Update: Overwolf announced today that it has reached an agreement that will see Twitch continue to moderate updates to Curseforge add-ons until November 30. The deal only applies to add-ons that exist on the platform as of November 25—new add-on moderation will be halted at that point—but it means that add-ons released for the Shadowlands expansion on November 23 can be fully supported and updated through the week following its launch.
The projected downtime has also been shortened: Curseforge will go into read-only mode at 6 am PT/9 am ET on November 30, and is expected to return to full functionality by December 3.
Twitch's technical program manager Chris Hubbard has also posted an updated transition schedule:
- 11/25 — At 12pm, we will stop new project moderation. This means if you create a project for the first time, you will have to wait until after 11/30 for it to be approved. We will continue moderating updates to current addons and mods.
- 11/25–11/29 — We will have moderators taking shifts over this time in order to approve file updates for addons and mods.
- On 11/30 — addons will only be available via the CurseForge app. Additionally, the mods tab will no longer be available in the Twitch Desktop App.
Overwolf vice president Gil Tov-Ly acknowledged that the timing is terrible, but pointed out that the transition date was originally set back in June, when Shadowlands was still scheduled to come out in October. That gave add-on developers a full month to support their creations prior to launch—until the WoW expansion was delayed to November.
Original story:
Curseforge has announced that addon functionality will be limited from November 24 until 'early December' as it prepares to finalise its transition to Overwolf. Yes, you read that correctly—that's the week of Shadowlands' global launch.
During the downtime, players will still be able to download addons from Curseforge but addon authors won't be able to upload updates or new addons:
"On 11/24, manual project moderation will be paused. All content requiring manual moderation submitted on or after this date will be queued to be reviewed once manual moderation is reinstated." says Curseforge in the update, which goes on to state that "everything should be back up and running" by early December.
While many addons have already been updated for Shadowlands content, there are usually some bugs that need ironing out directly after the launch of a new expansion, meaning the timing for this is truly baffling.
Players have been vocal about their distrust of Overwolf and this news really does nothing to win over the WoW community. Many of the complaints range from ad-riddled apps—especially when addons authors themselves are prohibited by Blizzard from making money from their addons—to installing things that aren't needed and hogging resources, even when inactive.
This has led to many WoW players searching for alternative addon managers to avoid having to download Overwolf's own desktop app, especially now that Twitch has removed the functionality entirely.
It certainly seems like an odd move from Overwolf and is bound to alienate more players who may have been on the fence over the acquisition. Perhaps the decision was made before the new Shadowlands launch date was announced. But with Curseforge being WoW's biggest addon repository, it's certainly a bad time to mess with something that a lot of players have come to rely on.
