They did it again

[calalily]

Celebrations was not really a very demanded stuffpack to begin with, while "Teen Stuff" is, apparently, popular with a demographic that, obviously, has no money to spend!

I can't even find H&M on Pirate Bay - which was popular with the same demographic.

Both are equally SecuROM infested, although neither one runs a "new" executable, so those running a Seasons-based install would be unaffected.

I know there's no executable, but once people get screwed over by the company, at least some part is "spite downloads".  If even someone like me considers piracy (can't actually do it though) then the company is so in trouble it's not funny.  Not to mention that including SecuRom on the cd gets them trouble anyway - people are still worried about H&M, even though it has no executable.  When I showed my screenshot of installed SecuRom to the BBS, proving that it was installed on my PC with Bon Voyage on 6th of September, there were endless questions about whether I had H&M (which I do).

It is fundamentally a failure in my book to try to sell things to people who have no money.

Not if said non-adults have a computer which they can install things on, and play to their hearts content.  My kids would take the mouse out of my hand for 1 hour tops - let alone play the Sims as much as I do.  Those sorts of kids pester the hell out of Mum and Dad, or just ask and they shall receive.

[Duckie]

Hmm. Has anyone else noticed that free Sims 2 communities, such as MTS2 and InSim seem to be more quiet nowadays?

I agree with you. I do a tour of the main sites each day just to see what's going on in the community and the last week or so it's been dead. MTS2 is really slow with uploads. Usually there's at least 3-4 pages of new stuff a day. The last few days though there's been barely a page and a half.

People are losing interest. Sad thing is, EA doesn't give a flying rat turd.

[Paden]

[People are losing interest. Sad thing is, EA is a flying rat turd.

Sad, but true. I must agree with the duck on this one.

[SamanthaS]

Usually there's at least 3-4 pages of new stuff a day. The last few days though there's been barely a page and a half.

Eh, in the US it's a holiday week and holiday season in general, which can cause people to be away from their computers so I think it might pick back up.

However, EA has screwed over this user all it's going to. I officially quit giving them money when I found out H & M had Securom (even though it doesn't cause the problems that BV does). I didn't even bother to yohoho BV.

[alia]

Usually there's at least 3-4 pages of new stuff a day. The last few days though there's been barely a page and a half.

Eh, in the US it's a holiday week and holiday season in general, which can cause people to be away from their computers so I think it might pick back up.

But the thing is, we don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Europe, so it should not affect for example MTS2 that much. And I think this trend has been going on for some time now.

And EA not caring about the community is probably true, but they're shooting themselves in the foot by doing that. If people are not interested in the community, they probably are not interested in the game either, and hence will not buy future expansion packs, or the Sims 3.

I must say, I am not interested in the Sims 3 at the moment either, because of Suckurom and EA's attitude towards their paying customers. During the Sims 1 days I was always excited about the expansion packs and could not wait to get my hands on the Sims 2. Now, I'm not excited. EA is driving away their core customers and they do not even realise what they're doing  :roll:

[SamanthaS]

I didn't mean that Americans are the only creators at MTS2 (or any other Sims 2 site), just that it's a holiday week here and that could explain a drop in uploads by Americans because people here in the US are preparing to travel to Grandma's house to gorge themselves on food.

[Jojoba]

Hmm. Has anyone else noticed that free Sims 2 communities, such as MTS2 and InSim seem to be more quiet nowadays? I get the sense that people are tired of the controvery and EA's lack of stand, so they seem to be drifting away from the community. People just don't seem to be as exited about the game as they were.

Got it in one.

We need to stop relying on EA for a "big move" of sorts on this, its not going to happen. Focus on supporting and encouraging free sites, creators, etc, rather then waiting for a multi national company who does not give a fuck and will never give a clear view. As Le Duck said, EA is a flying rat turd  :roll:

And ModTheSims2 has too many rules...uploading there is hellish at times. Its easier not to even try to upload there. It puts creators off, majorly. Bleh

[SamanthaS]

And ModTheSims2 has too many rules...uploading there is hellish at times. Its easier not to even try to upload there. It puts creators off, majorly. Bleh

Yeah, there is that.

[Markus]

I was going to upload some stuff I made there, but I heard they're really picky with the submissions.

[Duckie]

And ModTheSims2 has too many rules...uploading there is hellish at times. Its easier not to even try to upload there. It puts creators off, majorly. Bleh

I agree. When I read the threads introducing their new set of rules I had a feeling that quite a few of those that uploaded there at the time would find alternatives. Quite a few have and the dwindling downloads show this.

I was going to upload some stuff I made there, but I heard they're really picky with the submissions.

I find that an absolute hoot. They may say they are picky but have you looked through their stuff lately? 80% of the lots are cookie cutter, no effort offerings. The objects, for the most part, are uninspired and... well, boring. And don't even get me going on the quality of the textures... It's gotten so blah there that I've started hunting down the small, out of the way forums and sites where a good bit of the creativity, talent, and effort ran off to.

[JFederated]

FFS...EA's driven me back to watching TV.

[WedgewoodBlue]

I must admit that I am actually looking forward to see the "slump", in EA sales. but wonder if it will make the news anywhere.
I still don't have any of the problems associated with BV and Suckurom, but I am most definitely NOT going to buy any more stuff packs, or expansions. I don't want to take that risk.
I am looking forward to a colossal failure of Sims3.

[SnarkyShark]

If EA wants to pimp for a paysite, I'm just not sure I care anymore.  For me the bigger issue is EA's decision to treat all their loyal customers like potential software pirates by attempting to control components on computers they have no business controlling.

I'd like to believe that after the securom fiasco they'd clean up their act and try to win back all that squandered loyalty by treating their customers like people and not potential criminals, but I doubt it. More than likely they're in a huddle trying to figure out more ways to screw us. Piss off,  EA.

[Electricstatic]

Going to have to agree with 99% of what is written here. I used to be excited for the Sims 3; now, unless EA cleans up its act, I won't be buying it. I still find the pre-BV Sims 2 EPs entertaining (but I can only run the base game and NL -- and even those don't work at the moment but I believe that's my computer's own fault). Once I get a new computer I'll surely play the Sims 2 expansions up to Seasons, with no stuff packs.

EA is going to have to do a lot of convincing and effective user support until I buy the Sims 3.

[freoninferno]

i will have to chime in with my own agreement as well. the dialog i am having at EA has gone full blown ballistic with them putting words in my mouth & claiming utter falsehoods.  they are clumsy at best & very transparent. while that was happening there, offline, i had discovered that my Deluxe DVD did indeed come packed with Securom.

i knew i had to find a no-DVD patch so i could play my game, else the nightmare would return upon factory DVD insertion. oops, there are no no-DVD patches for the Deluxe product.

so natch, i proceeded over to mininova to look for some EP's, this way i could install them & patch those. say Pets, Seasons or OFB for example.
i fired up the newest version of µTorrent, and lo & behold if my pc did not suddenly start to freeze up. i figured perhaps it was Securom doing this, so i used the free version of Trashreg to finger the null reg keys, then used Regdevnull to get rid of them, then Sami Tolvanen's Eraser to get rid of the Securom folder in the docs & sets app folder. this particular Deluxe DVD comes with a version of Securom higher than 7 which does not have the ua7service.exe service, but instead two other services called RX and THUC. they live in the temp folder, not the system32 folder, and are reinstalled everytime they are removed when the DVD is inserted with a handful of DLL's. those are easily removed tho, just clear the c:\temp folder, but disable the nonsense in the services snap-in first so that if and when they come back, they enter your house neutered.

then i went back to mininova to fetch the torrent again. you know, the big one that's about 9 gigs, that way i could what i want and ignore what i already have/ don't want.

it froze again. the freezing was not unlike a hostile take over by a hacker or rogue code where there are no memory buffer overruns, yet plenty of of unfounded cpu clock cycles amping up. when it does this, everything is bitch. simple file browsing is impossible or slow. launching the task manager or any other app killer to terminate the process may never happen, or it may take up to an hour to terminate a process. using a web browser is pointless. right clicking may take half an hour to produce a context menu, that sort of thing. it behaved this way whenever i launched regedit, the command line or a rootkit revealer also, without µTorrent running while Securom was still present.

damn self protecting virii scum.

so i just thought that mayhaps that it be a crappy version of µTorrent, and subsequently downgraded to my previous archived version. nope, that wasn't it. so i went back to the newest µTorrent.

i went back and checked the documentation, and with my older non-crappy version of Zone Alarm, Peer Guardian 2 & Kaspersky AV, the µTorrent product is supposed to play ball nicely. still, i ran µTorrent without these security products in place, and even killed the explorer shell to lighten the load and get rid of other possible hooks.

no. No. NO. no worky. no biscuit for me.

so what started out as Deluxe DVD that failed to load, then would load after the application of some advice, but still was quite alpha-styled buggy, led to more advice that suggested that i apply a more stable EP to the mix to correct the buggy NL code found in Deluxe. and it took me to looking for said EP's via torrent, then a 3 day battle with Securom protecting itself until i removed it (at least i am pretty sure i did. maybe i need to get rid of the game executable too). and i have wound up not being able to do things that i take for granted like launching regedit and a simple command line. since µTorrent was not working, i opened up Opera and tried it's built in torrent client. not as nice, but it works. not this time.

today i spent several hours messing with Bit Tornado and had more luck. i got about 4% of my selected EP cure, but by muckety-muck if it just didn't frig the box before i had to reboot.

i am utterly INCENSED with EA in every regard, and i will be damned if they ever see one of my hard earned pieces of eight AGAIN.

more precisely, I FART IN THEIR GENERAL DIRECTION.

at this point, i do not know if it is Securom or not since i do believe i did successfully remove it, or if the ISP is not jamming things downstream, which is utterly possible, but A) none of these problems existed in any form previous to the Deluxe DVD purchase and B) the ISP jamming i have seen is never this severe.

echo echo echo echo every sentiment. arg, keel-hauling them is mild in comparison to what i have in mind.