Add World of Warcraft addons and Minecraft mods

[Xinayder]

I'm not sure if you're up to date with the changes happening at CurseForge, but it looks like third-party addon and mod managers are going to be severely limited when the new CurseForge API is released, as downloads from a third-party client do not count towards the CurseForge Rewards Program, a program that supposedly rewards creators by revenue from ad clicks. I'm not sure if anyone who submits their mod to CurseForge expects to be paid by Overwolf (the owner of CurseForge).

Also, CurseForge is now implementing a setting for every addon/mod uploaded to it that controls whether the mod can be distributed outside of CurseForge, something I see is going to impact Minecraft addons, as Overwolf is forcing a license change and/or violation for most Minecraft mods, which are released under open source licenses. And third-party clients will now have to be whitelisted by Overwolf, with the client developers agreeing to a term that says the usage of the API cannot be monetized (which will probably mean client developers cannot ask for donations or setup a Patreon page to get paid for their work).

This situation somehow reminds me of the reason why KerbalStuff was created in the first place.

With this in mind, I believe SpaceDock has a lot to offer for these two huge communities. I've seen that multi game support is now functional, perhaps this is the time to get the word out there and offer SpaceDock as a better alternative than CurseForge.

You can read more here: https://www.wowhead.com/news/the-end-of-ajour-overwolf-announces-new-api-roadmap-to-restrict-third-party-324892

EDIT: Ajour is an open source addon manager and it's being discontinued because of this change: ajour/ajour#746

[V1TA5]

You are alive?

IF one or more people are willing to maintain a game on SpaceDock im ok with adding it (i would prefer space themed games).
The duties include:

• adding new game versions
• solving disputes
• helping mod authors
• showing presence and an open ear in the community
• finding problematic mods
  ...

also: it helps for those people to be well established in those game communities and to have the time and energy to do this over years.

people or even better groups of them can open issues here on github

[HebaruSan]

Both games are already in the production games db, all that should be required is setting their active properties to True.
(I guess we would also need to make sure the GameVersion table was sufficiently populated as well.)

Also, good to know that they never had any intention of allowing CKAN to access Curseforge again.

[HebaruSan]

I wonder whether SpaceDock is the right answer to this situation. Mod authors would not earn ad revenue here, and if they are OK with that, it sounds like they would already have the option to enable revenue-free access to their mods on Curseforge via the existing mod managers for those games.

If an author is not OK with revenue-free access, then the only way SpaceDock would end up hosting such mods is if someone else took it upon themselves to mirror them here. I would be concerned about the potential for a flood of "unauthorized" uploads by disgruntled users that someone would have to sift through and sort out, along with controversy and potential legal threats by aggrieved monetized mod authors.

[V1TA5]

I don't understand why people want to earn money with their hobbies. Isn't that the definition of work?

Your argument also exists for KSP.

[HebaruSan]

I don't understand why people want to earn money with their hobbies. Isn't that the definition of work?

My suspicion has been that there are developers who want to get a job working on games but have not managed to do so, or they don't want to be "crunched". If they can monetize working on a mod, that could be an appealing way to "work" on games at a smaller scale. (Though it's probably very rare for anyone to make enough from Curseforge to pay their bills.)

Also for the very large communities being discussed here, the support work load is probably enormous. Answering the same user question for the three hundredth time may be less taxing if you can expect a check at the end of the month.

Your argument also exists for KSP.

Of course, but it's a question of degree, not all or nothing. Curseforge has been very unpopular with the KSP community, so KSP mods mostly resisted being lured into a monetizing environment. Minecraft at least (and I would believe WOW as well) seems to have evolved along different lines, with Curseforge widely accepted and not particularly hated.

To be fair, it's also possible that hassle-free access to mods on SpaceDock could catalyze a change in those communities' attitudes over time. I'm not dead-set against it, just raising the question for consideration.