Originally Posted by hulksmash
What are the incentives for developers to build an AddOn? I am curious to hear what other developers have to say on this. The AddOns are free, but are they required to be? Does anyone really donate to an AddOn developer? I don’t recall seeing any Ads on esoui, but I would entertain the idea of developers getting returns on ads on their AddOn pages.
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I have written a few addons for ESO so far, but haven't released them yet. I wrote them because I wanted my game improved, and nothing existed to do it. That was my incentive. I released one for wow a long time ago.
There's less incentive to release, at least no monetary incentives.
If you're programming to make money, you should actually program to make money and not donate your time tweaking a game.
Blizzard claimed authors had no rights to charge for their addons, basically asserting that all addons were derivative works of wow. While I have no intention to charge for mine, I found that spurious claim distasteful enough that I stopped dev on my addon for wow.
Otherwise, addon development is largely the group of people that are happy getting a thank you and praise for their time. Unless it's a really popular addon like questhelper, you aren't going to be able to sell it. You aren't going to pay your rent.