Nowadays, most games seem to be played with addons and mods. Whether you’re replacing the dragons in Skyrim with a stretched-out version of Macho Man Randy Savage or just making it easier to collect resources in an MMORPG, addons are intrinsic with most gaming.
This is especially true for PC gamers. While there are some modding clients on consoles, addons and mods thrive on PC games, providing graphical updates and at times seemingly entirely different gaming experiences.
One of the biggest clients for addons on PCs is the CurseForge client, a reputable and well-known source for addons and mods for quite some time. Originally a stand-alone product, the company was eventually bought by Twitch.
Since that merger, players using CurseForge for their addons have needed to go through the Twitch desktop app to access their addons. This access alone was a big enough draw for millions to end up downloading the Twitch client, as the title holds countless mods for seemingly endless titles.
Players that wanted mods for games like Minecraft, Darkest Dungeon, World of Warcraft, and countless more were using the Twitch client. Really, it was almost as big of a draw for players to join the client as Twitch’s streaming services themself were.
Interestingly enough, Twitch has seen fit to sell CurseForge over to a company known as Overwolf. As a result, players that intend to continue using CurseForge’s addons – which are by far the most popular source – will need to switch to Overwolf to do so.
There isn’t going to be too radical of a change to the service that CurseForge offers, though. While it existed in the Twitch client all this time, it’s generally been considered its own standalone product, which doesn’t seem to be changing.
One thing that will be appearing, however, is a sudden influx of ads that players weren’t dealing with on Twitch. Overwolf states that this is because they want to generate revenue with the addons to help make their creation a genuine profession.
“With 70-80% of ad revenue going to creators and distributed based on mod usage, we want to look into incorporating in-app ads in a way that is not intrusive,” Overwolf states. They also mention that the original CurseForge client also had ads before the Twitch acquisition, which is something they hope to mirror.
While there may not be a massive amount of changes, now would be a fantastic time to back up any addons you have that may have data or information stored in them so that you don’t run the risk of losing them.
