I am making a third party application called Eve-HR. The tool is completely free and I do not plan on even charging isk for the application and anyone can use it. I do run a patreon where people can support the project and ask for improvements and help drive the development of new features. My question is, that people have been asking for a way to self-host the application. This would be a large increase in my time and effort to support this. I was wondering if it would violate your third-party agreement if I provided self-hosting packages as part of a patreon reward. I wanted to ask first before doing it.
Q) Am I allowed to collect donations from users of my application? A) Yes, as long as they are purely voluntary. “Donations” may not be mandatory, and you cannot require a donation to unlock premium access or special items.
From the developers resources page. However charging isk would be fine.
Q) Can I charge people ISK (the in-game currency) for access to my application?
A) Yes
I am not charging for access, currently anyone can use it at Eve-HR as I stated for free with out any charge. But if they want to self host it, they are taking any way for me to make isk or advertise on it. For instance, I thought of having the ability for corps to pay isk to show their corp advert on the front page. If self hosting is done, I lost out on this ability.
But I am not charging for my application. Its readily available for anyone to use. Im charging for them to have the ability to host i themselves. This is why I was looking for an answer from the Devs.
Usually If you want to do something and have to ask "I know this is bad but maybe they will let me do it anyways." Just don't do it.
Would have to get work from CCP on this to be sure but its a grey area when dealing with RL money and applications written using their IP. Personally i would just open source it and if they want to donate some money for your trouble for maintaining it and giving them the option to host it themselves they can do so, as donations are allowed.
Well, I will just wait and see what they say. Cause, would they consider it premium or special because, its the same thing that is currently available to everyone else.
Developer may not charge any fee in exchange for a Player’s access to or use of the Application, or otherwise monetize or generate any revenue from the Application.
You are already in breach of this.
I do run a patreon where people can support the project and ask for improvements and help drive the development of new features.
People who pay you real money should not influence the development, since they are technically paying you real money to make an application for them. They should give you money out of the kindness of their heart, and get nothing in return.
Q) Am I allowed to collect donations from users of my application? A) Yes, as long as they are purely voluntary. “Donations” may not be mandatory, and you cannot require a donation to unlock premium access or special items.
Patreon is Voluntary, and does not unlock any premium access or special items. It does however allow people to ask for features, and help me design those features. Those features then become available to everyone. Soooo… I reject your statement. As its based on things that are not part of the application. When they are apart of the application, they are available to everyone.
By that same logic, Streamers wouldn’t be allowed to have Patreon or make money from Twitch. They are using CCP’s IP to create content for their viewers. Why should third party devs be more restricted than streamers?
Streamers are asking for voluntary donations as well as merely giving people a video commentary of their life in EVE basically. Us 3rd party devs? We have faaaaaaaaaaar greater reaching abilities given the tools we use, with real consequences (anyone using CREST/XMLAPI has access to things considered PII and are legally bound by privacy laws, among other consequences to using ESI), and we’re far more likely to set things on fire ( ahem@Saeka_Tyr ), which has a broad consequence of risking taking down the entire API system until those on TechCo are able to kick things enough to get them back up and running. And that’s not even considering the fact that some apps in use right now, have the real chance to be incredibly devastating to the game due to the amount of information those developers would have the ability to abuse, leak, or otherwise maliciously capitalize on. That is why we’re more restricted than streamers.
Telling people “if you want me to add new features, please support me by donating to my insertdesireddonationmanagingsiteofchoicehere” is enough of a gray area that you are far better off not doing that. It can fall into murky legal areas regarding people giving you money in exchange for an implied promise of delivery of given features. Especially when it’s in violation of section 2 below. If you want an alternative that does NOT violate it (and, in fact, falls in line with what’s allowed), you can charge ISK for people to self-host it.By using plex as a cash wage → ISK value translator, you can charge people an equivalent amount of isk commensurate with the work you put into it.
Furthermore, if you want a response from CCP itself, this subforum is definitely not the place. Send a support ticket and use that to garner a response. Here’s typically where people ask questions about using the APIs and those get answered by the more experienced app devs.
I sent in a support ticket, they told me to post here. In a direct link. They told me, the devs don’t have access to support tickets, and they couldn’t answer the question for me.
What in part 2 am I in Violation of?
I am not tying the use of or service of the application to money. Go to Eve-hr.com and use it right now. Nothing is behind a pay wall. No one features is buy to use. And you do not need to do any survey or marketing or anything. Patreon is completely voluntary. So… I don’t see how I am in violation of that.
Hosting the application yourself, also completely voluntary.
But I do appreciate your very well thought out response. And I do agree with you that Patreon exists as a support and see type of thing and is murky but it allows content creators to connect to their supporters beyond just donation. So if I am not meeting peoples expectations, I fully expect them to remove their support.
The intent to tie a patreon package to obtaining a form of the app that allows someone to self-host it themselves is what would be in violation. Self-hosting is decidedly an application feature- if it is offered. Hence tying any form of transfer of real money in exchange for self-hosting is in violation of the License Agreement and you’d be subject to anything from app closure and deprivation of future app development, to as severe as account termination.
Additionally, giving people the option to pay $20 a month as a patreon supporter to gain the ability to have changes made to the app is a further potential violation of the License Agreement section 4.2 - [...]developer shall not charge fees for unlocking or providing access to premium content within an Application. So there is that fun tidbit being forwarded to relevant parties. And if CCP really wanted to stretch it a little further, tying paying cash to being “at the front of the line” regarding app support (again, quite frankly another feature apps have), could be looked at as another violation.
WRT to the ticket, re-open it and tell them it’s a legality issue, NOT a 3rd party dev issue. Otherwise, they’re effectively telling you that what we’re informing you of, is, while not the Word of God from ccp itself, but damn close enough for you to NOT get in trouble by following the advice, which can be TLDR’d as this: if it’s a feature, future feature, or content of your app, no real cash is allowed to change hands for access or creation of said feature, future feature, or content. If it does, or there is the potential for that to happen, you are in violation of the License Agreement you accepted.
I will concede to your logic on self hosting. But I disagree. I don’t see it as a feature of the application.
So you are telling me, if I wanted to pay someone to create an app for my corp, this would be in violation of the third party agreement? Cause I’m pretty sure this happens, a lot.
I am trying to see your logic in having people tell you features they want to have, which when coded is available to all is against the third party agreement.
It is, unless you paid them ingame currency (ISK) for the development, as that is the singular exception in the Agreement provided by CCP. If you paid cash, they violated the Agreement.