Bluehorazon

The complaints what could happen and the complaints about what happened would be obviously the same. But it is very clear that the problem lies within how curse used the potential. You can blame FTB for being too naive and thrustworthy towards curse. However if they cancel the partnership you can't blame them for going after the money, since there are no financial benefits. And people actually can forgive doing stupid things. The important thing would be that FTB doesn't lose the moral highground if they present it right and together with other influential people in the modding-scene. Of course it would create a lot of damage, there is no way of denying it. But honestly it would be the best option if curse turns to act in the way a lot of people, me including, are afraid of. I agree. Of course. But than again they agreed to some points and the other parties have some expectations towards what curse has to deliver. If they fail who would blame them for turning their back on curse? Also I'm not sure if Mojang has any interest about bringing it down. The problem here is only forge. They can't forbid monitizing mods, because mods don't consist of any of mojangs code. However making money of forge is a nogo. However Mojangs seems to be not that strict since forge required a lot of infrastructure to be delivered to the end-user which costs money. I'm unsure but don't expect them to do anything against curse when they make money with forge. They are of course. Although Curse is the big-player in this partnership they utterly lack connections to modders in the way FTB has them. And even though they are partners now, the connections stay with FTB and the people there. If they would not hold up the expections and the partnership breaks they would not only lose their partner, which isn't something they are afraid of, but it is also highly likely that they would lose support of several major modders... not to mention forge (although those are two seperate contracts, but I doubt that they would allow curse to play them out against each other.

Curse only makes the launcher. The Wiki-Team, the Mod-Pack-Team and the people making the maps still work on the same things. The only thing that went elsewhere is the forum, which will still be moderated by the FTB-people and the development of the launcher. And no a partnership never means to fully work together... when a game-developer partners with Microsoft to release a game for XBox the partnership is very limited. It is still a partnership with Microsoft. The partnership between curse and ftb is mainly about giving curse the visitors from ftb, but offering hosting of mods, forge and developing a launcher. There isn't much he could have sold. He can't sell all the modpacks. Like Mindcrack... they are not his to sell. I'm not sure what he should give away, since you need to own it in the first place. And development of the launcher and the forum isn't something that can't be recovered. Well the point is. When they cancel that partnership most of the complains right now are totally invalid. After cancelling that deal it is obvious that the deal wasn't about money but actually improving the services. Also you shouldn't underestimate that FTB doesn't only have "business" relationsships with a lot of the modders, they are actually very close personally. I doubt that this personal relationship would be damaged by this, if at all it actually helps rising again. It is the really great benefit FTB has and something you simply can't sell to curse. And although I'm also sceptical about curse and their intention right now nothing happened for me to be able to judge it. I haven't seen the new FTB-Forums on the curse site, I haven't seen their new launcher. The only way I can judge them is based on the reputation they have... and honestly there once was a time were Apple had a good reputation...

They are propably discussed. But they are propably not allowed to share all details with the community. Also non-competition is a bit tricky in this case, since the deal would only affect the current FTB-business and slow personally. Also they said that they finished negotiations, but they are still very carefully what is actually written in the contracts.

The domains stay with FTB if I understood slow correctly. All the stuff will move to the curse-sites but they will keep their domain (which however is unused in that case). What curse get is basically the popularity of FTB and it's user. However in difference to a single person or a name you can't buy the favor of the masses that easy. Also I disagree that the name isn't important. If any place would sell a burger and pommes with the quality macdonalds offers they wouldn't attract many people... mainly because they are not naming themself macdonalds. Also they didn't buy the people on the launcher. Mindcrack and Direwolf are large contributors to FTBs success, similar as the Yogscast provided tekkit with popularity. Curse has no deals with these persons. Also they don't have any power over forge. They simply move the downloads to curse, which is actually good, since Lex complained often that it costs them too much to afford infrastructure. Also forge continues to be an independent thing, which again is obvious, since they only hire lex as some kind of councelor (propably to help them make their client). I doubt that slow is in any way a smart business-person. But it is quite obvious that he has people at his site who are. And in this case the advantage is on his side. I doubt that curse knows a lot of the MC-Modding scene so it is more likely for them to make wrong decisions than it is for FTB. That's propably true to a certain degree. I doubt that they lose the trust of the forgecrafters etc. Actually cpw mentioned that there was talk about this, so they propably knew it already. And although I agree that they will lose respect they actually will also gain some of it back if they have the balls to really abandon curse. Because that is a move that isn't easy, exspecially on a personal level and would clearly be only aimed at providing the community with a better service. It wouldn't help any of the FTB-people personally.

Well Mojang will never release an API like forge. I think it was Lex who chatted Dinnerbone, but not sure. The Minecraft API is for plugins only it is basically bukkit. The point is if FTB wanted to do such a thing. They had two options. Expand their own services or search a partner who already has the ability to do what they want. They didn't sell FTB or anything so honestly getting a partner is the low-risk move their. Because they would need a lot of money to provide something like this. If curse somehow manages to fuck this up, something obviously a lot of people expect them to do, who would get the blame for it? Most likely it will be curse. And although the deal itself propably alienates a lot of followers, actually cutting the ties with Curse will achieve the opposite. And this is something that is problematic for curse. They haven't bought anything and if their launcher sucks people will not use it. So if FTB wanders off, they have a repo, a launcher but nothing more. Their biggest problem is that modders would most likely follow FTB. Right now the chance is high that some modders will use curse just because... why not. It doesn't do any harm to them and actually curse allows them to make money with their mods to some extent and is propably better than adfly. I'm not convinced that this deal is as bad as some people see it, but I'm also not convinced that it is as a large step slow sees it as. Also I'm not sure slows comment about the tekkit-teal was based on the right information. It is propably the most logical thing that if a deal isn't working out because of money it is because one side is greedy, which often is a false assumption, because you don't know what the money is used for. I guess FTB would have declined the same deal tekkit got for the same others. And Tekkit might have thought more about a the deal FTB got now. You have to consider that they negotiated for almost 3 months. This is a clear sign that it is propably well thought through and propably even means that there are some kind of fallback patterns already in place if it goes wrong. If you judge it purely by the goals it isn't a bad idea. And even if it would just mean that other people would start a rivaling service to compete with curse it would be a good thing. Actually curse isn't really good at handling any competition. They basically just go out and buy any competetor. They were propably surprised when someone they approached actually turned them down. And I'm not sure but I guess the initial offer to FTB was propably the same, but now they were in the position were they couldn't just go away and leave, they actually had to negotiate and I don't see that deal as good for curse as they would have wished for. Exspecially if they actually signed any of the parts about 3rd parties being able to use their repo in the contracts.

Well there are a few things you should consider: 1. Lex already had offers to sell Forge, why should he sell it now and why should anybody even want to buy it. You can simply create a fork and use it. However since Forge is OpenSource now there is no way that you can keep anybody from continuing the project. 2. FTB doesn't need Forge. They have good hosting abilities. What they lack is manpower and money to hire people. They would simply need a lot of time to establish what curse already has, which also means they could still do it, but would need more time. FTB can go back to the current state at any given point. Also a lot of mods, exspecially smaller ones already use Curse for hosting. Larger mods normally have there own sites to get the mods and normally don't use the forum at all. Also even if the curse-launcher sucks... you don't really need it. Just create your instance with it and run it by other means afterwards. Curse also has nothing to lose. They already host the mods... why not set up a system to allows for easier installation. It costs them nothing, they propably want to do it anyway, however they would have to advertise and create their own modpacks, now they possibly get names like Mindcrack or Dire in there. Actually curse can lose a lot more than FTB. Curse is a company. They make money with that. FTB doesn't. If slow wants money he can simply stream running a donation mob and wait for people to kill him with Nitro-Creepers and Withers by donating. The FTB-people aren't dependend on the success of this, so they basically have nothing to lose. And actually if it goes bad and they do end it from their side people will propably blame curse and applaud them for cutting the ties if necessary. Curse on the other hand would greatly benefit from the popularity modpacks have. If people use their launcher to run modpacks they will win. This however means that they actually have to put some effort into improving it, something that can't be bad. Actually just for minecraft their launcher will get Linux/Mac-Support and FTB already said that they won't switch before that happened. Honestly for people using modpacks not much will change. They will have propably more modpacks avaible and it will be easier to customize them... however it will propably be at the price of ads in the launcher. The greatest benefit actually is for the modders. Right now they get nothing at all from downloads via modpacks. The system curse uses actually allows them to make money without the stupidity that is adfly. And well I can't complain about curse-adds. If you see a bad add you can report it and it is gone in seconds... can't really say that about adfly.