Authors CurseForge

Welcome to the legal world. It's been thrust in here and was bound to cause some upset. But really nothing all that special is going on.

Blizzard did the equivalent to an Inn keeper declaring that no commercial bands are allowed at his open mic night, because such bands started showing up at his open mic night, at the venue he runs while selling tickets separately.

There is nothing unethical with an innkeeper deciding that they don't want X in their Inn and also stating that selling tickets when they rely on their platform to be run isn't OK. Same with Blizzard, they are fine to not want commercial addons on their game platforms and say that the selling itself is a problem because you need their platform to run them.

As for glider, I thought it wasn't well received because of the DMCA arguments, but frankly I haven't looked at the glider case in detail because I think blizz is fine to seek recourse against programs that alter the game experience in the way glider did, and hence interferes with their business.

Certainly if there is ever litigation between commericalized addon authors and blizz I wouldn't expect the glider case to be a good role model. Blizz did not provide an interface for glider or allow free versions of glider.

What I'm sort of curious about is, how will they enforce this?
To block code "encryption" they can disable the string loading or whatever functions.
They can't block code obfuscation.
I don't think they can block the usage of a specific addon - if they go by name, the addon will get renamed.

I just don't see the point of it, why create a policy if it's not going to be possible to enforce it?
Do they think the authors of Carbonite are going to go "Oh dear. Blizzard say we are bad boys, we must now stop developing our bloated piece of junk so we can stop earning money"?

Can't go after end-users, because they can just claim they didn't pay for it.

Can't go after the developers, hosted off-site in places outside Blizz' jurisdiction.


Maybe it's the fact that it's 1am here, but I don't get it.
It's like me saying "the usage of the letter A is now forbidden on WoWAce". How tf would I enforce this?

Legit question, unfortunately one with no answer at the moment. My guess would be that they just want to keep all options open. I'm pretty sure that they have a handful of ways to 'discourage' addons that they feel are repeatedly violating their guidelines. Unfortunately, I don't even want to think about it, since the day that authors would be required to ask for/purchase special keys in order to "sign" their addons, so that they can be recognized as legitimate, is the day that I will personally stop bothering with both writing and using addons.

Quote from Belazor

Can't go after the developers, hosted off-site in places outside Blizz' jurisdiction.

I don't think most reputable addon hosting sites would have any problem removing addons that violate the new policy in obvious ways, such as code encryption.

There has been some talk about an addon blacklist embedded somewhere in the code hasn't there? currently unused but perhaps 3.1 changes that.

Personally I think they will add the option to blacklist by name. Yes it will be easy to get around by renaming but it would also be a simple way to get across to users that addon 'Q' being used by umpteen million users is not up to Blizzards standards or is significantly impacting in game performance/loading. That alone would likely deter the majority of users from modifying or installing a renamed version. Not to mention any renamed versions being distributed could be just as easily blacklisted. Blacklist would be dynamic and grabbbed at login. End result support tickets go from a major overhead for GM's to insignificant between logins.

Anyhows thats how I would do it.

There's a new database called BannedAddOns.dbc in the MPQ. This database has 11 fields on the latest PTR build, none of which appera to be strings.

As to how they will detect the "signature" of an addon, they can hash the compiled lua stream, for instance, which would make getting around it more difficult than just adding spaces or renaming variables.

from what i understand, they probably dont care if you have a donation box on you addon homepage or under your addon on wowace / curse client. its when you demand payment for your addon before people are allowed to download it, and when you make you addon say how the user can make donations every time you log into the game or have a meny under settings telling the user to make donations they have a problem with it

Quote from Phanx

I don't think most reputable addon hosting sites would have any problem removing addons that violate the new policy in obvious ways, such as code encryption.

I meant addons hosted on separate sites, like Carb.

Quote from Belazor

What I'm sort of curious about is, how will they enforce this?

I don't think they need to.

1) ModX comes out that violates one or more of Blizz's rules.

2) Blizz sends the author or ModX a letter asking them to comply.

3a) Author of ModX changes whatever it is Blizz didn't like and all is well.

Or -

3b) Author of ModX ignores Blizz and/or tells them to put their request where the sun don't shine.

4) If 3b, Blizz adds ModX to their 'Banned Mods' list using the ToC name/version and/or filenames of the mod.

5) Blizz puts in place some sort of "get off our banned list" procedure.

6a) Author of ModX follows the "get off our banned list" procedure and all is well.

Or -

6b) Author of ModX decides to say "screw it" and drops development of their mod.

Or -

6c) Author of ModX looks at how Blizz's banned mods list works and thinks "Noobs, this'll be easy to get around!".

7) If 6c, Author of ModX releases a new version of their mod with a changed ToC/filenames to get around Blizz's rules.

In taking active steps to circumvent Blizzard's banned list system the author of ModX has shown intent and handed Blizz's legal depart all of the ammo they need to bury them under a mountain of lawsuits and cease and desist orders for the rest of their natural lives.

The "banned mod" system doesn't need to be particularly sophisticated nor enforcable in any technical sense. Active steps to circumvent it constitute intent and any "I didn't know!" or similar arguments go right out the window and all that's left is to argue over whether or not Blizz has the right to dictate the rules under which mods can run in their sandbox.

And I don't know of anyone reasonable who thinks that's an argument Blizz would lose.

And I don't know of anyone reasonable who thinks that's an argument Blizz would lose

More to the point, I don't know anyone with a reasonably large enough budget to defend themselves.

Couldn't addons like Carbonite and the levelling guide addons that you see advertised on quite a few legitimate sites, be made free but supplied with no data there by making them fully functioning but unable to actually do anything.....and then sell the data separately? Just a thought....

Quote from myria

I don't think they need to.

[snip]

And I don't know of anyone reasonable who thinks that's an argument Blizz would lose.

That actually makes quite a bit of sense, but didn't I read somewhere in this thread that it's just guidelines and not an officially agreed upon ToS that you had to sign?
Maybe they will introduce this in the next patch, who knows.

Even so, would it still hold water in a court of law? I mean the ToS states you're not allowed to bot, but if you get caught you only get banned, not sued.

My head hurts now :(

Regardless of whether the EULA/ToS has legal teeth or not, there's a surefire way for a theoretical addon author to avoid it - don't buy/subscribe to WoW. If you've never entered into any contract with Blizzard, there's no way any clause of those contracts can affect you, but there's nothing stopping you from writing an addon that can run in WoW (admittedly, it'd make debugging a pain, but we can ignore that for the purposes of a thought experiment; just assume our theoretical addon author is perfect and never writes bugs). WoW addons, after all, are just Lua code written to a publicly-documented API; you could write one with nothing more than the Lua docs and one of the various API references available (either online at WoWWiki or wowprogramming.com, or a dead tree version).

More to the point, those guidelines are NOT part of the ToS or EULA and therefore have not been agreed upon by anyone.

That isn't quite true. You can interfere with a contract without being party of that contract. In fact that's usually the case when talking about tortuous interference with a contract. The contract in question is not one the defendant is party of. Else it'd be a breach of contract which is something else.

In this case the contract being messed with is between blizz and users who end up using the addon, but shouldn't by their contract with blizz.

But I'm not sure it's worth it trying to talk through the legalia here. Lots of what ifs. Say the company interfering isn't on US soil and hence not subject to US tort laws.

For me this is a non-topic, I'm already fully conforming with the policy anyway and have no problem at all continuing to do so. So worrying under what circumstances one might be able to get around the policies or how they may not be enforcable is kind of moot.

Edit: This was in response to athalnor

Exactly as Elsia said or to use Xinhuan's words: "If they can prove that it causes them damages" then it doesn't matter if you are part of that contract since it is essentially contract between the end user and Blizzard.

I am hungry....

So what I learned so far : It does not matter whether I am aware of breaching some contract someone else signed/agreed to, if anything from my hands causes damages, I am liable?

If we take that a step or 10k higher -> Say the devs of Notepad++, Notepad++ is used to write some code which is an application to engage in DOS attacks, therefore according to my very limited understanding, notepad++ devs can get sued according to the tort laws?

Either way, I am not happy with this recent development (the "rules"), but I can see why they came into existence. For some devs, it will not be an issue, while for others - and I do believe the rules are aimed at those devs - it will be a killer for income.
I was going to go all cryptic in my next part, but I got confused by myself, so I'll write it plainly - this is in NO way a personal attack (just to cover my bases with legal actions on things I am not aware of ;P) or a slander attempt.

Carbonite shows - at random intervals - a popup with "donate plz, kthxbai". Who's to say they won't jump to "we have x subscribers, we can rent out that popup with actual ads to increase revenue"? Perhaps that's what Blizz was fearing for and caused this "rule book"?