Is Overwolf Actually Bad?

Want more? Check here...
=Socials=
Second Channel: @LunarVods
Twitter: / cygnus_mc
Discord: / discord
Want access to the full interview and support my work?
Join the Patreon: / cygnusmc
Thumbnail by: / apollyonx69
Pebble art by: midnightmorpha.carrd.co/
=Summary=-
Overwolf is bad is probably the most googled term with their name, from their start as an overlay for teamspeak, to buying curseforge and making its launcher more accesable. Overwolf hasnt had a fair examination of what they are about, and what they are doing, so thats what this video is about
#minecraftserver #iceberg #minecraft
=Timestamps=
None
=Credit&Sources=
Overwolf:
www.overwolf.com/
Footage by ItsDrowned
/ itsdrowned
Music provided by Infraction No Copyright Music
Spotify: spoti.fi/3DzsedZ
If You've Read This Far Comment Pebble :)

[@milk-dog]

I never knew there was a standalone version of curseforge. Honestly my only gripe was that overwolf would run in the background for seeming no reason, hogging computer resources.

[@mystic-malevolence]

I've never used teamspeak; so my first experience with Overwolf was having their adware installed alongside the FTB launcher. In 2022. Not a good look.

[@Cygnus_MC]

Yikes

[@alululululu]

opting out of overwolf data collection is ACTUAL HELL, it takes literal hours to uncheck hundreds of checkboxes (which put u back to start + lag everytime u uncheck), when i tried i gave up and wasnt even at 1/5th of that

[@Cygnus_MC]

I had no clue, i tried it and it was failry simple to me atleast

[@legatelaurie]

There's an option to deselect all

[@yixuan7043]

I really hate the curse forge laucher is just extremely slow because of all the bloatware compare to prism laucher or modrinth

[@dextheexplorer]

Thanks for putting out these videos, love watching every single one. I don't think that Overwolf is that bad, but it definitely could be done differently.

[@Cygnus_MC]

Hey thanks for the love! I appreciate it

[@RngGm]

When i was using cursed forge launcher, the ads never worked

[@Cygnus_MC]

Thats lucky

[@thisaccountisnotinuse]

same

[@Americanbadashh]

Wait, Overwolf is optional?!

[@BananaPuppyBruh]

The Overwolf application always makes me lag more in games when it's open in the background I don't use mod anything that requires me to download something like Overwolf or Thunderstore

[@EntireArgument]

Great video, it's nice to see you reach out to find actual answers. I've used overwolf myself once or twice, but to be honest I think i'll just stick to getting a modloader like fabric for mods. It's what mostly everyone is used to and it's probably the simplest option if done before

[@Cygnus_MC]

Thanks for the compliment! And yeah, like i said i still use MultiMc myself

[@lluucasiscool]

i remember lagging on minecraft a lot so i deleted curseforge and overwolf and my fps increased by like 50

[@cheezyfriez12]

I tried overwolf/curseforge once. Neither of them loaded lol.

[@ZacGames25]

Thank you man, this helped a lot, i kept getting ads for "Buff" and ive known about it for awhile so i wanted to give it a shot but ive heard overwolf is sketchy and all ive seen from research is that its sketchy because it collects data, but literally every single application ever collects your data lol. Very well done video. Also i saw you were close to 5k so i subbed! keep it up man!

[@PaxTheCat]

I never used overworld or teamspeak. I understand your fear of data collection. Nowadays, privacy is a lie, it is hard to not be used.

[@Chee5e]

Love your videos man, they are perfect for understand stuff i didnt know too much about ( like this one and the purpurMC one)

[@Cygnus_MC]

Hey man! Thanks for the love!

[@QueenLizby]

did this video come out before or after a bunch of modders started the mass exodus from Curseforge?

[@Cygnus_MC]

I think before

[@Ghost_Boardy]

Great video! I like watching all your content while playing games. I use the launcher for a few mods and dont mind the advertisements in the app since I can just launch it and not care about them.

[@Cygnus_MC]

Thanks for the love! And fair enough hahaha

[@_TheCoolCat]

Hi dude! I love seeing your channel grow! you deserve all of the subs!!! ;)

[@Cygnus_MC]

Thank you so much!

[@nemtudom5074]

6:30 Since when? I used it about a year ago and i dont remember an option like that, maybe im dumb

[@dannithealmond-milkboy5738]

Thanks for making this video bro, I literally had no idea why everybody was dunking on overwolf all the time but at the same time I really didn't care enough to dive deep into it lol

[@Cygnus_MC]

You're welcome!!

[@Enigma_ZXC]

isnt corse forge launcher have choose download and download without overwolf? or i just didint get what u mean

[@MildarValsik]

I'm not 100% sure what Overwolf is. I heard you say it's an overlay like teamspeak. So an voice over in game. Then i hear something about ads. It's so modders can get paid somehow. Not sure how that would work. All i know is if it's anything like cellphone games with ads it's a hardcore hell no.

[@Cygnus_MC]

Overwolf owns curseforge

[@sporeham1674]

wait, optional? Crap, I gotta uninstall it then Just taking up space on my harddrive is all

[@nemtudom5074]

6:20 *Said by the company who has financial incentive to not to that* We all know what companies are willing to do for money. Which is everything. If they had their way we would have started our lives by mining coal as children. Fuck em. The ad supported model is not sustainable, and i give it 5-10 years before the whole system collapses. It is literally a self defeating circle. Actually free service is created, free, as in literally no cost, nor making the user the product Ads are put in once investor money runs out The niche enthusiast community blocks ads The rest of the consumers demand more, which requires growth, which requires more money, and the small amount they lost from the niche community is already starting to affect their budgets More ads are put in place More users install adblockers Ads get more invasive in terms of spying on the users More people block ads They start serving the ads for literal thieves and scammers People are told to install adblockers so they dont fall victims to these More people install adblockers Ads get worse More people install adblockers Repeat until both the system and the companies maintaining the system have collapsed. All because they were greedy companies who wanted to sit on a horde of money. The ad model works, as long as the funds are used to sustain the system, to do a social service, not as a for profit company. Like wikipedia. The ad model works, as long as companies are only taking in as much money, as they need to keep the lights on. The moment they decide that they want to pay their execs and/or shareholders huge swathes of money, all the budgeting calculations fall apart. Greed is the one thing they are good, at to a fault even, and this has, and will keep, causing their own demise.

[@demitricussstudios4885]

Overwolf is more just annoying for me tbh. I hate the notifications

[@thisaccountisnotinuse]

wait, fuck, they've basically got a monopoly on modding, they own thunderstore too apparently. fuck

[@kryzonok]

Yeah my friend told me it was bad but I didn't think it was either

[@BananaPuppyBruh]

"with a bow, in minecraft" 🤣

[@devilofether6185]

not that I don't want modders to make a living doing what they love, but I am suspicious of any attempt to monetize modding; especially if they are not going to release their source code. apps like overwolf, alongside uber and amazon, netflix, and youtube; exist by taking the work of others, and presenting it in front of buyers, and taking a cut. apps like this don't produce anything, and their service is entirely as a middleman, who could be easily cut out, unless they have enough of a monopoly to make it difficult to exist outside of their system. at that point, the app caters to businesses more than consumers; but then eventually cannibalizing them as well to prop themselves up. This is a Trojan horse in my eyes

[@IMDEADnah]

IT TURNED OUT EXACTLY AS I HOPED OBTW

[@JustDoom]

its always a good day when a new CygnusMC video drops

[@Cygnus_MC]

Thanks!

[@pavelstoikov3780]

dont forget ventrilo 😁😁 was the OG of coms then ts3 came and take the 1st place

[@FuriousKai]

I rarely used overwolf but around yesterday after not using it for a while overwolf while not being open was using around 24% usage of my cpu which is ridiculous for app that’s just running in the background I have no clue what the app was doing but please don’t use overwolf and if you are use it at your own risk

[@efficiencyvi8369]

These are answers every company would give. Sure your data is safe until their database is leaked with millions of unencrypted Minecraft passwords or something similar. 🤷🏼‍♂️ And not making the software open source because of cheating is also BS. As if closed software would be safer. I also don't see why mods have to be monetised in Java. If you want to do this for living, bedrock edition has a giant marketplace.

[@Cygnus_MC]

These are the awnsers they provided. And from the digging ive done i don't have a reason to distrust. However the open sourcing i do agree

[@efficiencyvi8369]

@@Cygnus_MC Yeah, that wasn't against you. But every company will give you the same answer and I don't have a reason to trust them. 🤗

[@jasmin_xxx]

Is cursedfoce safe?

[@linusdogthegameboy1983]

Surprised you didn’t mention it being part of the Twitch app. It didn’t even work correctly.

[@Cygnus_MC]

I think that got decommissioned

[@Kerbezena]

If I install any other unrelated software - in my case "Logitech Gaming Software" and Overwolf, which has some integration but isn't a necessary part of that software is installed alongside it, without my explicitly stated consent, then a line has been crossed that I am not willing to bend. Fuck that practice, it has to die asap! Prompt me to check the option to install Overwolf, lay out the benefits in a concise manner BEFORE installation. If you feel like that would lead to too few installations, you probably have a point. Such a piece of s…oftware has no home on my PC.

[@NobleLaika]

Underrated video bro

[@radeeyate]

🔥🔥🔥

[@Cygnus_MC]

;)

[@mosemister]

Not being open source because they fear it may expose them to cheat software is such as BS answer. The most secure OS for the average user is Linux, which is open source and got its security because its open source

[@Speiger]

Have a few cases where app developers made the SRC "view only" (not open source) and it was only updated delayed after the stuff was out. Why? Because competitors stole changes as they were made and simply integrated them first instead of actually doing the work themselves. Happened to me too where we even just "mentioned" a feature and not even a week later a competitor made the exact features before we even had time to release them. Opensource has a dark side a lot of people love to ignore xD Not saying that open source has not a ton of upsides, but there is downsides and it is a 1 way street, once open source you are stuck with it.

[@mosemister]

@@Speiger when it comes to anti-cheat isnt more anti-cheat software better? As in different implementation that cheat software needs to bypass if it wants to work. Isnt competition good in the general market? And also isnt licences there to prevent someone copying your code?

[@Speiger]

@@mosemister a cheese tactic is the best when it comes to anti cheat. Yes. But the cheese tactic allows for closed source and is also a ton of time suggested, because otherwise loopholes can be found. In general, competition is important. But leaching competition isn't competition. And open source licenses only work/enforce if you are willing to go to court. That's why copyrights get lost if you don't "strengthen" them by ensuring nobody infringes on them. And fun fact thiefs, and by that I mean people who steal code to resell it as theirs, do not follow license agreements. I am not saying modrinth was stealing because that would be wrong. But they were leaching and hoping to get away with it until CF enforced their right to stop them, to actually ensure a fair competition.

[@mosemister]

@@Speiger i wasnt saying there isnt a time barrier when it comes to patching anti-cheat. I was saying that there excuse of not being open source due to people looking at the code was BS As for stealing open source code i would disagree with you there too as blender recently had a lot of people selling it on the Microsoft store as there own. The blender team didnt go to caught or anything. They just informed microsoft that these sellers were in breach of the license and microsoft removed them. Sure that system isnt perfect but all legal stores will do that. Even github themselves will do that as this happened to me. Because i had the apache licence on my project they needed to specify that the source code came from me and state there changes (there wasnt any) so i contacted github and they dealt with it

[@Speiger]

@@mosemister Anti cheat: Fair enough. Open source: That depends on your open source license. Some licenses you will get you into situation where jack shit will happen. And that is one of the downsides of open source. If you go with MIT you are basically fucked since they basically leave you with 0 copyright. Like i can take a MIT project, change the name and distribute it as if i wrote it, take patches that you are middeveloping and making sure that nothing is broken and basically release them before you taking down your userbase. And there is NOTHING you can do against that since the license allows that. Please tell me that is a good thing :) (And a lot of devs in minecraft modding say, they won't see non MIT projects as open source) Last: Again depends on how "open source" is made but there is downsides to it. Closed source is always a valid option and does not make the project worse!

[@chipszed]

overwolf owns curseforge and as of recently opened up about sending money to support israel, the ethno-state that is currently commiting genocide against the palestinian people.

[@SaiCode]

What you missed: they are still bad... in the name of course forge forcing modrinth, prism launcher and so on to prevent mixed mods, force prismlauncher to not implement curseforge Auto Download and many more cases, just using their believed monopoly.

[@Speiger]

The modrinth part i can understand fully. Why allow a competitor to leach of your work. What modrinth did was that they basically supplemented their packs with curseforge downloads if modrinth didn't have the mods, instead of simply allowing to distribute the jars externally. And after CF simply send them a: Stop doing that, modrinth changed that. Also ever since overwolf took over CF. They improved the creator income by 10x in some cases (more like 5-8x on average) They are constantly improving the curseforge website/client experience. And while not everyone likes the changes, I think they are actually improvements (as a dev) And unlike Modrinth, they didn't have to start of with twitches garbage work as a base: Where even a modrinth developer said: "I definitely don't envy them" when it was pointed out they don't have to deal with Twitches stuff. Curseforge isn't the best solution we could have out there, but at the moment they are the best we have and unlike TWITCH, they are actually trying/caring.

[@gow03064140]

LOL YOU FORGOT TO SAY WILOXE XD

[@Wiloxe]

Meh, I don't really care xD

[@Cygnus_MC]

For sorry @Wiloxe

[@mopsydizzle]

I really can't take adware seriously regardless of their stated mission, and I can't take anyone who advocates for it seriously either. Ads are cancer.

[@Cygnus_MC]

Yes, ads are cancer. Im not advocating for ads here, im just awnsering the question if Overwolf is malware

[@MorganSaph]

Didn't address some other issues with the app. Such as Overwolf being bloatware. Despite being essentially a game launcher, it is very memory intensive. For comparison, on my potato PC, I can play any Steam game and keep the launcher open and not experience any issues. If I want to play any game connected to Overwolf, I need to start the game and then exit the Overwolf app. Steam is bigger than Overwolf, so why is Overwolf taking so much more memory and cpu power? It's not needed for playing games, only launching them. Next is the ads, of course. Why does the Overwolf app prioritise loading and playing apps over anything else? Several times, I've had to close and reopen Overwolf because the ads were the only thing to load before the app basically slowed to a stop. And yes, I do have a potato laptop, but my buddies, who have high-end desktops, have gotten the same issues. Overwolf the company isn't bad. But Overwolf the app, based off the past few years that I've used it, seems to be severely unoptimised and my experience with it has only worsened with time. Also, I don't know how, but it's amazing how they've avoided punishment for monetising mods on CurseForge. Mojang, and by extension, Microsoft, owns those mods (According to the last few years of Minecraft's EULA). So it's amazing that Overwolf hasn't been hit with backlash for essentially aiding, or committing, piracy.

[@fl8803]

Conclusion: Overwolf is bad.

[@Cygnus_MC]

Eh, if its actually striving for its goal it could be a net positive

[@Nord_Act]

"We're not making Overwolf open source because we're afraid someone can use it for making cheats" The most pathetic excuse ever. Especially on a background of CF making their API and mod distribution policy almost unusable for other 3rd party launchers (as Prism, Multimc and other than CF launcher) and websites (one time Modrinth provided search results for CF mods and nowdays mods are forced to check multiple times if you have rights to distribute mods in modpack if those mods aren't on Modrinth just because else they can be sued by CF)

[@peulleieoyukino6369]

c'est caillou

[@Cygnus_MC]

Oui

[@Mabra51]

Dwayne "Le Caillou" Johnson

[@whocares_yes]

Huge respect to another Pi-Hole homie ❤❤ not being detected by adblock detectors gang Edit: Huge respect for another privacy-paranoid nerd LMAO, feels good to not be the only one

[@Cygnus_MC]

Pihole nation rise up

[@foxfan_e]

8TH

[@Cygnus_MC]

9th!!

[@jobussin]

yes it is bad

[@williamiveson8043]

overwolf is garbage

[@fluf201playz]

pin me because no valid reason

[@mattimuss]

It ain’t bad. It’s actual ASS

[@CuBoyd]

fijrst

[@Cygnus_MC]

Nice

[@CuBoyd]

first*

[@0nnnnnnnnn]

cuboyd from constantiam!!1

[@Cygnus_MC]

First

[@IKeepLosingMySocks]

pebble

[@Cygnus_MC]

Pebble

[@kleefirestar]

Laggy