Posted on Thursday, April 16 2009 @ 1:24 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
WoW Insider
reports developers of add-ons for World of Warcraft will no longer be allowed to charge money for these applications starting from May 19. The new policy also forces developers to make their add-ons open source and forbids various other things like in-game advertising and soliciting for donations in WoW.
In the wake of the announcement, the authors of several popular mods announced that they would no longer be developing and/or distributing their addons, while other addons (Carbonite being a notable example) are switching to an entirely free model.
The news today is that Blizzard is giving a 60-day grace period for developers to comply with the new model. That's 60 days from the release of the new add-on policy, which was March 20. So everyone has until May 19 to get their ducks in a row and stop charging for addons, showing ads, or asking for donations in-game. People found violating the policy after May 19 will be "contacted directly" by Blizzard and, I assume, asked politely to stop.
