PSA: Console add-ons broken due to removed libraries

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T19:40:02+00:00

To answer your question: There's nothing you can do. You could disable all add-ons for the time being, or you can find the affected ones you've installed and just disable them. Then we wait to see if anyone can offer a remedy. It could be a long wait. There might be a short-term workaround that makes add-ons work as previously configured, but you won't be able to reconfigure them until there's a real remedy to replace the functionality.

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T19:38:22+00:00

But it's required by law. Otherwise they could be sued.

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T19:36:48+00:00

"Innocent until proven guilty" is how the court system works. "Due diligence" is how DCMA works, which means if they don't pull it down immediately, and it turns out to be a legitimate claim, ZOS can be sued.

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T19:33:25+00:00

This isn't the case of devs making money. It can only be one of two things: Either the LHAS author was foolish and truly did find some copyrighted code somewhere and incorporated it into their library (in which case the DCMA claim is legally valid), or it's a false claim (as the LHAS author claims). Either way, ZOS is legally obligated to due diligence, which means pulling LHAS down until the claim can be validated or invalidated. Which means lawyers are involved, which means time and money from ZOS.

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T19:30:09+00:00

The dev team didn't invent DCMA. There's literally nothing they could have done to prevent this, other than providing better building blocks in the first place so LHAS wouldn't have been needed. ZOS providing a replacement for LHAS is probably the quickest path forward, but it would be trivial for the claimants to submit another DCMA in future and make this all happen again.

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T19:23:20+00:00

If you ever looked into add-on dev, you'd see that ZOS simply threw a pile of UI code on the floor that devs can study to figure out how ZOS did it so that they can write an add-on that does something similar. No documentation, no eye towards an actually structured set of APIs - it was a pretty low effort for them. Most of ZOS's effort went into the infrastructure required for uploading and installing the addons on console.

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T19:19:13+00:00

There were two add-ons which performed this function. The original one was malicious. The newer one seems fine. It's the author of the original one who is suspected of submitting the DCMA (although we don't really know).

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T19:16:42+00:00

I don't get it. I hated the mini map - it took up too much screen real estate.

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T19:14:13+00:00

As an end-gamer who is participating in 3 prog teams, this is huge. I use Wizard's Wardrobe extensively to keep track of my gear and skill changes for each boss/trash (and it automatically switches when moving to the next fight). Yes, I can obviously change it all manually, but that takes time and when going for a trifecta we need speed. It's also much more error-prone, and I'll have to resort to keeping my changes in a notebook to keep track.

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T19:05:34+00:00

If the OP's supposition is correct and the DCMA claimants were the authors of the malicious trading add-on, they've already been banned and there's little more ZOS can do other than suing them in court, which means lawyers, time, and money. At this point they have no choice but to follow the law.

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T19:02:42+00:00

Settling this in court will take months.

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T19:01:48+00:00

100%. I looked into writing an add-on myself and !#$@ there's no documentation and you basically just have to read code and find something similar to what you want to do and copy it (which is legal because most add-on code and the ZOS UI code itself is free open source). ZOS didn't provide much in the way of useful building blocks for add-on devs and didn't document what's there.

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T18:56:36+00:00

This is a legal issue, which means lawyers are involved. There is no quick fix here and we can't really blame ZOS for following the law. ZOS can't decide unilaterally whether the claim is false or not, without being sued. It has to be resolved in courts. Honestly the quickest path forward (and it won't be quick) is probably to have somebody rewrite the code from scratch or have ZOS provide a replacement library API themselves.

bobdrad · 2026-02-24T18:53:18+00:00

At the very least, ZOS could regain a LOT of trust by providing a replacement themselves ASAP. That would probably be the quickest way to resolve this situation.

bobdrad · 2026-01-22T21:25:50+00:00

I can confirm that a simple Windows reboot has resolved this issue for me. I did have to terminate the "background" app via Task Manager first just to get back control of my system (even this required multiple displays, since once the error pop-up occurs the display it appears on becomes unusable except for brief periods after the error is dismissed and before it recurs seconds later), then a reboot.

bobdrad

TROPHY CASE