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10-20-20, 07:33 PM   #8
StormFX
A Flamescale Wyrmkin
 
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Join Date: Nov 2006
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Originally Posted by zealvurte View Post
Your thinking of what the future of addon managers might look like is similar to mine from the sounds of it, so fingers crossed.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of users having an array of manager options available. But it cannot come at the expense of the authors (in the form of bypassing analytics and revenue streams) or the hosts, by way of skipping whatever means they have in place to support their site.

Originally Posted by zealvurte View Post
Off-topic: Hi Storm, glad to see Masque is doing well and that Apathy still exists.
Long time, no see, Zeal-bud! :P

Originally Posted by Dolby View Post
We are certainly looking into providing an api for 3rd party managers to use, just working on a way that is affordable and doesn't bankrupt us with crippling resource expenses. I certainly like your suggestions so far.
As I mentioned, NexusMods uses a mix of advertisements and slower-speed servers. Users who subscribe to a premium account see no ads and get access to high-speed CDNs for their downloads. Granted, there's a huge difference in file sizes between say WoW and Skyrim, but still. The cost is relatively cheap (I have a lifetime premium @ Nexus). You could do like, $1/mo, $10/yr and then like $40 for lifetime. Hell, I pay $12/yr for AMR and I don't even use it that often.

As far as API, the biggest change would be requiring authentication for downloads. This would be to enforce the server limitations of non-subscribers, etc, even through third-party managers. Then you really wouldn't even need to worry about the third-party clients, as it would force them to incorporate authentication into their application (via user credentials).

Also want to do it in a way that requires the least if any changes for addon authors and 3rd party managers.
I can understand that. But also, admit it -- you just like your vBulletin. :P

I think we can find a way but you'd also have to convince others sites like us to provide an api too. Just having one side do it isn't all that useful since there are authors that stick with curseforge because they have some nice ad rev sharing which is totally understandable. I in no way fault any of them for wanting to stay exclusive with that and really only jealous its something we can't provide for authors here.
So implement a rewards program of your own! It's clearly semi-profitable, since CF did it for all these years. It may seem a bit daunting, but I'm sure you can handle it. :P As far as CF in that regard, if OW hasn't gotten their shit together since selling off users private info, they can't pay me enough to stay there. I'm not risking mine or my users' data for a few bucks in ad revenue.

I can see the need for additional hosts. The problem is that it makes it more difficult for authors to maintain consistency across the sites. I know I've given you a hard time about the lack of Markdown support, but there's a reason for it. Any time I update my ReadMes, I have to spend a few hours formatting them into reasonable BBCode. Luckily BigWigs packager makes short work of the change log. I guess I should just write a shell script to run pandoc and convert it and post it via the API, but meh. That's more work!

Last edited by StormFX : 10-21-20 at 10:28 AM.
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