Originally Posted by wreck
Cool news. give us a hint.
LOL, I can't imagine that this has anything to do with the Addon itself. It would be completely silly at this point to release a "DontCallItProCarboniteForDonatorsOnly" addon 
On the other hand, they could give us all a baseball cap, mug or tee-shirt and it wouldn't upset anyone in the Blizzard camp. |
In order to object, Blizzard would have to ascertain that the gift was either purchased, or extended the feature set of the mod for which a donation was given (i.e. implying that donated-for mod was somehow crippled).
There's absolutely nothing in the new policy that stipulates that mod authors cannot exclusively share their creations freely with whomever they choose, be they guild members, friends, family or anyone called Keith or Dougal. And who's to say Keith get's the same thing as Dougal?
Even if someone reports back to Blizzard, what can they say? "I donated to this mod .. and I got this completely unrelated, unadvertised mod/beta/thing for free". Even then Blizzard can't be sure that it's related to donations as mod authors aren't likely to make private financial transactions public record.
Blizzard is left twisting in the wind wondering what's a public / private release, free / gift, beta / non-beta etc. And it's all compliant with the new policy too. See my coach? See my horses? See me drive them through these legal courses? In the immortal worlds of those jolly american cowboy types, "Yeee haaawwww!"
