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The Daily Grind: Profiting from mods?
In case you missed the news the other day, Blizzard has essentially told everyone who has developed a mod for World of Warcraft - no matter how much time, effort and care they've put into it - that they can no longer ask for any money for their mods via the mod (in-game advertising). This includes soliciting for donations people optionally offer the mod maker for making such a great and useful item, if it's 'nagware'. Many mod developers put in a great deal of time creating their mods, and some of the mods have been good enough to actually wind up getting incorporated into Blizzard's in-game UI due to almost universal adoption by the player base.This morning we thought we'd ask you what you thought about this? On the one hand, Blizzard has the right to completely block all mods from World of Warcraft altogether if they feel that the mod developers are making too much money by 'selling' their mods, or their advertising is too intrusive. It's their game. Like it or not, they get to dictate the rules. On the other hand, the base UI at launch was, in my opinion, horrid. It lacked a great many things that have since been added to WoW's base UI due to things modders dreamed up. Should all requests for funding stop? Should it only stop when it is a "pay" mod - or mod with a pay service attached like wowecon? Or should mod authors be allowed to solicit donations on their own web site (as they are essentially allowed now) for those who love the mod and want to donate something to keep it going, but not in game?
