donations

[xromania™]

Im courious, players give or not some donations to addons authors? i recomand to all, because we are so many, to give even 1 euro lol, every month for example, for the addons u like and use every day...

[Phanx]

I never donate money to addon authors, but I also not ask for donations from users of my addons, and I do not accept donations when they are offered. I write addons as a hobby, and publish them to benefit the WoW community, not because I want money.

It actually bothers me when I see addon authors asking for donations by saying things like "my kid needs new shoes, please help out!" -- if you are so broke you can't buy your kid some shoes (you can find perfectly good shoes for $5 at a thrift store, for example) you should probably be spending your time looking for a better job, or teaching yourself new job skills, or downsizing your lifestyle, instead of playing WoW and writing WoW addons.

I don't mind addon authors who ask for donations in a less guilt-inducing way, like "donate to my cookie fund!", but I still don't give them any money. Everyone here is (I hope) participating in the community because they enjoy participating in the community, not because they want money. This is a hobby community, not a marketplace. Plus, I use about 150 addons (excluding my own)... donating to all of them would get very expensive, very fast!

Edit: I guess I should mention that I do accept money from the Curse.com author rewards program, but that comes from other sources like ad revenue and premium subscription fees, not from user donations.

Edit #2: I also do donate money to actual causes I care about, and sometimes to the creators of other software, like TortoiseSVN or DropboxPortableAHK. I just don't feel that money should be involved in the relationship between WoW addon authors and WoW addon users.

[Coote]

I'm in the same boat as Phanx. I mess around with addons primarily as a hobby, as well as to learn new stuff. I do not accept, nor ever plan to accept donations in the future. I admit, I have been toying with the idea to put links to my favorite charities if anybody were ever interested in donating, though.

[xromania™]

btw im disapointed we cant make real money with games lol, like in diablo 3 - but there is hard

[Rilgamon]

Accepting money raises expectations. People dont donate for what they have but what they want.
I cant put more time into my small addons and still lag behind what I planned for most of my addons for myself. So I dont have a donationsbutton but I donated roughly 20$ a year since I play wow when I really like certain addons.

[Dawn]

I think of donations as an expression of appreciation. There's nothing wrong with that. You get a bonus at work if you excel at your job, too.

Of course you do not donate to all and every addon you use, but maybe the ones you really like/need/love and like to keep updated. After all quite some addon authors only pay the damn subscription fee to write, test and maintain addons. At least that's what I did before I quit a year ago for the previous 2-3 years.

Besides, you should think more out of the box. There are other countries, with different living conditions than in the US. A few bucks are way more worth for someone living there. I'm not saying one should dedicated all their time to wow addons and expect to make a living from that, because they can't otherwise. But people making some extra money out of their hobby in their free time, isn't a bad thing.

That being said, it's not like people are donating a lot of money on addons, anyway. Like Phanx said, the most money would be in adds and subscription fees. And you could argue about those ways of making money more than about a donation.

[Phanx]

Well, subscribing to a premium service is totally optional, and I don't think anyone feels guilty because they can't afford to pay (or don't want to pay) $5 a month to hide the ads on WoWI or download a little faster on Curse.

Viewing ads is also totally optional in this day and age, and I don't think most people feel very guilty about blocking them.

Anyway, I think the situation is very different when it's an individual addon author asking for money. At that point it's personal -- you see the asker as a human being, an ordinary person just like you, and you feel bad about saying "no". That's why the "help me get my kid some shoes" approach pisses me off so much. It makes me feel bad about something that should be a fun hobby... or at least it used to. Now I work in Berkeley, and I say "no" to about 58978541521 people asking me for my spare change every day, so I guess I'm kind of desensitized. It still annoys me, though.

[SDPhantom]

The only things I've ever donated were my time and expertise. I've never donated any monetary value mostly because I don't have enough money to start throwing it around. I can help others debug code all day and possibly donate code for others' projects. When someone asks for a donation to "feed their family", my response is "I need to eat too." I don't feel bad, it's the unfortunate truth. I'm already poor, so should I donate myself into debt? That doesn't sound logical at all.

The same goes when I look at accepting donations, it's entirely up to the person giving their money. Can they afford to give money for my work? There are much better things they can use that money for, but if they're insistent, I won't say "no".

[Ketho]

off-topic:

At what mark or point do authors receive donations anyway? Like, do they need a hundredthousand of users before they get any possible chance of donations? Just wondering, since I haven't received a single "eurocent" in the past 3 years, so I stopped caring about providing donation links from now

[Dawn]

Originally Posted by Ketho off-topic: At what mark or point do authors receive donations anyway? Like, do they need a hundredthousand of users before they get any possible chance of donations? Just wondering, since I haven't received a single "eurocent" in the past 3 years, so I stopped caring about providing donation links from now

Doesn't matter. It's not a given. If someone decides to donate he can do so at the first download or the "last". Totally up to the people.

[Tonyleila]

I once donated to Raven because I really had many requests and the author was helpful and spent all his time on changing things. As an addon/Interface author I have a donation button but I will not give more support to anyone donating than to someone how can't or does not want. As long as I play WoW I'll update my addons/interface because its fun.

[Rilgamon]

Originally Posted by Ketho off-topic: At what mark or point do authors receive donations anyway? Like, do they need a hundredthousand of users before they get any possible chance of donations? Just wondering, since I haven't received a single "eurocent" in the past 3 years, so I stopped caring about providing donation links from now

The last time I donated was when I saw an updated version of postal I realized that the two addons I cant live without (postal + bankitems) are both from the same author and since it took some time into mop until they were updated I learned again how much I love them I cant donate much ... but its a good way to say thank you for what I got

[xromania™]

so u think here authors dont get some money for their work?

[Coote]

Some may, but most don't. There are also probably also more addons here that do not include donation info than there are ones which do.