Skimming over the forum at Reclaim Your Game, I stumbled upon a post that cannot be ignored and should be announced to the Sims community. It’s based on the topic that’s been struggling with The Sims 2 community for a number of years – paysites.
While it is true that I have worked on a paysite in the past (8th Deadly Sim), it wasn’t until Paysites Must Be Destroyed was created and the truth behind the game’s EULA that made me come to my senses. Sad to say, EA/Maxis have been ignoring their EULA for a long, long time…But it seems that just recently it has gotten worse.
Recent activities over at the official Sims 2 forum shows that the Maxoids are putting the banhammer down on those who link to Paysites Must Be Destroyed. Their reason?
MaxisDrea’s post:
A lot of our Simmers have been posting links to PaySitesMustBeDestroyed which is not ok. This site often posts content that is either from our TS2 Store or from partner sites which are pay/subscription based. This is considered linking to pirated content.
Wait…what? That’s a huge stepout there, Drea! I’m not a frequent visitor to PSMBD, but I do check it from time to time. As I recall, they don’t post content from your store because it is official created by EA and technically is commercial content (even though it’s my opinion that it’s stupid to charge for such). Paysites must be Destroyed was setup to host content from fan-made paysites.
Speaking of which…since when did paysites become “Partner sites”? Isn’t this breaking your own rules? Isn’t that why fansites usually try to include the following at the bottom of their site in the copyright notes:
This site is not endorsed by or affliliated with Electronic Arts or its licensors. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Game content and materials copyright Electronic Arts Inc. and its licensors. All Rights Reserved.
From The Sims Resource
So how can any fansite that charges be “partners” with EA, hmmmm, especially when it is stated in the EULA!?
This mess over at the TS2 forums has gotten so bad it’s even causing SimMasters to quit due to inconsistency of the Maxoids decisions!
Hey Maxis…let me congratulate you on screwing your customers even further! Keep at it, pissing off your fans near the time The Sims 3 comes out is a great thing – it saves us $50 bucks to spend on something else!
Sources:
Great news post Judhudson! I totally agree…
I posted in the ‘shebang’ thread xD
Is EA trying to turn me away from the Sims franchise on purpose?
Partnering with the likes of TSR, disgraceful.
The truth is, without FREE custom content the Sims wouldn’t be as successful as it is now, if they won’t realize this in time then they deserve exactly what they get. Maybe a Sims clone will show up on the market and give us everything EA is with-holding.
Sorry for the double post, but http://tsrcoconut.wordpress.com is an interesting read…
Hey Jud, you should email Gamasutra (www.gamasutra.com) about this. They are an videogame industry website. I was going to send them an email, but I couldn’t write down any coherent ideas.
I’ll leave them a note, thanks for the suggestion. I doubt it’s news worthy to the huge sites, but I wish they’d pick this up. I’m not saying that to bring visitors to my site – I just want everyone out their who plays The Sims to know what is going at the official Sims 2 site before it’s covered up and hidden.