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Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: bethgael on 2006 December 30, 23:43:56 This is an interesting bunch. I say "interesting" in the most teeth-gritting way possible. This site seriously shytes me. I can understand (if not condone) creators who want to charge money for the work they do, even on content that doesn't, strictly speaking, belong to them, but this mob charge for just being there: they make no content themselves, they just make money off the people who do.
This site hosts all of the following sites: Artistic Habitats ArtSIMz Candace's Sim Bazaar Elektrafied Sims Elemental Sims Empire Sim Enchanted Sims Curio Co. Even More for Sims Hans Christian Andersim 2 Hullabaloo It's Simply Similicious KILLERSIMS Mocha Sims My Funny Simentine Nana's Sims 2 Pompkyn's Sims Boutique Seasonal Sims 2 Sexpot Sims Similarity Sims Simmage SiMonet Sunny Side Sims The House Depot The Sim Republic The Sims 2 at SimsHost The Sims Lady Troll Sims Vintage Sims The Wooden Simolean Yuppie Sims Plus a lot of Sims 1 sites. The aim of Simshost is to provide a "low cost" site for those with Sims sites to host their files. It does this by collecting subscriber fees from anyone who wants to download anything from any of these sites. The thing is, simshost collects money on behalf of the sites. They charge everyone to download from these sites, even the items listed on the sites themselves as "free": Quote 3. You can download things without a subscription; however, it is usually less expensive if you subscribe. Non-subscribers pay an additional fee per download. All users pay a download fee based on how much they download. These charges are detailed in the following table: Subscription monthly cost $2 per month for continuing subscribers Subscription activation fee $4.00 Subscriber download rate $0.10 per megabyte downloaded Non-subscriber download rate $0.10 per megabyte downloaded Non-subscriber download fee $0.50 per download If something goes wrong with a download, they offer the following "protection" to users: Quote Refunds and Payments from SimsHost If an error occurs during a download or you receive a defective download, and your download account is charged for it, you can request a refund for that item from your personal account activity screen. Just find the item in your list of downloads and follow the link next to it to report the problem and have your account automatically reimbursed for the cost of that download. SimsHost will refund the unused balance of your account at any time, subject to administrative fees, as follows. The administrative fees for any payment from SimsHost depend on the method of getting the payment to you: Admininistrative Fees Applied to All Refunds Paid to your PayPal account $4.50 Paid to your Credit Card $4.50 Company check sent to your address in the USA or Canada, payable in US$ $6.00 Company check sent to other locations, payable in US$ $7.00 The administrative fee will be subtracted from your account balance before any refund is made and is not refundable. Yet: Quote Typical Download Costs for The Sims 2 Type of Item Typical Size (bytes) Download cost (US $) Downloads per $ Skins (Body) 300000 $0.0286 34 Skins (Hair) 500000 $0.0477 20 Wall 40000 $0.0038 262 Floor Tile 15000 $0.0014 699 Bed (All Sims 2 double beds are love beds.) 1535000 $0.1464 6 Don't forget that if you have a SimsHost account but do not activate your subscription, your account will be charged an additional $0.50 per download. If you only see a couple of things among all the dozens of sites that you really want right now, it might be less expensive not to subscribe; however we expect that for most people a continuing subscription will be the best way to go. Also don't forget to include an extra $2 per month for however long you want your subscription to stay current. And if you are activating a new subscription or renewing an old one that expired more than 30 days ago, add in $4.00 for the subscription activation fee. So, if you have problems with, say a site that you've downloaded 34 skins from, you've only been charged a dollar, (plus ongoing subscription fee), yet you would have to pay at least $4.50 to get your money back. In other words, there are no refunds, folks. Who they really are: Quote Who the heck is The Lunar Resources Company? The Lunar Resources Company is a privately held corporation, incorporated in Texas. We've been around since 1994. Our main line of work is research and development that leads to establishing permanent human settlements on the moon. In the process we've developed relationships with other companies and even founded companies in the network software and services industries. Because of that, we're able to do things like Moon Sims and SimsHost as sort of a corporate hobby. We hope you enjoy them! And they claim: Quote Are you earning lots of money from this? Nope. Although we expect that SimsHost will eventually reach break-even, we are currently still subsidizing it; albeit not as much as we do for Moon Sims. We do want SimsHost to reach a stable break-even point because that will assure that the Sims sites will be able stay on line forever, independent of the vagueries of the dotcom and aerospace industries where we earn the money that enables us to host the Sims sites for you. (Wanna buy a spaceship? We'll make a special deal for SimsHost subscribers!) We know that several people hope to make big profits from operating Sims sites, but frankly, we don't think the market will support it. If your goal is to make money, the best thing going right now seems to be to have a "free" site where you sell "donator gifts" for $1 to $10. However, you will mostly likely still earn less than minimum wage doing this, and we're worried that people will eventually grow weary of donating to "free" sites. Sims stuff is really not a lucrative industry, so if money is your only goal, we recommend that you instead apply your talent to something like professional graphics or 3D modeling. We don't recommend the web design industry, either; there are already far too many people chasing too few contracts and the big companies with the big bucks already have their own in-house web teams. While in the same breath saying: Quote If I subscribe to SimsHost, does it help support the Moon Sims sites? Frankly, yes. The less we have to subsidize SimsHost, the better the chances that we can afford to keep Moon Sims going as it is, without need for subscriptions or moving sites to SimsHost or whatever. We're really the same group of guys doing both Moon Sims and SimsHost. Although we hope that SimsHost will eventually reach a break-even point, currently we are subsidizing it out of our pockets. So yes, if you want to provide financial support for the hosting of the Moon Sims sites, the best way to do that is to subscribe to SimsHost. Right now, the future of all the Moon Sims sites depends on our success in the volatile dotcom industry. We've survived the shakeout quite well, but we would be more comfortable if we could tie our support to those sites with the size of the Sims fan community who really need the resources. Moonsims is a supposedly free Sims 1 site. They also tell us: Quote When you sign up, you agree not to share or distribute any material from any site hosted by SimsHost. Therefore, they are a corporation in breach of EA's TOS for both the Sims 1 and Sims 2 games. Apologies if everyone's already aware of this particular site. My son tried to subscribe (thinking that the items on "free" sites would be exactly that, free, if he got a "free" subscription from simshost, the only way to get any items from any of the sites). The site requires extensive personal information from you when you join (real name, address, etc), whether you intend to use your credit card or not. And they do not delete accounts even if requested, it seems. Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: liegenschonheit on 2006 December 30, 23:51:20 Yes, that place is a vile, shitty ripoff. You get charged per download, plus a fee for your account. It's the worst kind of double charging profiteering ever, despite what they say. Most of the sites hosted by them are nothing special anyway, so no loss. I do love Artistic Habitats for their trees and plants though, and I would even rather that they went to TSR than stay with simshost.
Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: Super_Pirate_Dude on 2006 December 30, 23:55:09 What a fuckhole, lol
Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: lordrichter on 2006 December 31, 00:00:58 I never go to any of those sites, is SimHost just starting to charge (recently) or have they been doing it for a while?
Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: Super_Pirate_Dude on 2006 December 31, 00:19:41 Quote from: "lordrichter" I never go to any of those sites, is SimHost just starting to charge (recently) or have they been doing it for a while? It says it was doing it since sims 1, so it has probably been around for long Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: graniaomalley on 2006 December 31, 00:42:52 Quote My son tried to subscribe (thinking that the items on "free" sites would be exactly that, free, if he got a "free" subscription from simshost, the only way to get any items from any of the sites). The site requires extensive personal information from you when you join (real name, address, etc), whether you intend to use your credit card or not. And they do not delete accounts even if requested, it seems. Huh. How old's your son? If he's a minor, I believe you can take legal action against them to cancel the account/erase his information. I could, of course, be wrong. Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: Capucine on 2006 December 31, 01:36:58 Quote from: "graniaomalley" How old's your son? If he's a minor, I believe you can take legal action against them to cancel the account/erase his information. I could, of course, be wrong. No sites are allowed to store information of anyone under 13 years old if I remember correctly. SimsHost has been around for years, way before The Sms 2. I think it must have started around 2002. Very suprised to see they still exist, frankly. Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: idtaminger on 2006 December 31, 02:17:22 The sites it hosts were never anything special to begin with, so I never really cared. Still don't care.
Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: bethgael on 2006 December 31, 02:24:55 My son is 15, and used my personal information (name and birth year) to sign up so he could access an adult content site. I picked up on it almost immediately.
He, of course, is grounded and is on "no computer" status for a while. The best I could do is remove my personal information from the profile. I'm now born in 1900 and my name is "Please Delete This Account", residence at "Now, Mudsuckers, 0000". :evil: Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: idtaminger on 2006 December 31, 02:30:57 Then your son musn't be very bright. Everyone knows you use fake accounts to sign up to dodgy services like that. I've known that since age 12.
Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: jesserocket on 2006 December 31, 02:45:28 I hate hate hate SimsHost. Ever since they started up, quite near the beginning of paysite history...Vile bastards. They just started a whole new thing, it wasn't like at the time, with so many sites, they were well-established and too popular, and NEEDED to go pay, as a lot of big sites at the time did, they started out explicitly to be 'premium' hosting for paysites. 'Premium', always highly overpriced, not even always at all good, paysites. And not unlike the behemoth that is TSR now, slowly they began to 'acquire' assorted good free sites, and the first you'd know of it was when you visited, and saw that not only could you not download from this site, you also couldn't even preview unless you were a Sims Host member, in most cases.
SimsHost..........Jesse haet SimsHost. Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: Soup Parrot on 2006 December 31, 03:36:03 I hate SIM HOSTS!!! I would never sign up for what they ask, big con! To me the sites that go under Simhosts are just as bad. SimHosts needs to be made extinct and buried for good :evil: .
Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: stim on 2006 December 31, 05:16:57 Holy crap, I remember when those guys went in to business. If I recall properly, they are the original implementors of Thomas's buying creators model. It was so long ago, I can't remember who it was, but I swear to it they bought off some Sims 1 sites to switch over to Simhost. Not anywhere near the payout of TSR though, I bet.
I just remember being so pissed off when they announced their little scheme, especially when Killer Sims hopped on their little band wagon. Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: toomanyguppys on 2006 December 31, 05:37:03 Was it that, or did they "conveniently" come into being right around the time that so many sims 1 sites were closing or being threatened with closure because of the bandwidth problem--which was quite real at the time? I don't remember for sure, but I can probably find out.
Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: Toasty Pirate on 2006 December 31, 18:17:44 Wow, that's really crap.
I think EA should know about this one - I think they might take action against another corporation making money off their products. Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: LesserOr on 2006 December 31, 19:56:09 Quote from: "Toasty Pirate" I think EA should know about this one - I think they might take action against another corporation making money off their products. I hate to rain on the parade, but someone (I can't myself at the moment) should check that this is a real corporation before claiming it to EA. Reread this: Quote Who the heck is The Lunar Resources Company? The Lunar Resources Company is a privately held corporation, incorporated in Texas. We've been around since 1994. Our main line of work is research and development that leads to establishing permanent human settlements on the moon. In the process we've developed relationships with other companies and even founded companies in the network software and services industries. Because of that, we're able to do things like Moon Sims and SimsHost as sort of a corporate hobby. We hope you enjoy them! This sounds suspiciously like "The Simderful Ladies of Elegance Fashion House has been publishing its designs on Paris runways since 1994!" Corporations don't have "hobbies." Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: Soup Parrot on 2006 December 31, 20:09:54 Pwhat a joke they state here:
This plan does not violate the Maxis EULA. SimsHost does not pay for the things folks created; it only pays you proportional to your contribution to the service's revenues, and the service we are charging for is (quite clearly) the delivery of the data, not the content of the downloadable material. I was gagging reading through all what they said. Lets see after you put up your subscription fees to join about $5, then you dole out more money per download. TSR is cheaper than them, unlimited DL to. Id like to see this site killed to. Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: Toasty Pirate on 2006 December 31, 20:13:57 I wasn't personally going to report it because my report would probably be something like this:
"This guys, are like totally evil because they're selling CC for The Sims 2 so they can fly to the moon!" And I doubt this would cause the EA legal team to rush to their feet and take action. I guess someone with more knowledge about corporations and legal speak could do some research onto them to see if they are a real corporation or not. Then maybe they could be reported. Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: jesserocket on 2006 December 31, 21:48:07 Quote from: "Toasty Pirate" I wasn't personally going to report it because my report would probably be something like this: "This guys, are like totally evil because they're selling CC for The Sims 2 so they can fly to the moon!" And I doubt this would cause the EA legal team to rush to their feet and take action. I guess someone with more knowledge about corporations and legal speak could do some research onto them to see if they are a real corporation or not. Then maybe they could be reported. SimsHost has been arond forever, sadly, I'm sure not unlike TSR, EA have noticed them and chosen to do nothing... Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: LesserOr on 2007 January 01, 01:21:49 Quote from: "jesserocket" SimsHost has been arond forever, sadly, I'm sure not unlike TSR, EA have noticed them and chosen to do nothing... Despite its obnoxious micropayment system, SimsHost is no different than any other ignored paysite. EA has to be officially, plausibly aware of a violation before they can (legally) be expected to react. The internet is a big place, and SimsHost is so under the radar it might as well be grounded. TSR, however...EA can't deny knowing about them. They could still claim to be charging for bandwidth and the service under the old rotation system (though that's a lot of definition stretching, and wouldn't hold up in court.) But once they locked off content and started seriously headhunting creators, TSR became a .package store. This will force EA's hand. It should be interesting to see how it plays out. My money is on TSR "seeing the light" and switching back to the old system, after a quiet (polite) ultimatum from EA. Title: warning: simshost.com Post by: Soup Parrot on 2007 January 01, 07:09:44 Thanks lesser you just gave me an idea :).
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