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There's good money to be made, yes. Like the app store or Facebook games or whatnot, the best benefits are realized if you're a top-tier developer, but Curse (h

by cheald 16y ago

There's good money to be made, yes. Like the app store or Facebook games or whatnot, the best benefits are realized if you're a top-tier developer, but Curse (http://curse.com http://curse.com) runs a revenue-share program with addon authors. Donations don't cover much, generally, but Curse's payouts cover about half of my rent. I use the platform because they provide git repos, automatic release management, and issue tracking, but I'm certainly not going to complain about the revenue share. :) I write addons because I enjoy writing them, and because they scratch itches I want scratched. I've never sat down and written an addon with financial incentives in mind, but the resultant income is a very nice bonus. I know a few guys like the QuestHelper guy were making extremely good money off of addons - enough to be a full-time job - but it's very hard to build a career on that; Blizzard can kill that income stream even more easily than Apple can with an app store app, because they continually fold the popular stuff into the base UI. If your massively popular addon has its concept shipped in the base UI, your installed base drops precipitously, and the income stream dries up.

cageface 16y ago
Interesting. I had considered writing some addons as a possible alternative to mobile app development for a little extra income but I gave it up because I assumed it wasn't viable. Glad to hear otherwise.
- cheald 16y ago
  It's likely far less lucrative than mobile apps. I've got some exceptionally popular addons, but they aren't going to make me rich. I suspect the average developer with low-to-medium visibility addons doesn't make very good money with them. (I've been meaning to get into mobile app development; I've written a free Android app, but I can't seem to come up with a good concept for something I could charge for)
dteoh 16y ago
Didn't Blizzard at one point say no one can charge for addons or put in-game directions to donate or pay for the addon? How did Curse manage to get past this?
- cheald 16y ago
  They did. Curse runs ads on their website and client, and does a revenue split with addon authors. The idea is that hosting your addons drives traffic to Curse, which drives up their ad income, so they give authors a bit of it to incentivize them to continue sending traffic to them. I think the exact split is based on your addon's install base through the client. The end user never pays for the addon. They can pay for a premium client subscription, which gets you priority bandwidth on patch days, one-click updating, no ads, and that sort of thing, but you're very solidly in paying-for-service territory then, and there are still fully functional free methods to get the same addons. I think what Blizzard mostly wanted to avoid was an environment where some players could gain an advantage over others by purchasing some addon, and they didn't want the in-game experience turning into an advertising slum.

by cheald 16y ago

cageface 16y ago

Interesting. I had considered writing some addons as a possible alternative to mobile app development for a little extra income but I gave it up because I assumed it wasn't viable. Glad to hear otherwise.

cheald 16y ago
It's likely far less lucrative than mobile apps. I've got some exceptionally popular addons, but they aren't going to make me rich. I suspect the average developer with low-to-medium visibility addons doesn't make very good money with them. (I've been meaning to get into mobile app development; I've written a free Android app, but I can't seem to come up with a good concept for something I could charge for)

dteoh 16y ago

Didn't Blizzard at one point say no one can charge for addons or put in-game directions to donate or pay for the addon? How did Curse manage to get past this?

cheald 16y ago
They did. Curse runs ads on their website and client, and does a revenue split with addon authors. The idea is that hosting your addons drives traffic to Curse, which drives up their ad income, so they give authors a bit of it to incentivize them to continue sending traffic to them. I think the exact split is based on your addon's install base through the client. The end user never pays for the addon. They can pay for a premium client subscription, which gets you priority bandwidth on patch days, one-click updating, no ads, and that sort of thing, but you're very solidly in paying-for-service territory then, and there are still fully functional free methods to get the same addons. I think what Blizzard mostly wanted to avoid was an environment where some players could gain an advantage over others by purchasing some addon, and they didn't want the in-game experience turning into an advertising slum.