CurseForge

CurseForge is a website hosted and owned by Curse, Inc. It hosts customization, mods, modpacks, texture packs, worlds and add-ons for Minecraft, as well as third-party content for other games.

History
The earliest archived version of CurseForge was taken in late 2007. Then, it just linked to various World of Warcraft advertisements, since the URL was reserved by GoDaddy. In 2008 it was taken by Curse, Inc., as a repository of World of Warcraft addons. The repository was imported from curse.com. The website was also paired with a CurseClient, which helped install addons. The CurseClient would be the predecessor to CurseVoice, which was renamed to the Twitch Desktop App after Curse, Inc. was bought by Twitch.tv.

CurseForge was originally oriented to addon developers rather than users, while curse.com was oriented towards the general public. Besides from World Of Warcraft, CurseForge expanded to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, Age of Conan, and Runes of Magic, with the potential for other games. In mid-2011, CurseForge started hosting Minecraft content.

At first, CurseForge mainly hosted "server mods" instead of "client mods." The term server mods referred to Bukkit plugins, while the term client mods referred to all content that required the client to modified in order to function, including language packs (non-English translation weren't supported by the game until version 1.1), texture packs, and conventional mods. Although listed on CurseForge, mods were actually hosted on dev.bukkit.org, a sub-website. In mid-2012, texture packs were separated from client mods. In early 2013, worlds (custom saves, also called maps) were added to CurseForge.

In June 2013, CurseForge announced that they would orient to modders who used Minecraft Forge by separating the "client mods" into a subsection of CurseForge for all mods. Mods could be categorized as being based through Minecraft Forge, ModLoader, or through the modification of the Minecraft.jar, or a combination of the three. minecraft.curseforge.com became the subdomain for all third party content developed for modded Minecraft, excluding Bukkit plugins, which remained on dev.bukkit.org.

In January 2014, Feed The Beast announced a partnership with Curse, Inc. Some of Feed The Beast's websites would be moved onto Curse servers, and eventually their modpacks would be hosted on CurseForge and would be downloaded through CurseVoice, Curse Inc's new mod manager and communication software, instead of through the Feed The Beast launcher. Despite skepticism in the community over Curse Inc's commercialism, the plan went through, and as a result, CurseForge had a massive increase of popularity and usage. While modders previously self-hosted mods using sites like MediaFire, CurseForge became the primary repository for mods. Many modpacks also moved onto CurseForge. This likely because of the convenience of a centralized repository, the monetary incentives for popularity of a project (reaching a significant popularity for a project would give "Curse Points" that could be exchanged for PayPal, Amazon, or Steam giftcards), the feature that a modpack download would contribute a download to the count of each mod (meaning that modders could make money off of their mods being downloaded indirectly through modpacks), the allowance of CurseForge modpack makers to be include any mod on CurseForge in their modpacks, and the presence and endorsement of popular curators such as Feed The Beast and Jadedcat.

In August 2016, Curse, Inc. was bought by Twitch.tv. CurseVoice was transformed into the Twitch Desktop App, but there was not much change to CurseForge, except for a merging of accounts. In June 2019, the curse.com website was merged with CurseForge, with CurseForge working as a singular front for both developers and users.

On October 8th, 2019, Feed The Beast announced that their contract with Curse, Inc. had ended and that they would no longer use the service and would instead recreate their own launcher. They planned to remove their content from the site on the 31st of October, although the content is still available.

First projects

 * First Bukkit plugin (or "server mod," as it was originally called): Heroes by LordKainzo, created on August 3rd, 2011.
 * First mod: Invinci-Dogs by an unknown user, created on August 25th, 2011 for Minecraft Beta 1.7.3.
 * First texture pack: Pocok's texture pack by a user likely named Pocok, created on September 3rd, 2011.
 * First world: Texture Pack Viewer by Pluto_mcpvp, created on January 29th, 2013.
 * First modpack: Aesthetic Construction by jadedcat, created on October 23rd, 2014.
 * First customization: LUCKY BLOCK BROWN MOD by a user likely named Josh7506EI, created on February 21st, 2015.
 * First addon: Castle Siege by an unknown user, created on October 21, 2016.

CurseForge today
CurseForge hosts third party content for the several games, the largest being Minecraft. It also has content for World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Kerbal Space Program, WildStar, Terraria, World of Tanks, Rift, Runes of Magic, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Secret World, The Elder Scrolls Online, Stardew Valley, Secret World Legends, Chronicles Of Arcadia, Surviving Mars, Darkest Dungeon, Grand Theft Auto V, and Staxel.

For Minecraft, CurseForge hosts Bukkit plugins, modpacks, customizations (miscellaneous content, mainly mod configurations), addons, mods, texture packs, and worlds. Each type can be filtered by various categories, and can be sorted by date created, last uploaded, name, popularity, and most downloads. Creators earn "Curse Points" for the popularity of their projects, which can be redeemed for PayPal or Amazon (for Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, and Amazon.ca only) giftcards. The amount of Curse Points given is in proportion to a secret formula determining popularity to avoid creators releasing as many updates to a project as possible to rack up Curse Points.