CurseForge does not have an official API for 3rd parties who want to download files from its servers. The way some addon managers operate today, is by reverse engineering the calls between the Twitch Client and the CurseForge backend. A good analogy is someone reverse engineering the Spotify app to stream songs from Spotify’s servers without receiving Spotify’s or the artists’ consent to do so.
Unauthorized use of the CurseForge API introduces challenges that need solving. Most notably:
- Authors did not give their consent to have their creations distributed outside CurseForge
- Authors’ earnings will be impacted, as CurseForge has no way of monitoring engagement outside its own ecosystem, and changes are coming to the rewards program
- Downloads originated from 3rd party services rely on CurseForge servers and CDN, incurring substantial costs and offering nothing to cover them
