On October 1st, 2021, our Community Hackathon took place. It was an exciting collaboration with the Riot Games third-party developers community Discord’s server, in which participants had exactly one month to build an in-game app on Overwolf for their favorite Riot game. We received a lot of great, fully-functioning apps for different games, so choosing the winners was an incredibly tough job.

It was a close battle, but the judges have eventually made their decision: The Project Halo team won 1st place, with their extraordinary app for TFT.

We’d like to share their story with you:

Hi guys. Can you tell us a bit about yourselves?

geo: Hi, I’m geozukunft. In real life, I’m known as Viktor but most people just call me “geo”. I’m 20 years old, and I come from beautiful Upper Austria.
Vivi: Hi! I’m Thomas and I go by the name of Vivi online. I’m 21, from France.
Robin: I’m Robin, 26, from Germany. I go by Nurse or Doctress online, mostly because I spent way too much time playing Soraka.

What are your hobbies and interests?

geo: All of us are into coding and gaming, whether on PC, AR or mobile. Other than that, Robin and Vivi love reading. Robin also likes doing all kinds of side projects, and Vivi enjoys climbing.

How long have you been gaming and what’s your favorite game?

Vivi: We’ve all been gaming for many years now. My personal favorite has to be one of Portal games, geo’s is the AR game Ingress, and Robin’s favorite game is probably AntiChamber.

What got you into programming?

geo: It started out of boredom when I was 9 years old in school, and I guess it just stuck with me since then.
Vivi: Around 2013, I wanted to create a Minecraft plugin for my server, so I had to learn Java. It did not go well in the beginning, but I really learned to appreciate programming.

What initially got you interested in creating content for Project Halo?

Robin: I suggested the idea more as a joke, but it started shaping into something serious pretty quickly. I was looking for a time-limited project, and a hackathon sounded like lots of fun. At a certain point, geo just tagged along. Then Vivi saw us looking for people to brainstorm with, and hopped on as well. He didn’t know us very well at the time, but as active members of the community — he just felt comfortable approaching us.

How did you come up with the idea for the app?

Robin: I like Sankey diagrams and recently learned about how matching in TFT was now allowed to be displayed. So the idea of showing match history along the lines of what Hearthstone Battlegrounds does was quite interesting. Additional data points just got dragged in as a “why not”. The initial mockup wasn’t even that far away from the final product.

For those unfamiliar with the app, can you tell us what the app does and what’s special about it?

Robin: Prototype Halo (name still WIP) is a TFT overlay. It displays recent rounds of combat in a fancy-looking Diagram that shows who matched against who, and who won the fight.
The app also shows the current health of each player, as well as the units currently included on their board. Additional features such as how much damage was done, active traits, and exact positionings of each unit are also planned — but we decided to cut them out for now, to keep it within the limited timeframe.

How long did it take you to develop it?

geo: I wrote the backend, supplying the app with additional player data. It took me around 3–4 days.
Robin: The frontend was developed across 2 weekends, a few evenings, and a week during which I had luckily taken time off. The hackathon duration being a full month really helped, as there were a lot of dependencies between each other and rather different schedules.
Vivi: I was looking for different ways to get other players’ units, but couldn’t find any API available for such a task in Overwolf/TFT. So I actually had to learn how to read the memory of the game in order to get this information. Most of the first 3 weeks were about learning and implementing the memory reading, and during the last part of the month, I implemented it in the Overwolf platform.

What challenges did you face during development? What were your struggles?

geo: Overcomplicating things in the beginning, and overengineering things that could have been done way easier.
Robin: First time working with an encapsulating system like Overwolf is always weird. Streamlabs and Twitch were similar in that regard. The entire visual part was done using a canvas framework called Konva which I had only used in entirely different contexts before, never in conjunction with Angular.

What did you think about the hackathon itself? How would you describe your experience?

geo: It’s the first time I participated in a hackathon that was more than a few hours long, and that didn’t have specific tasks I needed to complete. So it was fun and exciting to try something new.
Vivi: I never used Overwolf much before, but the hackathon made me discover the whole SDK available for developers. Combined with the memory reading, I learned a whole lot. It was a fun and enjoyable experience, I just wished we had communicated more with the other participants. One of the best moments was seeing what everyone had made in the end, some ideas were really inspiring.

What did you take away from the hackathon? What did you learn?

geo: Don’t overcomplicate things.
Robin: Beware of the scope creep.
Vivi: Dare to learn completely new things.

How did you feel when you heard you won first place?

geo: I haven’t felt so happy in a very long time.
Vivi: Really happy! I remember trying to participate in the 2016 Riot API Hackathon 5 years ago, and now I won this one. Time flies.

What are your plans for the future?

geo: As for Project Halo, people can look forward to seeing it soon in the Overwolf store. We are also planning on adding additional features in the near future. As for me, I’ve been working on a personal project that’s related to LoL. It will launch early next year.
Vivi: We have a lot of ideas of features that could make Halo better and more useful, so I plan to work on them. I really appreciated doing memory reading on TFT, so I might also do more projects in this area.

Developer Spotlight — Meet the Hackathon Winners was originally published in Overwolf Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After recently being asked what the various processes in Overwolf do, we wanted to shed some light on each and every one of them:

Overwolf.exe:

The main Overwolf process.

OverwolfHelper.exe and OverwolfHelper64.exe:

These processes help Overwolf identify the games you play, so that our overlay could be displayed in them.

ow-obs.exe:

This is the recording engine. The ow-obs.exe process runs whenever any recording app is used.

OverwolfBrowser.exe (general)

Overwolf uses Chromium to render and control its app windows. Each of these processes has a different PID, and each Overwolf app that’s running has its own OverwolfBrowser.exe, with the exception of three unique ones:

1. OverwolfBrowser.exe — type=gpu-process

This type of OverwolfBrowser helps us display windows efficiently using the power of the GPU.

2. OverwolfBrowser.exe — type=renderer

This is a common process type to have when using Chromium. Essentially, it allows Overwolf to turn HTML, CSS, and Javascript into the apps you know and love.

3. OverwolfBrowser.exe — type=crash_handler

If and when a Chromium Browser crashes, this allows us to handle it — for example, by relaunching the crashed process.

We use these processes to ensure our platform can empower creators to build the best in-game content possible, and allow players to fully enjoy it.

Regardless, using several processes the standard among Chromium-based apps, such as Battle.net, Discord and Spotify.

And in any case, we’re always looking for new ways to optimize our processes and make Overwolf better.

A Deep Dive into Overwolf’s Process Infrastructure was originally published in Overwolf Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Call of Duty players, we are aware of a number of users who have been banned after playing Cold War and Warzone on Windows 11 while using Overwolf.

While we are not responsible for the bans, Support Main is one of our core values and we immediately began to look into the issue to protect gameplay and our community. For background, Cold War has been supported on Overwolf for months without any bans or issues.

On our end:

1. We have released an update to our games list to change the way the Overwolf overlay works and will no longer trigger a ban from Activision while using Windows 11. It’s important to note that in the 24 hours following this change, we have not had any new ban reports.
2. We’re chatting with Activision, and we’ll do whatever we can to help those whose accounts have been banned. We can’t promise it will work, but we’ll give it our best shot.

We will update you all the moment we have more information to share.

Call of Duty: Windows 11 Update was originally published in Overwolf Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Each developer on Overwolf has a unique story to tell, their drive and effort create new ways to experience and interact with our favorite games. Without them, we wouldn’t exist. That’s why we would like to share these stories with you — starting with Junior, the creator behind League Tracker.

What is your name, age and where are you from?

My name is Amer Yono Jr. I’m 21 years old, from San Diego, California.

What are your hobbies and interests?

In my spare time, I enjoy coding and playing League of Legends. I am currently Platinum in three roles; jungle, ADC, and support. I’ve been trying to push ranks and currently working to reach Diamond by the end of the season in at least one of my roles.

How long have you been gaming, what’s your favorite game?

I have been gaming ever since I was in elementary school. I really enjoyed playing COD Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops, and Black Ops 2. As I got older, a friend of mine got me into League of Legends and I’ve been hooked on it ever since. I still love playing other games, but my go-to game is definitely League.

What got you into programming?

I was 16 years old and a friend of mine asked me to help develop an app for his local church. The app was called Taksa, which translates to Liturgy. At the time, I didn’t know how to program, but for some reason I was really passionate about making a program work. So I downloaded Xcode and had a lot of trial and error, until the app was ready and turned into a real source for the church. I fell in love with programming ever since, and have a serious ambition for it.

What initially got you interested in creating content for League of Legends?

When I play League of Legends, I would say that I’m very competitive. Because of this, I tried finding ways to gain advantages over the enemy. More specifically around how often each champion uses their summoner spells and abilities. As I played, I wished for there to be an overlay that tracks summoner spells. I noticed there was something lacking in the overlays available, so I decided to create it to help all players push in ranks.

How did you come up with the idea for LeagueTracker?

I saw that big streamers were using the in-game chat to copy and paste enemy summoner spell timers, which was pretty cool because everyone on the team knew an estimate of when a spell would be up. I understood that people wanted to have the extra edge on enemies, but I felt like using the in-game chat was not the best in terms of execution. We needed an easier, less annoying way to communicate very crucial timers. So I decided to build an app that allows teams to have synced enemy summoner spell timers.

For those unfamiliar with LeagueTracker, can you tell us what the app does and what’s unique about it?

LeagueTracker is an overlay that helps track all sorts of aspects of gameplay. The main functionality is to track all summoner spells with a click of a button. It is not limited to this, you are also able to track all champion abilities, as well as Zhonya’s Hourglass timers. LeagueTracker syncs these spells with all of your teammates and provides a notification alert when the timer is nearing the end of its cooldown.

Since when have you been developing it?

I‘ve been working on the development of LeagueTracker since August 2020.

What were your struggles with development?

At first, even just getting started was the hardest part for me. It felt like there were so many things to learn. One step at a time, I started familiarizing myself with the structure of how exactly an Overwolf app works. From all the different types of window settings Overwolf provides, and even just learning JavaScript, which is the core language to all the functionalities I would need to create my app. I didn’t know any JavaScript before starting LeagueTracker, which is why it was so difficult for me.

Why did you decide to develop with the Overwolf framework?

Overwolf is a platform that provides developers with easy-to-manage windows and game event APIs. To make an app, you need to know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I already knew HTML and CSS, so I figured that learning JavaScript could not be that hard. So I sent an app submission on the Overwolf website explaining my passion and ambition about the idea of LeagueTracker, and they responded positively — giving me the motivation and approval to work on this idea.

What are your thoughts on the Overwolf developer community?

The Overwolf developer community is always there for me. No matter the question, I know that if I ask for help, they will gladly guide me towards the solution.

How did you join the internship?

I’m currently a college student at California State University San Marcos pursuing my Bachelor’s of Science in Software Engineering. I knew that at some point I would need to get an internship to help get a job later down the road as a Software Engineer. So I asked my developer manager Jason if Overwolf does internships. They didn’t at the time, but Jason talked to some people at Overwolf and made the idea happen. He really supported me through the development of LeagueTracker and there’s no way I could thank him enough.

What happened during that time?

During the internship, I primarily worked with three people at Overwolf: Jason (my app manager), Jasmin (product designer), and Arthur (product manager). I learned so much about the thought process of designing and implementing an app. We all worked on the aesthetics of the app and challenged ourselves to make it provide even more value. They had some great ideas that really took the app to a whole new level.

How did Overwolf help you?

Ever since I started creating my app, Overwolf has helped me excel as a developer. I’ve never learned so much information in such a small amount of time. I now know how to develop server-sided functions in Node.js, store data in a NoSQL database, and develop websites in React. Overwolf provided a safe space for my creative self to thrive as a programmer.

What did you take away from it?

Take your chances. If you have an idea that can offer something new, bring it to the table. It’s great to dream, but it means nothing if you can’t get started. Don’t let the how stop you from reaching your goals. Take everything one step at a time and keep grinding until you succeed.

What does the future hold for LeagueTracker and where do you see yourself going as a developer?

LeagueTracker is just the beginning. I hope to continue to grow as a developer and bring my skills to a level I could never imagine.

{Developer Spotlight} — Junior [LeagueTracker] was originally published in Overwolf Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

TL;DR — We’re happy to let you know that we’re gradually resuming support for Call of Duty: Warzone, starting June 9th.

More details:

First, we’d like you all to know that the senior folks at Activision and Raven have been VERY community focused, welcoming, and fast with their response. To resume support, we had to make some technical adjustments. The dev team at Overwolf has made tremendous efforts, and once a technical solution was found, we got the green light to resume support for the game.

As a reminder, this does not mean that 3rd party developers can develop anything they want. We’ve discussed strict guidelines for app creation, and we’d like to emphasize that any app that may involve boosting, queue dodging, matchmaking interference or GDPR breaches will not be allowed.

The Overwolf apps which will be approved first are: Fuze.tv, Ouch, Ekko, Gazoom, Outplayed, Insights Capture, Voicemod, Buff, G-Loot, and Warzone Tracker. More apps will be added in the future.

We plan to roll this out over the next couple of weeks, so if you’re experiencing issues, please contact us on Discord (https://discord.gg/overwolf).

Again, a very warm thank you to the folks at Activation and Raven, and to our community of creators for the collaboration and patience.

Update (April 24th)

We’re in the midst of a good conversation with Activision at the highest levels. In the short term, we’re removing support for Overwolf apps on Warzone. In the longer term — based on the feedback we received from Activision, I’m optimistic we’ll find a safe and sustainable way to resume support for the game. If you like, please share your feedback with us here: https://overwolfdevs.typeform.com/to/piDDJhSe

Dear Call of Duty: Warzone players, we want to inform you all that Call of Duty: Warzone is currently blocking Overwolf.

There is no need to uninstall Overwolf or any app. Until this issue is resolved, please close Overwolf and play Warzone regularly.

Needless to say, it caught us by surprise. Competitive integrity is one of our core values, and we work tirelessly to enforce this value, both in-house and with the cooperation of game developers. We also have clear guidelines that 3rd party developers must follow when releasing apps on the official Overwolf appstore.

As a tech platform for creating gaming apps, it’s our responsibility to ensure that all apps are 100% safe to use and are in alignment with the game developers’ guidelines. To make sure this is indeed the case, we maintain active conversations with game developers. Creators, game developers and players must know without a doubt that Overwolf stands behind each and every app created on it, in total compliance with game developers.

At the moment, we’re working closely with Activision to get to the bottom of this issue and have it resolved as soon as possible. We will update you all the moment we have more information to share.

Call of Duty: Warzone Update was originally published in Overwolf Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So how does one person go from taking some notes for his own R6 Siege matches, to creating a successful gaming app used daily by thousands of players? Let’s find out.

Meet Onno, the founder of a successful online shop and long-time gamer from the Netherlands. He’s the person behind the popular R6 Analyst app.

Online shop owner by day, gamer and app creator by night

We all have our favorite computer games, right? Well, Onno’s favorite one is Rainbow Six Siege. What he likes the most about it is that players can win by planning ahead, using tactics and outsmarting their opponents. In many other games out there, he just feels it’s more about being able to aim faster and relying on mechanical skills. When he’s not playing computer games, or board games (which he really likes too), Onno is busy running his online business. He started it several years ago and put a lot of time and effort into it. He really does love it. But since R6 Analyst was released, he started finding himself really juggling between operating his business and working on the app. Thankfully, the hard work he put into his business at its earlier stages allows him to now spend more and more time working on his app.

R6 Analyst is his pride and joy, and there is always more work to be done on it. So between operating his online shop, working on the app, and playing Rainbow Six Siege — let’s say Onno’s plate is never empty.

Better, faster, smarter — winning the game with data

OK, so what exactly is it? What does the app do?

R6 Analyst is an overlay app for Rainbow Six Siege. It shows all sorts of relevant in-game information, and players can use it to track their performance, analyze their moves and well, just overall play the game in a more effective and knowledgeable way.

Most of its features are actually solutions to issues that Onno encountered as a player. Let’s take the Smart Ban feature, for example. When playing, Onno felt that he was missing data-based recommendations on which operators he should ban during a match. It needed to be something that would tell him which operator should be banned in order to disrupt his opponent’s playstyle, without disrupting his own. And none of the other apps he found for R6 Siege solved this issue exactly like he wanted to. Sure, there were similar features in the other apps — but they all focused more on the enemy team than on Onno’s team. So it was really important for him to design this feature differently, and to put just as much focus on the player’s team. And that’s exactly what he did with it: The R6 Analyst Smart Ban feature automatically analyzes the play history of both the player’s team and the enemy team, and makes smart ban suggestions.

Actually, putting a lot of emphasis on analyzing the player’s team is one of the things that makes R6 Analyst stand out. This focus is apparent across all of the app’s features. Let’s look at Map Statistics as another example: Onno wanted something that would show him which strategies work best and in exactly which maps. So instead of winging it and relying on hunches, he went ahead and created a feature that does just that. It also shows players which strategies don’t work very well in certain maps, so they could easily know what they need to work on. Practice makes perfect, doesn’t it?

An app is born

Nowadays, R6 Analyst is a full-blown app used by more than 75,000 players. But it started as something quite different. At first, it was simply a way for Onno to automate the process of collecting data for his own matches.

“At the beginning I was making decisions based on feeling and intuition. But there’s a lot of information out there, and data is something I was very comfortable working with, thanks to my background in data science. So I thought that if I could gather the data, the decisions I make would be more informed and accurate,” he explains.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the idea of applying data analysis into R6 Siege came to life. So the concept was great; it allowed Onno to analyze his gameplay, keep track of his tactics and strategies, and make decisions based on data. It all worked nicely. But the method of gathering the data itself and keeping track of it was, well — just boring. After around 5–6 months of manually writing down stats and numbers, he just grew tired of it. Onno wanted to keep using data in his gameplay, but he had to find some easier way to do it.

“I really needed a way to automate the process of gathering the data,” Onno continues. “At first, I was using Excel. But it was so boring to type stuff into it after every match, you know? So instead, I wanted to find an automated way to do it. And that’s where Overwolf really helped.”

The need for automation is what led to the creation of R6 Analyst. The app was originally intended for Onno’s use only, but that changed soon after his relationship with Overwolf started.

“Once the app was running, I said to myself, ‘this could be really useful for other people, not just me’.”

Quickly after beginning his journey with Overwolf, he realized something else, just as important: not only could his app be relevant to the entire Rainbow Six Siege community, but it could also turn into a source of income for him. “There was a very clear indication that this could potentially earn me money, if I put some ads in the app and stuff like that — which I really hadn’t even considered,” he says as recalls his very first communications with Overwolf. “This can be a job, basically.”

The tale of Overwolf and R6 Analyst

Onno has known Overwolf long before he was even thinking of creating an app. He first encountered the platform as a player, using other Rainbow Six Siege apps developed with it. So by the time he wanted to create his own app, he already knew that Overwolf was the way for him to go.

Now experiencing the platform from a developer’s perspective, Onno highlights 3 features in Overwolf that he personally finds the most useful:

First of all, Easy coding. He found that Overwolf’s user-friendly tech framework allows developers to build apps using simple HTML and JavaScript. “You can basically write it the same way you write a website, it’s the same programming languages. So it’s very accessible,” he explains. “I built the website for my own company, so I was already familiar with how to build stuff like that. Rather than having to build a whole program, all I have to do is build a ‘website’, and then it just becomes visible in the game — which is awesome.”

Next, he mentions the Game Events API. That’s the very tool that tracks important events happening in-game: Match start, match end, kills, deaths, victories… Pretty much any event that’s interesting to monitor. “The whole point of me building the app was to automate the tracking of things that happen in the game. And that’s something that the platform does for me, it’s the special secret sauce that Overwolf has,” Onno adds, chuckling.

Last but not least, he highlights Overwolf’s Monetization and ad support. As part of the company’s “From passion to profession” mindset, the team brings many ideas to the table — a lot of them around ads and app monetization. Using the platform, developers can monetize their apps through a unique approach, fit especially for gamers. Most Overwolf team members are gamers themselves, so everyone is well aware of how important it is to have a smooth, uninterrupted gameplay experience. Keeping all ads non-intrusive and never interrupting the game are among the top priorities here. “Overwolf handles all the ads, which in the end — is how I make money from it. And that’s what allows me to spend so much time on the app,” Onno summarizes.

Future plans and an appetite for creation

R6 Analyst has just recently reached the 75K-player mark, and Onno expects it to keep growing, hitting the 100K-player mark within the next six months or so. “I have a lot of ideas that I want to implement in R6 Analyst. I think I can spend at least a couple of more years just making more features for the app,” he says, laughing.

When asked about the possibility of creating apps for other games, Onno replied that all options are on the table. His passion for gaming and creating in-game content isn’t limited to one game only, and he doesn’t rule out the possibility of building something for other games later on down the line.

“Every time Overwolf adds game-event tracking to a new game, I say to myself ‘Hmm, that could be interesting… Do I want to build an app for that game? Do I have a good idea?’” He never stops challenging himself and asking these questions. It’s all part of his hunger for creating content, and part of the driving force behind R6 Analyst.

The thing is, he currently spends so much time playing Rainbow Six Siege, so there’s barely enough time left to play other games and seriously explore building apps for them. “If I were to play a different game that’s supported by Overwolf, I would definitely build an app for it. Assuming I had a good idea, of course.”

Onno believes that not only is it exciting to build a new app and try to grow it, but it’s also a fun and interesting way to play the game. “I like thinking about the game in a critical way, asking myself how I can get better at it, how I can get certain information in a clearer way, and whether I can provide this information on-screen using Overwolf,” he says.

For Onno, creating in-game content is more than just something he enjoys doing. It’s a constant, empowering state of mind, and it adds a whole new layer of excitement to everything. He knows that he has the power to not only play the game as it’s originally been designed — but actually create new experiences and functionalities that can entirely change the way it’s played.

Power to the players

At the end of the day, once you start walking down the path of creating in-game content, there’s no turning back. Almost any game that you love playing can become your own creative sandbox, as long as you have a good idea of how to make it even better than it already is. In many cases, that tiny improvement that you have in mind could make the gaming experience more enjoyable for the entire community. And even if at first you weren’t even thinking of making money from it, you might be in for a pleasant surprise, as you gradually start turning your passion into a profession. That’s pretty much how it went down in Onno’s case. So yeah, he has no plans to quit his day job, as he really loves it. But he can definitely see a future where he spends less and less time on it, and more and more time on his app.

The future’s looking mighty bright, and there is no doubt we’ll be hearing more about R6 Analyst and Onno himself.

From a small Excel sheet to a successful app: The Story of R6 Analyst was originally published in Overwolf Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By now, it’s pretty clear that the global pandemic has changed our lives in almost every aspect. One of the things that the world has learned is how to operate successfully in a more remote and flexible way.

We’ve quickly applied this learning into Overwolf and found that the hybrid model is definitely the way for us to go. What exactly does this hybrid model mean? Well, in a work-related context, it basically means combining remote work and office work. By adopting this model, we get to enjoy the best of both worlds: On one hand, we benefit from the social interactions and collaborations that naturally occur at the office, and on the other — we benefit from the productivity and flexibility of working from home.

The hybrid model seemed like a great fit for us, but adopting it wasn’t entirely hassle-free. The main challenge we faced was learning how to work together without actually being together in the office we all know and love.

As a startup company, we’ve definitely had our share of challenges in the past. And one thing that experience has taught us is to just welcome these challenges with a smile and face them.

With that in mind, we decided to take this challenge as an opportunity to reflect and to reassess our practices. We set out to find new ways to balance between staying productive and conveniently working from home. Even before COVID, we were always looking for new, creative ways to work together and communicate more effectively. And now with the pandemic at large, we just had to take advantage of the situation and step up our game.

Transitioning to the hybrid model

Yes, adopting the hybrid model wasn’t easy, especially at first. Everybody was so used to either working at the office, or having everyone work from home. But when we started mixing the two models together, things started to get a bit complicated. For example, if a team of 5 employees has a morning meeting every day, and only 4 of them are at the office — the meeting still needs to be held online.

Luckily, the incredible people we have on board have made the transition as smooth as possible. Not only were we able to adapt to the new hybrid model, in some areas we’ve even started seeing better performance compared to how we used to work before the pandemic. Employees shared that they feel comfortable spending a lot of time working from home, and that they really appreciate the autonomy and flexibility that come with it. A few months in, our team members are happy to take on more responsibilities, and enjoy an even greater sense of ownership and trust.

But we didn’t stop there…

A few months ago, one of our employees asked to work from London for a certain period of time. By then, we were feeling very comfortable with the concept of working from home, and were well aware of all the advantages it provides. So naturally, our answer to the employee was yes. The logic behind it was simple: If the work can be done from an apartment in Israel, it can just as easily be done from anywhere else in the world. It’s all pretty much the same to us.

In any case, this was the first time we’ve received such a request from an employee, and it really got us thinking about trying something completely new. We realized, in fact, that we could allow all employees to enjoy the experience of living abroad for a certain period of time while continuing to work in a regular manner.

That sparked our imagination, and led to the birth of WFA: Work From (almost) Anywhere.

Laptop and headphones on the beach

As part of the WFA program, employees will be able to take a month or two in the summer to travel abroad and experience life in other areas of the world, while continuing to work.

The summer is considered a good time to travel to many destinations, so we thought it would be great to try it out around then.

Like many working people, we don’t always get the chance to travel abroad for a long period of time. We have no doubt that the very experience could be a fun, unique, and exciting change of pace. And that by itself is already a fantastic thing to achieve. But also professionally speaking — we strongly believe that looking at things from a different perspective, and working from an entirely new location somewhere around the world, could allow us to learn new things about ourselves and about our work. By changing our environment in such a way, we can also change how we think, how we create, and how we approach our tasks. And that could definitely be a special path to explore, both as a company and as individuals.

So what will working in Overwolf look like in the future?

The Work From Anywhere program can be an amazing opportunity to experience living and working from abroad. And now, by applying what we’ve learned through working from home, we can make it happen.

This year will be the first time we carry out this program, and we’re very excited about it. But what excites us even more is everything we’ve learned this past year. It’s the confidence that no matter what new situation we find ourselves in, we will know how to adapt and make the best out of it. And looking forward, we’ll most likely stay with the hybrid model, even after the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

Other than that, we can’t say for sure what working in Overwolf will look like in the future. But there is one thing we are certain about: As long as we stay critical, and remain brave enough to challenge our old ways of working when these stop serving us well, we could adapt to anything thrown at us. Even if it’s a beach ball in the middle of a Zoom meeting.

Wanna join the ride? Awesome! Check out our open positions in sunny Tel Aviv and let’s get started:

https://www.overwolf.com/jobs/

This is what the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us about work was originally published in Overwolf Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

More than 30,000 creators build gaming apps and mods with the Overwolf platform, and millions of players enjoy them every day. The demand for new and exciting gaming apps is huge, and creating them is now easier than ever before.

So you might already have an established gaming website or product, and you might be asking yourself, “Would it make sense to bring it in-game?” Or, perhaps you have some cool idea for a gaming app, but you’re not sure if it can be built.

In this post we’ll introduce the five most popular types of apps that people build using the Overwolf framework, and we’ll briefly go over some of the tools and resources they use.

And who knows? It might just be that little spark you need to start building the gaming app of your dreams.

1. Analytics and Stats apps

Many popular apps provide in-game statistics, track game progress, and analyze performance.

Porofessor, for example, is a well-known app for League of Legends. It provides players with a variety of detailed statistics: from build recommendations before the game starts; through real-time information about their team members and opponents; and all the way to post-match analysis.

Another popular app you may have heard of is R6Tracker, which provides real-time statistics for Rainbow Six Siege. Players who use it can view in-game information such as level, ranking, number of kills/deaths, win rates, and victory chances.

Both apps started as websites widely used by players, so it made a lot of sense to bring their value in-game, using the Overwolf framework.

Main tools used: Overlay windows

One of the primary Overwolf tools used by these apps, the App Window API, provides the ability to display overlay windows inside a game. Analytics and Stats apps use it to display statistics and relevant in-game information to players, based on their current match and context.

2. Esports and Tournaments apps

Many esports and Tournament organizers turn to Overwolf to build apps for governing the competitions they’re running — apps that monitor who won and who lost, and when a game starts or ends. These apps can then report the outcome to the organizers, without relying on players and teams to report on their own results.

G-Loot, for example, is an esports platform for PC. It lets players complete challenges and compete for prizes, in more than 25 popular games. Players can either compete against other players or play solo, challenging themselves to get better and better.

Main tools used: in-game events tracker

One of the main Overwolf tools used for Esports and Tournaments apps is the Game Events API. This tool tracks key events that occur during the game: Match start, match end, kills, deaths, victories, defeats, damage dealt, in-game currency spent, and many more — depending on the game itself. This means that you can easily build an app for holding tournaments across multiple games. With match events being tracked and reported, all that’s left is for players to compete.

3. In-Game Guide apps

In-game Guide apps are another type of app that utilizes the Game Events API.

These apps can understand exactly what players are facing or experiencing at specific points along the game, and can display the most relevant guide content to assist them. It’s basically like looking up a guide for a game challenge online, just without the looking up part — and without leaving the game.

A great example of this would be Icy Heroes, built by Icy Veins — a leading content website for Heroes of the Storm, Diablo games ,World of Warcraft, and Hearthstone. The website offers extensive guides and strategies for Heroes of the Storm, but to find the content they need - players must leave the game and look it up on the website.

The dev team behind Icy Veins recognized the opportunity and saw great value in having the content available to players in-game. So they decided to use the Overwolf framework and create an In-game Guide app to do just that. The Icy Heroes app supports Heroes of the Storm — and provides players with exactly the right guides and the most relevant information for their chosen heroes. The app also recommends which talent players should choose when they level up.

4. Companion / Utility apps

Apps in this category allow adding sound customization, map layers, and many other special in-game features.

One app that does exactly that is Apollo — an interactive audio app for League of Legends, Fortnite, and Rocket League.

It allows players to add custom announcements and music clips on various game events, giving their own personal touch to the game and enriching their overall gaming experience.

Among Map is another interesting example, its main feature being a high-quality map added as an in-game layer. This allows players to easily navigate through the map and add important notes and markers.

5. Replay & highlight apps

This category features apps that can automatically capture and record game highlights, or enable players to manually do so themselves.

One of the prominent apps in this category is called Outplayed, and that’s exactly what it does — capturing players’ top moments and biggest plays in dozens of games. It also lets players manually record on demand. Once all highlights are recorded, players can browse through the captured clips and easily share them on social media.

Main tools used: OBS game capture, in-app media player and social share

To make all this happen, three Overwolf tools are primarily utilized: the Media Replays API, the Media Player API, and the Social Share API.

First, the Media Replays API. This tool is basically what enables capturing short, OBS-based video replays of the game that’s currently running.

Then, the Media Player API comes into play. This tool allows adding a media player element to an app window and playing video files. In this case, it allows players to play the clip they’ve just captured.

Last for this category, the Social Share API. This is the API that allows players to share the video clips on Reddit, YouTube, Discord or other social media channels.

What would you build?

These 5 popular app types are just some of the amazing apps people are building on Overwolf. There really is a lot more to it.

If this post has inspired you in any way, if it sparked your inner creative fire, please drop us a line. We would love to hear from you and help you turn that idea of yours into reality.

And in any case, feel free to check out our complete API and documentation library. You can dig deeper there and hopefully find some hidden treasure you’re looking for.

There are endless possibilities of creating in-game apps with the Overwolf framework, and we’re really excited to hear your thoughts and see what you come up with.

Good luck!

The 5 most popular types of apps you can create with Overwolf was originally published in Overwolf Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.