Paid addons have been a very controversial topic in the WoW community, with many players feeling that the enforcement of paid addons is severely lacking in the West. The rules of the UI Addon-On Development Policy can be found here and state many rules, including addons being free of charge, addons not soliciting donations in-game, and more.
Blizzard expands the "free of charge" rule with the following:
World of Warcraft User Interface Add-On Development Policy
1) Add-ons must be free of charge.
All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on.
This is controversial in the community, as there are addons out there that seem to violate it. Some addons seem to enter a grey area where they give away the base version for free, but then sell a premium upcharge for the pre-built data. In addition, some streamers and content creators have sold UI packs, customizations of addons, to their subscriptions, which also falls into a grey area.
According to Elspeth on X (Twitter), China is cracking down on paid and monetized addons for CN realms. They note that addons must be free with no paid unlocks, VIP tiers, subscriptions, etc., but also note "no paid WA/config sharing", which seems to imply that addon/streamer packs and free addons with paid settings cannot be monetized either.
Some of the biggest notes from this are:
They encourage players to support free addons and encourage a healthy addon ecosystem that promotes sharing and free access.
They strictly oppose any form of paid addon, including, but not limited to, paid purchases, VIP versions, and pay-per-use services.
They support platforms providing authors with reasonable incentives through a tipping system. Tipping should be purely voluntary and not linked to add-on functionality. Otherwise, it will be considered a paid service.
After this announcement, any platform or individual that continues to engage in paid addons will be subject to legal action.
