Hello, friends.
We're launching Curse Premium today and I'm sure some are wondering about the effect that Premium will have on authors.
All authors will have complimentary premium. Yes, this could lead to gaming the system and creating fake projects for the sake of it, but we have a manual approval process, and we will investigate any reports of said gaming. Please, don't ruin it for the real authors. It will be one or two weeks before complimentary premium is provided for authors.
We are also launching our Author Rewards Program (ARP). 20% of the revenue generated from Curse Premium will go towards the ARP. Some of you may have heard about it, but I'll describe it now:
One of the main reasons Curse.com has become so successful is due to the addons it distributes. These addons obviously are created by the addon authors, our content producers. As a way to reward our content producers, we are launching the ARP. We will grant addon and library authors Reward Points (henceforth called points) based on said addon's popularity; for libraries, it will be based on the popularity of the addons using said library.
Points will start accumulating now that premium is launched, but the CurseForge author store will not be available to redeem from until details have been worked out, likely a month from now.
We aren't going to release the full details of the algorithms we use to calculate points, to help limit gaming the system, but the general idea is as such:
- Every day at 16:00 UTC, we start the point generation
- An addon (or library)'s score is generated with our algorithm.
- Score is then compared against all other addons, to calculate the percentage.
- We then multiply that percentage by the amount of points we're granting that day, and grant the result to the project.
- The points of the project are then subsequently divvied up based on the project manager's reward splits.
- Points can then be spent at the CurseForge store to redeem for various items, currently Amazon Gift Cards (we will expand our inventory in the future). Note: we will support some non-United States goods and more may be added on request.
There are some complications with all this, though:
- If you redeem more than 12000 points in a given year, we will need extra tax information from you. Since this will occur for only a handful of authors, we will work with you on a one-to-one basis.
- Due to tax issues and the like, there will be a new terms of service agreement that you will have to agree to in order to accrue points. Our lawyers are currently reviewing this and it should be ready soon.
- For non-United States authors, there may be extra tax issues related, which we should be able to work out on a one-to-one basis. Authors who have already opted-in will have to agree to the new terms of service in order to use the store.
We've already started granting points to authors. To see your points, go to http://www.CurseForge.com/home/ and check the bottom-left.
Update: Authors should now have free premium if you have a project with at least 1000 downloads. The 1000 number should hopefully limit gaming the system somewhat. If you have a legitimate addon, getting 1000 downloads should not be hard to do, especially with the number of users that use Curse.