store" is something I'd still be skeptical of though.
Well it's known that battle.net will carry ads. Has nothing to with monetizing addons. And that they consolidate accounts makes a lot of sense for customer retention. If their next MMO comes around they want to make it as easy as possible to stay with blizz, but again that has nothing to do with the monetizing addon speculation.
As far as I see it that lawyer was just wildly speculating, having (a) had bad experience litigating against blizzard and (b) not understanding addon culture and their secondary benefit to Blizzard beyond the glider context.
Having said that I thought the interview was an interesting read. I remember that on EJ there was discussion about the summer 08 summary judgement of Blizz vs MDY commenting on the not so great quality of argument of the MDY lawyer(s) (ah here is the link http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t28385-blizzard_wins_lawsuit_against_wowglider/). I kind of agreed back when and the interview shows it again. They kind of failed to challenge Blizz on the points where they were vulnerable, such as if a ToU is a contract in the traditional sense, having not been signed and being subject to change without notice by one party, for example.
And they did not concede points that were practically lost such as the damage claim as part of the tort charge.
So the MDY lawyers conceded points they should not and they did not conceded points that they should have, really... and now speculating about sinister motives of blizz doesn't really help.
I think that lawyer should spend less time setting up a legal shop in second life or giving interviews to gamer sites and more time engaging with the more pressing questions, what the meaning of software licenses are legally, what the scope of DMCA is, and where the limits of the limited rights one gets from being a copyright holder are and what digital copying really means etc etc.
I just hope you realize by now that Blizzard's "Apple Store" for addons was an April Fools joke. Probably you do, but just poking a stick at the poor horse.
I'm sure people do but, if you think about it, it still could be a possibility - it's not that far fetched of an idea.
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What the hell? I don't see Blizzard selling addons via Battle.net. Most of the stuff they've copied from the addon community so far has been watered down to the point that many people still prefer to use non-Blizzard addons for those features instead.
Also, labeling Glider as an addon made me scratch my head. I've never seen it but I imagined it as a standalone application (primarily at least).
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Curse Premium*goes off to patent his addons* :P
Nuff said.
Blizz already has a brilliant revenue stream. Only if they seriously thought they could increase their earning bracket monetizing addons will we ever see that and frankly I very strongly doubt that.
The AppStore on the other hand is a very large chunk of Apple's revenue model. And Apple does a lot to actually protect against certain forms of openess, such as scripting to protect that model.
But regardless why are we discussing a poorly formed speculation of a biased lawyer which was posted on a fan site on April 1st? Certainly that wasn't a legal opinion :P
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Curse PremiumLawyers making jokes and telling them to other people == not funny.
Activision-Blizzard is actively looking at more ways to milk Blizzard's cash cows. They're already in the process of combining all account management and login systems for current and upcoming Blizzard games into the Battle.net system so that they can use it to shovel ads and whatnot at you. They said as much at Blizzcon too, so I'm not just wearing my tinfoil hat here :p
Their making an "addon store" is something I'd still be skeptical of though.
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Forum ModeratorWell it's known that battle.net will carry ads. Has nothing to with monetizing addons. And that they consolidate accounts makes a lot of sense for customer retention. If their next MMO comes around they want to make it as easy as possible to stay with blizz, but again that has nothing to do with the monetizing addon speculation.
As far as I see it that lawyer was just wildly speculating, having (a) had bad experience litigating against blizzard and (b) not understanding addon culture and their secondary benefit to Blizzard beyond the glider context.
Having said that I thought the interview was an interesting read. I remember that on EJ there was discussion about the summer 08 summary judgement of Blizz vs MDY commenting on the not so great quality of argument of the MDY lawyer(s) (ah here is the link http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t28385-blizzard_wins_lawsuit_against_wowglider/). I kind of agreed back when and the interview shows it again. They kind of failed to challenge Blizz on the points where they were vulnerable, such as if a ToU is a contract in the traditional sense, having not been signed and being subject to change without notice by one party, for example.
And they did not concede points that were practically lost such as the damage claim as part of the tort charge.
So the MDY lawyers conceded points they should not and they did not conceded points that they should have, really... and now speculating about sinister motives of blizz doesn't really help.
I think that lawyer should spend less time setting up a legal shop in second life or giving interviews to gamer sites and more time engaging with the more pressing questions, what the meaning of software licenses are legally, what the scope of DMCA is, and where the limits of the limited rights one gets from being a copyright holder are and what digital copying really means etc etc.
I'm sure people do but, if you think about it, it still could be a possibility - it's not that far fetched of an idea.