Why no love for addon authors from billion dollar companies?

thadjarvis

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

The policies most companies use for addons including ZOS are pretty unfair to modders. I am headed out or I would link the relevant areas of the TOS but in summary:

• You are not allowed to sell mods in any form.
• You can have a donation link but can not ASK for donations (that part seems really weird).
• You can't make promises to make this mod or add that feature at certain Patreon payout levels, which defeats the whole point of Patreon and what generates revenue there. Patreon is also not useful as its market is too diversified and doesn't generate mod traffic, plus most people don't like the idea of a recurring payment system.

Thank you for the insight. It really helps us naive players understand the context. Still unclear though, how do they disallow.

In other words, what happens if a add-on developer breaks the TOS? Do they loose the API/SDK access, and isn't that publicly available or within the add-on developer community anyway?

What stops an add-on creator from writing an add-on and player using it? Is their some encryption authentication obtained from ZoS built into add-ons permitting their use in the game? Basically, I don't understand how they could enforce anything, and how they are able to make a ToS a requirement prior to writing and selling code. Is it enforced on the user end?

I am sure they do somehow but not sure. User base would be more supportive if we understood. The preventative policies put on creators is different in nature relative to the OP's ideas of being positively supportive. I can see the corporate pros and cons of the latter, but the former seems to just be sadism.

Elsonso

thadjarvis wrote: »

what happens if a add-on developer breaks the TOS? Do they loose the API/SDK access, and isn't that publicly available or within the add-on developer community anyway?

What stops an add-on creator from writing an add-on and player using it? Is their some encryption authentication obtained from ZoS built into add-ons permitting their use in the game? Basically, I don't understand how they could enforce anything, and how they are able to make a ToS a requirement prior to writing and selling code. Is it enforced on the user end?

I am sure they do somehow but not sure. User base would be more supportive if we understood. The preventative policies put on creators is different in nature relative to the OP's ideas of being positively supportive. I can see the corporate pros and cons of the latter, but the former seems to just be sadism.

i would imagine that the player gets banned from the game, if ZOS decides to take it that far.

ZOS seems to take the approach that they change the game to make what the add-on does not work anymore. That is what happened to Miats.

Otherwise, they just seem to ignore it until it becomes the standard. When the game first came out, automation was a Big Bad No, but add-ons did it. They lived in a grey area. There may have been an add-on writer that got in trouble, back then. Today, add-on automation is not so grey.

We also have add-on writers that make changes to your game play without asking, or allowing you to disable the change, and that appears to be OK, as well. Of course, then we have the people who write add-ons that go in an disable that stuff, so I guess that makes everything even, in the end.

DeathStalker_X

Because they don't like that others made features in the game the way they SHOULD have been made in the first place.

Kiralyn2000

DeathStalker_X wrote: »

Because they don't like that others made features in the game the way they SHOULD have been made in the first place.

If that were true, they wouldn't make it possible to do addons. Let alone have a sub-forum for them.



I will never understand why people with such irrational hatred for every single thing a dev does, bother to still hang out on their forums.

idk

nafensoriel wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

/snip

The 1% that actually produce quality generally use it to get work in programing so they are compensated by the nature of getting work.

I'm afraid this is little more than wishful thinking. There is certainly no data I have seen to back this up, and I know most of those 1% of top ESO modders personally.

Maybe in a perfect world this might be the case, but "worked on mods" isn't winning people any resume points in the real world, even if the code they write is on a level comparable to industry standards.

I can see why one would want this to be true. No one wants to see good people getting screwed.

I hired someone who ran an EVE online corp as a manager.
I hired three people whos resumes included mod development.

Sure I might be biased. I also might hate automated resume sorting services.

That is grand but it has no bearing on the suggestion that Zos should pay add-on developers. If you entered into an agreement where you paid them then great. Zos has not done so with the add-on devs. As such Zos should not pay the add-on devs. If that group of people feels differently they should lawyer up as I am pretty sure Zos' legal and business teams do not find this thread to be of any significance.

nafensoriel

idk wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

/snip

The 1% that actually produce quality generally use it to get work in programing so they are compensated by the nature of getting work.

I'm afraid this is little more than wishful thinking. There is certainly no data I have seen to back this up, and I know most of those 1% of top ESO modders personally.

Maybe in a perfect world this might be the case, but "worked on mods" isn't winning people any resume points in the real world, even if the code they write is on a level comparable to industry standards.

I can see why one would want this to be true. No one wants to see good people getting screwed.

I hired someone who ran an EVE online corp as a manager.
I hired three people whos resumes included mod development.

Sure I might be biased. I also might hate automated resume sorting services.

That is grand but it has no bearing on the suggestion that Zos should pay add-on developers. If you entered into an agreement where you paid them then great. Zos has not done so with the add-on devs. As such Zos should not pay the add-on devs. If that group of people feels differently they should lawyer up as I am pretty sure Zos' legal and business teams do not find this thread to be of any significance.

/origional/ Counter argument. /editing sentence for clarity

A counter-argument to the concept for ZOS ever paying anyone anything without doing as I did with my own developers and physically hiring them.

Mod developers must adhere to relevant company standards and corporate practices or they cannot mod the software. This includes QA/QC. All relevant labour laws. They must accept any liability without question to any damage to the company their code may cause. They must at all times carry insurance against their software impacting the brand or profitability of the company.

Sound like something mod authors would agree to? Nope. That's why it's a hands-off matter with no compensation expected or requested. Remember payment comes with conditions. No one is going to pay a mod or add-on developer for something and then let that developer carry absolutely no risk whatsoever to that code's deployment.

idk

nafensoriel wrote: »

idk wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

/snip

The 1% that actually produce quality generally use it to get work in programing so they are compensated by the nature of getting work.

I'm afraid this is little more than wishful thinking. There is certainly no data I have seen to back this up, and I know most of those 1% of top ESO modders personally.

Maybe in a perfect world this might be the case, but "worked on mods" isn't winning people any resume points in the real world, even if the code they write is on a level comparable to industry standards.

I can see why one would want this to be true. No one wants to see good people getting screwed.

I hired someone who ran an EVE online corp as a manager.
I hired three people whos resumes included mod development.

Sure I might be biased. I also might hate automated resume sorting services.

That is grand but it has no bearing on the suggestion that Zos should pay add-on developers. If you entered into an agreement where you paid them then great. Zos has not done so with the add-on devs. As such Zos should not pay the add-on devs. If that group of people feels differently they should lawyer up as I am pretty sure Zos' legal and business teams do not find this thread to be of any significance.

/origional/ Counter argument. /editing sentence for clarity

A counter-argument to the concept for ZOS ever paying anyone anything without doing as I did with my own developers and physically hiring them.

Mod developers must adhere to relevant company standards and corporate practices or they cannot mod the software. This includes QA/QC. All relevant labour laws. They must accept any liability without question to any damage to the company their code may cause. They must at all times carry insurance against their software impacting the brand or profitability of the company.

Sound like something mod authors would agree to? Nope. That's why it's a hands-off matter with no compensation expected or requested. Remember payment comes with conditions. No one is going to pay a mod or add-on developer for something and then let that developer carry absolutely no risk whatsoever to that code's deployment.

Umm. yea. You have still fallen short of justifying that addon devs should be financially compensated by Zos. The logic is not there.

If you are an addon dev and have a problem with this then stop creating addons. No one is making you, certainly, Zos is not.

Dolgubon

idk wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

this expresses what appears to be a common attitude of business in general I touched on before which I feel totally misses the point. It is about opportunity to invest for greater net benefit, not about someone trying to work some legal angle to take something from you.

Not at all. Your idea assumes addon creators are business partners and in fact, they are not. It does not appear many addon creators are coming to this thread and to suggest they should be business partners as you suggest.

We tend to not frequent the main forums that much. But even if they did, silence on the matter doesn't mean too much. It'd be a bit weird to comment for either side on this topic.

Tigerseye wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

/snip

The 1% that actually produce quality generally use it to get work in programing so they are compensated by the nature of getting work.

I'm afraid this is little more than wishful thinking. There is certainly no data I have seen to back this up, and I know most of those 1% of top ESO modders personally.

Maybe in a perfect world this might be the case, but "worked on mods" isn't winning people any resume points in the real world, even if the code they write is on a level comparable to industry standards.

I can see why one would want this to be true. No one wants to see good people getting screwed.

I believe the guy who made EHT now works for ZOS?

That is correct.

thadjarvis wrote: »

Thank you for the insight. It really helps us naive players understand the context. Still unclear though, how do they disallow.

In other words, what happens if a add-on developer breaks the TOS? Do they loose the API/SDK access, and isn't that publicly available or within the add-on developer community anyway?

What stops an add-on creator from writing an add-on and player using it? Is their some encryption authentication obtained from ZoS built into add-ons permitting their use in the game? Basically, I don't understand how they could enforce anything, and how they are able to make a ToS a requirement prior to writing and selling code. Is it enforced on the user end?

I am sure they do somehow but not sure. User base would be more supportive if we understood. The preventative policies put on creators is different in nature relative to the OP's ideas of being positively supportive. I can see the corporate pros and cons of the latter, but the former seems to just be sadism.

To answer a few specific questions, the API is available to anyone. Add-ons are in plain text, and you can even run code in-game with the full API using /script.
Attempting to sell an addon is against the TOS and/or addon TOS. (Yeah, there's a TOS specifically for addons: https://account.elderscrollsonline.com/add-on-terms)
To prevent it, they could ban the player from the game, (if they manage to connect it to the account) and they are able to modify and block off portions of the API, and they can probably turn off an addon specifically by name or something similar. I imagine if it were particularly egregious ZOS may even initiate legal action.

silvereyes

No applause, please. Just throw gold or crowns.

Seriously, though, as an author, I don't want money or sponsorships. I honestly don't want any of that commercial crap in-game. The full-page crown store ads are bad enough.

I'm just happy that the API is available. Every addon that I've released to the public, I made for myself first to scratch an itch. I've also adopted a couple that I couldn't bear to see die when the authors moved on.

A lot of people don't realize this, but maintaining an open API represents a not-insignificant amount of work for ZOS that they provide as a free service to the community ... and I love them for it. Having addons in the mix makes their jobs harder. It complicates troubleshooting ("have you uninstalled all out-of-date addons?"), creates unique exploit opportunities (remember Miats?), and puts extra strain on their servers (cough ... guild sales history ... cough).

I'm sure they would love to make all the addons go away to reduce the number of variables in their already super-complex ecosystem, so I'm very happy that they don't. They don't owe us anything. We owe them.

That's not to say that I would turn away some freebies from them if they want to provide an incentive for addon authors.

sirinsidiator

Right now ZOS as a company is quite old fashioned and I don't see them adopting any sort of modern policy regarding monetization of addons in the near future, or doing any innovations in that regard. But I agree that some of the TOS are way too restrictive and seeing how twitch streamers and web content creators are features by ZOS all the time, I can't help but feel that there is a bit of an imbalance in how they treat addon authors.

That aside, at least their UI team appreciates us and they are in close contact on a regular basis. Don't think there is much way for improvement in that regard.

Sad story for the end: By far the most donations I ever got was when AwesomeGuildStore broke after an update and I couldn't update it for a few days. In other words right now there is more incentive to let popular addons break on a regular basis than to keep them up to date if authors were out for the money.

Chaos2088

Because they are not employed by the company who makes the game and doing it in their own free time....simple really.

idk

Chaos2088 wrote: »

Because they are not employed by the company who makes the game and doing it in their own free time....simple really.

Exactly. As a player, I appreciate the work of a number of add-ons. I have even helped test some and supported some. However, the people agreed to create these applications knowing they were not working for Zos and knowing they had no recourse to wages of any earnings from Zos.

Additionally, I am pretty sure Zos is not taking delivery of said add-ons. The players are. So the idea that Zos should be paying for something they have not specifically ordered and do not possess or support seems very weak.

If an add-on developer feels Zos should reimburse them they should take it up directly with Zos. If they do not like the results of the conversation they can pull that addon from public availability and be on their way. That is their choice and is how business sometimes works.

Solinur

I'm not even sure if I would want some sort of compensation by ZOS even if it is in the form of a platform like twitch. I would feel obligated to actually put in some sort of schedule or minimum hours per week, which would actually be quite stressful. Similarly to the other authors here, my addons started out from my own curiousity and interest.

Also I'm not in college. I'm not even a programmer by training, but I guess the skills I acquired will come in handy.

That said, some sort of appreciation would certainly be cool. I actually had the idea in my head to use the Custom Title Library and give addon authors some sort of title.

imno007b14_ESO

I'm sure it's a double-edge sword for ZOS. On the one-hand, some of the great addons out there probably help them retain a lot of users who might otherwise quit the game in frustration. I mean, the guild stores are just one example, a big one. I've no idea how you'd find anything or have any idea how to price anything in this game if you were left to depend solely on what ZOS gives you - aside from spending hours running around the world every time you needed to look for an item. But on the other hand, think about all the support tickets they must get from people that turn out to be addon related: that must amount to a lot of wasted support hours and money.

Like a lot of others here, I'd love to see ZOS add some of the better addon features to the core game, but I'm not sure how much of that we'll see. I suspect that having to cross-develop for consoles will keep a lot of that from ever happening.

BackStabeth

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

/snip

The 1% that actually produce quality generally use it to get work in programing so they are compensated by the nature of getting work.

I'm afraid this is little more than wishful thinking. There is certainly no data I have seen to back this up, and I know most of those 1% of top ESO modders personally.

Maybe in a perfect world this might be the case, but "worked on mods" isn't winning people any resume points in the real world, even if the code they write is on a level comparable to industry standards.

I can see why one would want this to be true. No one wants to see good people getting screwed.

I have also hired, in the past, people who had experience in the gaming industry. I was responsible for 167 remote locations, the data pushed and pulled, the systems at each location, the programing in regards to IBM AS400, Windows servers and IBM proprietary operating systems for retail.

Just because those people whom you personally know who make addons have no used that experience in a resume as of yet, or have not told you they have does not mean they have not, will not or have plans to. If they are applying for any job I think it at least would be worth mentioning, and if they are applying for a job in the computer industry it would be crazy not to include it in a resume.

Have you asked each person you know who develops addons if they have included that fact in a resume? Or if they plan to mention that experience in a resume? This is what doesn't make a lot of sense to me, why wouldn't someone include that experience in a resume? It would make absolutely no logical sense at all not to.