During The Sims 2 lifespan, a battle broke out regarding the fact that paysites were breaking the Sims 2 EULA regarding charging for custom content. Well, in a move that I guess you could say “Better late than never“, The Sims team finally addressed the issue of custom content on paysites. Straight from MaxiodDrea’s mouth:
The Sims celebrates creativity, humor, and community. We strive to provide players with tools that enable them to customize and personalize their game experience. We are proud that so many of The Sims and The Sims 2 players create their own art for the games and share it with others. Sharing art online is a hobby that involves an investment of time, energy and money. Whether players choose to share their original artistic creations with the community is up to them: some custom content creators design work for a fee; some host their works on sites that organize, store and serve an enormous amount of content for subscribers; some artists request donations; and some artists allow all players to download their creations for free. These artists set their own terms for how they want to share their talents with the community at large. Those terms should be respected by other players.
So…what exactly does this mean to anti-paysites such as Pescado’s Paysites Must be Destroyed? Personally, I have no beef with the subject – it’s not a battle I want to step into. But now that Maxis has issued their views on paysites, does this change your thoughts? I wonder what route TS3 will go in terms of distributing content…
I’m very disappointed about this clarification but at the same time relieved that there is finally a resolution to this paysites war that seemed so endless. However, this won’t stop anti-paysites from doing their thing. It’ll just have to be in secret as it used to be. I can imagine paysites celebrating and I can’t say that I blame them since it’s enough to gloat. But I won’t ever pay for CC even if it is a donation, so while I’m bummed about this Maxoid post, I will now know to stay away from paysites because I refuse to give them my money and I will just not bother getting paysite CC for free like you can now with a couple of sites. There will always be great CC for free, so at least that’s good. I will train myself to only be satisfied with free CC (sometimes it’s a bit difficult). After all, is it a proven fact that many paysite CC have been horrible after being misled by the wonderfully taken photos, and you’d never know until you pay. At least with free CC I can just delete them if they are horrible and not have any regrets because I never wasted any money. Who knows, anti-paysites could possibly start encouraging lots of people to never visit paysites or download from them just so that the paysites can go out of business. I wouldn’t be surprised.
It’s nice that a representative of EA has finally come out publicly with this statement, but this isn’t a resolution to the ‘debate’. Look at what she’s said:
“These artists set their own terms…Those terms should be respected by other players.”
MaxoidDrea has essentially said ‘respect the terms of use of other players’… in other terms, play nice. I think it impliedly condemns PMBD’s booty, but the statement has no legal force…like a cease and desist letter from EA would!
Only if TS3’s license agreement clarifies that commercial sites can distribute game content will the issue be resolved but only for The Sims 3 content. TS2 CC file sharing will continue freely.
Well, I see your point, but to me it’s a resolution in the terms of people asking Maxis to do something about it…Maxis basically stated that the artists may do as they wish, and that they’re not going to get involved in the scenario.