Well, that or we've found Shakeshaft's mentor.

Isn't Spaik also the one who put up extracted AL witch lights to make money off of?

So... now we're Pescado and his band of disillusioned miscreants?

In all of this, I'm still wondering how they think that it's, you know, legal to be selling fan content (and thus how they feel that can claim copyright over it, let alone make legal threats over people sharing it legally). On top of the EULA stating that user-created custom content isn't for commercial gain, there's the whole issue of (last I checked, anyway) having to disclaim fan content for just about anything and point out that, "Hey, the copyright belongs to those guys over there. Not for profit here." If people have to do that for detailed artwork, then believe you me, TSR's floodfill pixels fall right into the same category. It's fan work. It's a fansite. That shit's not supposed to be a business.

Steve's SimMaster account is still active by last check, yes; I got the impression from Anubis's post that those accounts still hold their power, they're just not the ones that users are supposed to actively turn to or anything. Kind of a blanket "we all quit/were fired/were technically demoted for consistency's sake, so go to those guys instead."

Which is rather amusing, because wasn't it that (up until a bunch of them jumped ship within a week some time back) the SMs were the ones who were at least trying to come off as even-handed, while the Maxoids have consistently been the ones doing the T$R coverups and declaring places like MATY as "unfit content for the BBS"? That's kind of a large step towards censorship (as much as you can consider it censorship on a forum that could be considered as 'private domain' in spite of it belonging to a publicly-traded company) the likes of which hadn't been seen up to that point. Of course, this is all just theoretical - I avoid the place except for if I'm linked to something specific there - but considering the connection between EA and T$R (even without factoring in Steve's SM account), which they're only making more obvious by the day, it's not the most unheard of thing. I'd like to say that I don't think that it's possible that this is the vein that it's heading towards and that it might even be the reason why the accounts of some people here were banned without so much as a warning, but I'm not sure I can positively convince myself that it doesn't have at least a slight chance of being a possibility.

Damn you. Now I have to bleach my brain a few times to get rid of the image of Thoma$$ making heart-eyes at Pescado.

I think my favorite of the MTS2 questions yesterday were probably the ones that didn't even have multiple choice answers or fields to type in essays. I know there was one that told you to hum the theme to Jeopardy and then hit F3, one that told you to go check and make sure you didn't leave the stove on, and one that simply said Dammit, make it stop! However, the one that asked me to "input the longest song title in the world into the 10-character box below" also had me laughing for a while.

Hmm. I don't think it was a 4ESF one; I had the first couple of their stoves like that, and they had the full oven capabilities - they may have changed this with the ones after that, though, for all I know. But, the one from MTS2 is really cute (on top of working properly); I hadn't seen it before.

Oh god. I always, always find myself hating the stovetops like that - in fact, I feel that a detached stovetop is a damn good reason to not put a kitchen set into your downloads folder. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love them in a real home (we've even got a nice one in my house), but they're just silly in the game, because you have to use cheats to place them onto a counter, which leads to a usable counter underneath the stove unless you place something with an invisible recolor onto that counter (which, in turn, makes clicking on the stovetop more difficult at times. Not a problem when you have to make your sims cook something, but a big problem when you want them to go clean the thing). Otherwise, sims are preparing their food on the damn stove, and let's not even get into the fact that all of the standard oven features are intact on these stovetops, so they'll be magically inserting food into cabinets, where they will be cooked. Now, I'm not really sure on all of the logistics and if it'd even be possible to make a custom stovetop that only cooks certain meals (pancakes, omlettes, mac and cheese, and any other food that doesn't go into the oven), but if it could be done, it'd make the stovetops more feasible, at least. And it'd be even better if they'd be made as a whole object with the counter underneath them so that the use of the object would actually be logical (at the very least, it'd prevent the serving platters and empty plates from being placed into the stove, as well as prevent the whole "I'm going to set up my wooden cutting board on the stove and start seasoning my salmon right there" thing; ugh, seasonings all over the stove. That thing would have to get filthy every use).

Then again, I really only see these stovetops made by paysite creators, and why would they ever follow logic or try to make it work properly?

This comparison is even more amusing when you consider that Saks Fifth Avenue might be closing down permanently thanks to the recession. Maybe it'll pass onto the game companies who only think of the consumers who can constantly shell out their money to upgrade their systems every time a new graphics card comes out, and we'll start getting ones who will make quality games for everyone to enjoy.

Greed and shitty games. PC and console games alike are really just the "same old, same old" now; every now and then, you find a rare gem, but give it a couple months and everyone copies it. Game companies are all sticking to the formula now because they know that people will buy the games - and keep buying them - even though they've played it all before. Hell, I can't even find replay value in a lot of games anymore.

You'd think that the law-fu would be better-practiced dealing with the ramifications of treating their customers like criminals, as well as the lawsuits against them. But, if they're going to go after Pescado for those links that he has no control over being posted by people he has no control over simply because he's the one providing the service at MATY, then... shouldn't they be going after TSR for the fact that they have people selling extracted versions of their creations (for example, one of Spaik's sets being the witch lamps extracted), on top of the obvious fact that they're breaking the EULA by selling any of the content to begin with? What's their excuse for not doing that? "Oh, but they're our special friends"? Playing picky-choosey here just gives them even less ground to stand on, as well as makes them look worse.

So whether it's a bullshit letter or not, the situation in and of itself is bullshit.

Their heads look so disembodied (especially the third from the left and the second from the right) that it's almost nightmare-inducing. "Can't sleep, paycrap mockery models will eat me."

...Wow. There really are no words for this. Except perhaps, "Thank you, EA, for giving me yet another reason to not waste my time and money with The Sims 3." It's kind of funny; a couple of months ago I was considering giving it a chance (whether purchased or pirated). Then I read the in-game ads thing (which I could have maybe dealt with, if not for...), and then they had the crap on the BBS essentially declaring paysites as their partners, and now this? Fuck it, it's not even worth ARRing the game now.

Hope it crashes and burns. That'll be the only way for there to even be a smidgen of a chance that EA would realize just how bad of an idea it is to spurn the community (and, by default, their consumers) the way that they have.

Forgetting the atrocious color combination for a moment, the material looks like the commercial carpets that stores use.

As for the Evi "childrens' Christmas clothes" (and I use that term loosely), I know that's what I'd want my little girls wearing if I had any: snowflake fishnets. Where the hell does that inspiration even come from? (Actually, in looking at that picture for more than a couple seconds, I've also come to the conclusion that Evi considers children to be pets. Which might explain the TS2 Pets logo being used as her symbol.)

Taking a mini-step out of my lurking (and most likely promptly running back to it as soon as I post this).

The next few sentences after what you quoted also reek of TSR, Yaardam. He mentioned wanting to provide "benefits" for the mods (and it's implied to the creators, as well) off of the profits he wants to make off of a "voluntary donation program" and ad revenue.

I'm also really baffled by the person who seems to be defending Walt's position and attacking everyone who was trying to do something to help the community in all of this...