Updated 3/15/2009
We all remember this post below on how EA used the artwork from a fan for their tenth anniversary newsletter and didn’t give the author (Alex from SimGoodies) any credit… Well after a month of waiting, EA finally responds to Alex and yes, they admit they used his artwork “accidentally” after assuming it was created by EA. For this whole mess, EA (in this case, represented by Ulf Thor of EA Sweden) will be removing the graphic from the newsletter and sending him a free Sims 3 Fatboy, retailing at $229! Congratulations Alex, I am glad I was able to help you 🙂
His email response is below:
Well, well, well…How should I begin this story. After doing some research, I’ve came to conclusion that one (or possibly multiple) of the artists from The Sims Team is a thief and well, pretty much lazy. I hate to call them out on this but all indications proved they have stolen the the artwork from Alex of SimGoodies to use in their January newsletter.
Lets start from the beginning. On January 16th SimGoodies created a wallpaper using the renders that the Sims Team released – no harm in that, because thats why the renders are put out there – to use for fansites and graphics. You can view his wallpaper below:
Now take a look at EA’s header for their January newsletter which was issued on February 4th:
*Update* – Cidade dos Sims directed me to his version of the newsletter that their local EA region sent out – this time with Marcela’s arm not lifted up – the exact same as Alex’s wallpaper.
The only difference you can spot is Marcela – the thief. Her arm is raised in the air for the newsletter picture. But wait, something isn’t right. Here is her render. Did they use a different one perhaps? Copy the above newsletter image into your paint program and zoom in. Look at her right arm and the area around her neck. Does it look like an edit to you? It sure does to me! Her joint where her arm connects to her body looks off!
Not only that, but I had to ask Alex for proof. I needed solid evidence to prove that he came up with the background. Sure, the dates are valid…but I needed to see the actual PSD file with the layers in tact. He gave me the PSD file and I had a look. Here is the breakdown, first with my PaintShop Pro screen showing off the PSD file and then separate images showing their layers (I resized each layer so it can’t be used for other purposes and to protect his work):
Now after speaking with Alex I found out more information. He used a template graphic for the confetti which can be viewed here. The fireworks – just brushes in Photoshop. So yeah, the ball is in Alex’s court. Why did EA decide to use his artwork for their newsletter? Isn’t that what they have graphics artists for? Not only that but they didn’t even ask him or give him the honor of it being used. Nope, it looks like they ripped it and added a few small changes.
But wait, there is more! It appears the artist had a second lazy streak. Instead of designing their own celebration background they used the following artprint!
Their background at the official Sims 3 site:
Was taken from this clipart:
Care to answer, EA? This is just pitiful, extremely lazy and a horrible way to treat your fans.
i dont think her arm looks doctored, even zoomed up. but it is suspicious…
maybe they fired all of their good graphics artists?
I can’t believe EA would do a thing like that lol. It’s a nice wallpaper, but surely they could have come up with something themselves or even ask the creator and give credits.
EA’s Sims Dept. have become very lazy, their programmers don’t seem to know what their doing, their graphic artists are ripping off other people work, and their finance department are ripping of the public!
They know full well that they can do what they like and people will just brush it aside and keep on buying their stuff.
If people would show a little restraint and stop buying their stuff until they get their act together it would benefit everyone!
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and in my opinion Jud has every right to post this. You may not agree but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Some people would say you should take it as a compliment when people take something you made and turn it into something else. I don’t agree myself. I’ve had this happen to me before – not just with Sims stuff, btw! I’m an artist and my artworks get taken often without my permission. Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean it’s “for free”. And it doesn’t give a fulfilling feeling when you see this happen.
EA could have at least credited the creator of the wallpaper. It doesn’t matter if the creator of the wallpaper used images from EA – they have released those to the fans so they could create artworks. The fans didn’t create the wallpapers to be redistributed without a mention of a name. That’s rude – whether it’s EA or someone else.
It’s pretty arrogant to say that EA wouldn’t do something like this. Were you there when the newsletter header was created? I’m guessing your answer would be a no. They may not have meant to ‘steal’ it but it’s still not nice to find out your wallpaper has been used like this.
EA isn’t perfect. I am grateful for their work, but that doesn’t mean they can do whatever they want and not get yelled at by the fans.
And Jud, I don’t think this is a worthless post. I appreciate all your posts, mainly because you don’t just kiss other people’s butts all the time. You say what you think, often in a proper manner. I appreciate that a lot. So don’t let anyone hold you back.
I try not to be rude to EA…but I’m one to believe that if someone is rude to you, then you have every right to be rude back. Yeah, it’s not exactly the right way of handling things, but EA needs to be straightened out. I’m sick of what they have became. They used to be a respectable company…but now it’s faulty games or patches, careless customer support and poor staff management. I’m not saying that everyone at EA is accountable, but they really need to get rid of these bad apples that they have and put in place people that care.
One of these days EA will get it together and become a great company again. Until then, they deserve what they get.
Thanks Rosie for the support. And yes, I hate kissing up to corporate butt. If someone does someone wrong – they should be called out on it. I’m sure this wouldn’t even of escalated if they would of just asked Alex for his work – he’d be honored. But you don’t take things that either aren’t free of use or do not belong to you.
Sending out free newsletters is not out of kindness. It’s a marketing trick. That whole thing is full of “BUY OUR CRAP! BUY MORE! NOW! WE WANT YOUR MONEY! MORE MORE MORE!”. It’s not expensive to send them. It’s profitable spam – spam you signed up to receive. The same things goes for the renders. It’s not kindness. It’s more like “CREATE BUZZ FOR US! GIVE US FREE ADVERTISING! TRICK PEOPLE INTO BUYING OUR CRAP!” (The lack of “please” or “thank you” in there is intentional).
EA could have at least asked or credited the author of the composition, even though they’re probably doing nothing wrong legally (IANAL though). Would be smarter too, this kind of crap reduces customer satisfaction, may even lose a few customers. As it is things are just piling up with all the half-baked products right now, which isn’t doing them any good. If EA would refrain from this kind of arrogance, customers would be a lot happier with their products, which would mean more revenue for EA.
I’m not surprised EA has been struggling to stay afloat for the past couple of years, with the way they treat their customers and the poor quality of the products they put out.
It isn’t very nice to call people names Jessica. Plus it is really immature.
Let me get these links out:
EA’s Customer Support Scoreboard – http://www.customerservicescoreboard.com/Electronic+Arts
876 Complaints at EA at the Better Business Bureau – http://www.bbb.org/greater-san-francisco/business-reviews/video-games-wholesale-and-manufacturers/electronic-arts-in-redwood-city-ca-64196
A Simmer’s 7 month battle with EA Customer Support (still not resolved) – http://acuppajoe.blogspot.com/2009/10/this-is-why-we-cant-have-nice-things.html
Their DRM fiasco with The Sims 2 Bon Voyage, FreeTime and Spore.
Their horrible decision to follow through with their ‘Sin to Win’ campaign with ladies to advertise for Dante’s Inferno at Comic Con – http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/07/ea-apologises-for-sin-to-win-booth-babe-promo/
Need I go on?
murrp…got pretty heated here, didn’t it? i do want to say though i think the second “accusation” isn’t really…err….valid?….
i just say it cuz i was designing a candy wrapper for my godson’s birthday and i found PLENTY of backgrounds that look like the balloon and streamers thing you have. some with people under it, not the ones you show up there …. but it is something that’s around, so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.
as for the first “accusation”, i do think EA should have credited the fan for the decoration rather than making it seem it was their own. i will say i’m not gonna bash EA though just because I love my sims game so i wont get into it
in terms of “morals”, EA should have said it was created by a fan. technically, no one can really do anything about it, i guess, unless the fan copyrighted the image, but even then it would be tricky because the images used to create it were already copyrighted by EA and that would be Prior Art or something like that…..
idk….i think arguing it is petty since there are other things we should be more upset about rather than free images. even if we could get EA in trouble about this or start some sort of news from it, i’d rather the news be over the patches and prices of the packs rather than this.
No, I’m just correcting your poor grammar. And I guess if my IQ is below 8, it must be a pretty easy thing to do.
I can’t understand your writing. I also believe you are the one with no self-esteem seeing as how you are letting people that you have never met in your life and who have no clue who you are make you so upset. It takes a very insecure person to let complete strangers on the internet make you so upset.
GOOD ONE! Oh man, you’re cracking me up you’re so funny! Oh man. You should really do stand up or something. Really, just too funny.
Wow, someone clearly woke up on the wrong side of the bed haha.
Jessica, stop insulting people, stop arguing back. You’re digging a hole for yourself. You say that you’re mature, but you’re posting multiple comments that all seem to have bad language, insults and other nonsense in them. Jud just posted an interesting article for us to read, but you had to take it too far. If you’re not happy with Jud’s performance on *his* site, then go elsewhere.
As for the article itself, it really doesn’t surprise me. Alex would have no doubt been thrilled if EA had asked to use his artwork, but instead they just decided to take it. Sure it seems harmless enough, but Alex isn’t getting credited for it all, which is wrong.
Hahaha This is very entertaining. I love how someone who cannot even compose proper English sentences is telling me I don’t understand the definition of a troll. You are the classic definition of a TROLL. Try to at least be a little original in your rampage, ok?
Btw, English isn’t my first language either, but somehow I have a feeling I have a better grasp of what a troll is than you do.
Kthxbye <—- that's how you do it
i dont understand why there has to be fighting via this comment section.
OK, so you have opposing sides – that happens a lot in the world. Let it go – we’re all on the internet, all you’re doing is flooding the comment section, trolling or not, it’s very pathetic to keep on arguing when the argument has stemmed far from what the original topic was. it’s a sunday night (at least where i am), go get some ice cream, hot chocolate, something or whatever and play your sims game. if you CANT play your sims game, then take a hot shower and watch a movie til you go to sleep. there’s no point in getting heated over an online post.
not the best way to go to sleep and start the week.
“A Sane Person” ur the BLACK GUY FROM LOST HAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA lol now if u haven’t seen that series go to abc.com and watch the first season cuz that’s YOU u act just like him, hope u love ur self more now, not like him, I bet u like it in the butt too and ur picked up on school HA HA HA
Judhson plase delete my comments, I don’t like been mean and I said I wouldn’t but in my last comment… just delete it, delete them all and sorry a sane person, that last comment isn’t true, i’m sorry
As you wish.
and cuz i really hope i wasn’t that nasty with anyone else, i’m sorry if i insulted anyone else and felt offended, ignore my childish behavior, what i said wasn’t true
Okay people behave or Jud might be knocking on my door asking how to ban IPs at the server level -_-;
wicked … this is hilarious, what happened to Creative Commons, everyone follows those laws regardless of whether they posted on someones site or not.
Eish …
Just adding to my last comment
The funny thing is, copy ANYTHING of EA’s without permission … and POW, you got a lawyers letter instantly, trust me I know all about it.
Now my question, who protects the man on the street? the person who doesn’t have a whole department of lawyers to protect them?
All I can say is ‘FAIL’. :3
Thanks 😀
-Aleex
:O Speechless… …But happy EA was caught 😀
I have contackt with the norwegian EA now!
-Aleex
I’m not sure. I still doubt EA doing this and I wouldn’t doubt Alex copying something and passing it off as his own. He’s copied whole areas of HTML & CSS off SimOperations. In the end, EA is allowed to do this. It is their graphics. I’m sure that somewhere your games’ license it actually says that you don’t own the game, you only hold a license. In the end, doesn’t matter who made it, that wallpaper is copyrighted by Electronic Arts.
That doesn’t make any sense, Connor…In that case, then SimOperations is not your site – it solely belongs to EA as you used the plumbob in your logo, have a Sims 3 picture as a background, even used ‘The Sims’ title in many of your posts. Better be prepared for EA to come and take your site away 😛
EA will reply to all this fiasco and just like the one for the blog post of Mitch Lasky, it won’t be pretty…
Well, Jud. Yeah, in essence, EA could at any point ask me to close down my site and I could only legally oblige. However, the thing with fansites is that they are allowed to do this because it’s part of marketing. But that’s a whole other story 😛
So, we can’t use free nonEA stuff in the game, but they can steal original designs from the fans. Oh, ok, nice.
EA lets us run fansites. Apple doesn’t. We are legally allowed to have simoperations.com whereas macoperations.com wouldn’t be allowed by Apple.
I think EA must hire me to create their graphic logos…
As I realised the High-end loft logo can be made by me in 10 minutes using my Photoshop!
They are so lazy??!?!
George f play, it doesn’t matter about the speed. I could spend an hour drawing random lines but it wouldn’t make it any better.
Okay heres my Two cents’ worth.
1. EA was wrong to use it without askin Alex for his permission first. I know that he wouldn’t have said no and that Infact he would probably be very flattered.
2. Complaining probably won’t get Alex anywhere so he should maybe also take it as a compliment. They obviously liked his work and thought it was better than anything they could do. And hey, who knows, maybe it’ll lead to a future job at EA for Alex lol!
@Jamie
(a) He copies off other people so it’s not really a problem
(b) I don’t really think EA needs this hassle when people like VRevis really need EA’s attention
Req # Job Title Role Specialty Location
25873 Assistant Community Manager Marketing, Sales & Comm Community Manager Texas – Austin (BioWare + Pogo)
26131 Community Management Specialist Marketing, Sales & Comm Community Manager California – Redwood Shores
(1) EA isn’t hiring anyone new, you could definately be good to bet they’ll lay-off more people cause there not making any money.
(2) And probably we do a better job then they do at designing (witch might be why they slacked off cause they couldn’t have done a better job 😉
(3) EA took the time and effort to somehow change the way the render looked so that no one would notice (FAIL: we did notice)
(3) Killing off fansites is not the way to go. They’ll loose almost (barely) half the fans of EA by doing so (if they haven’t already)
(4)I can’t make an apple fansite? what?! I would have made Macmillion 😀
Shoot my bad. Accidentally commented twice :(.. jud, please delete the first of the 2 new comments i made…
I can’t believe EA would screw up so bad. They can pay people millions to do everything else, but not this. Most people that work there are over PLAYED and under worked.
I don’t know enough to comment about this specifically, other than, I hope that EA really shapes up. All the kiss-ups may disagree with me but please think before you kiss up (I’m not pointing fingers, this is in general). When Comcast raises your bill, you have the option to move on to another company for the same kind of service. There is no Sims alternative, so we are stuck with the way EA treats customers if we want to continue playing Sims. And please quit telling us to stop playing. We have every right to receive excellent customer service for what we are paying for, especially because if it weren’t for us customers, EA would be nowhere. Or are you going to tell me that you will walk into a store and allow the clerks to treat you as less than a customer because your nose is too brown to care? Of course not! So how is this any different? I dare you to come into my retail store and be treated like shit, because it’ll never happen as long as I am working. Some of you really do not know the meaning of customer service and many mega corporations are NOT as angelic as you want them to be. That’s just naivety in its full form. So rather than telling us to shut up (again, in general), your ass-kissing praises are not helping the company improve. You are just giving them more reasons to continue with their practices. So much for being a fanboy/girl. And I’m talking about the kinds of praises that lead EA to believe that they are flawless. Obviously it’s a different story if you are just generally talking about a feature you enjoy. While this site is friendly to just about everyone, Jud is the owner and he can post whatever he damn well pleases. I applaud him for not kissing EA’s ass. I wish there were more people with that courage. Maybe for once, we can have a better product.
LOL, i’m back. And we were just wondering why
(a) Was he in contact with EA Sweden and not EA Norway
(b) Strange how the graphics haven’t been removed?
*cough*shopp’d*cough*
😛
The sims part in norway are under EA Seden… You will not belive this i think LOL
-Aleex
Alex, hopefully once you do get your fatboy you can snap some pics of that for proof. Of course, Connor will then probably think of some way saying it’s doctored or that you bought it…so really there isn’t no point. EA can do no wrong according to him :/