Official Survey: They're going to sell individual downloads!?WTF?!

[keirra]

That was quick. I, too, hope that the right people were able to take the survey. Unfortunately, aren't alot of the members at N99 pro-paysite?

[Ink]

Sounds like Second Life all over again. Perhaps we'll have paysites owners selling their files in an EA store and each taking a cut of the profit. Does this mean the stuff couldn't go in the booty because it's technically 'EA' files?

[Xeon_Black]

Perhaps we'll have paysites owners selling their files in an EA store and each taking a cut of the profit.

I think that's what they're planning to do. EA prolly sees there's a huge profit to be made from those paysites, and wants a cut, is why all the while they never really took a stand. I just can't help but feel Thomass or Steve or whoever in TSR knows a big dog in EA and they did some sort of secret shady deal, which is why we see the official Sims 2 site promoting TSR. Who knows, maybe whatever profits TSR made, already a certain percentage of it could be going to EA.

Was the survey recent? If it was, I'm wondering why is it gone so fast. I thought surveys are usually left for quite awhile to gather more insight from the public. 

[Dr House]

I'm chocked. I feared something like that would happen but seeing it taking place is really a living nightmare.
It hurts. All these years of simming, gone away, swept for money. Will Wright's initial idea of the simming community is going to blow up I wonder what would he think of it - unless i'm highly mistaken on him, which wouldn't surprise me after that.
So EA is preparing a payserver for Sims 3. Without me, definetly. 'Hope they change their mind.

[deelink]

If EA are thinking "This is the future of gaming" this is where they want to be for The Sims 3, where they turn it into a second life but for their monetary gain. I mean, individual downloads? At what? 4 bucks a pop? 1 buck a pop?
I hope they choke on their plans and not have a single subscriber.

It will come to a point where the sheepies will play on and play on only to get their money's worth and who really sees that happening?

They won't get my monies, no way. 

[Saraswati]

guys, there's always the option of walking away and refusing to pay them a cent..

[Paden]

That's the route I intend on, and have been going by since BV.

[pixelated]

guys, there's always the option of walking away and refusing to pay them a cent..

Yup. There's just no way that The Sims 3 will get as large a fanbase if they make custom content cost money, and I have no desire to play a game that's clearly just made to make money.

What saddens me the most, having played and been part of the community since Sims 1, is that it'll really ruin the great community that was the reason I didn't get tired of Sims after two weeks. The community is the reason that people stick around for years even though the game quickly goes dull and repetitative. Oh well, they're shooting themselves in the foot with this.

[Markus]

This really disgusts me.

[alia]

Sounds like Second Life all over again. Perhaps we'll have paysites owners selling their files in an EA store and each taking a cut of the profit. Does this mean the stuff couldn't go in the booty because it's technically 'EA' files?

Yep. We don't offer torrents here because they're illegal. Maxis has the right to sell those pixels, just as we have the right not to buy them.

[calalily]

I don't see them teaming up with paysites - particularly if EA is using their own stuff.  Why farm it out to Tom Ass and give him *any* percentage if you made it, took pictures and have a website?

Tom Ass could find himself competing with EA instead.

But if they did that, they would screw the whole idea of custom content sharing.  For a start, anything cloned (like new meshes) would be cloned from content you have to buy, which means that custom content would come to a halt, and stop the spread of the word of the Sims. 

I might be a sucker for the stuff packs, but I would never buy an item at a time.  Never - and certainly not online.

And Xeon Black - the surveys are often only up for a limited time, like 5 hours or so - they get the required number of participants in that time.

[Saraswati]

As far as I'm concerned they can go jump.. if I wanted to pay for content, I'd play Second Life. God forbid.

[Paleoanth]

Tom Ass could find himself competing with EA instead.

But if they did that, they would screw the whole idea of custom content sharing.  For a start, anything cloned (like new meshes) would be cloned from content you have to buy, which means that custom content would come to a halt, and stop the spread of the word of the Sims. 

I might be a sucker for the stuff packs, but I would never buy an item at a time.  Never - and certainly not online.

TSR competing with EA might be kind of fun to watch. 

While, at first the idea kind of shocked me, in some ways it might be nice to be able to get one or two things I wanted instead of buying an entire stuff pack because I wanted one or two things out of it.  I might not buy any EA custom content though.  But, at least I will have a choice to pick and choose.  However, I cannot see how they are going to be able to stop sharing.  There are some VERY clever people in this community, and my best guess is that once they figure out how to crack the items (the haxors won't be able to help themselves, they will try almost immediately), people will be sharing the meshes along with any custom content made from the items.   Illegal or not, people will do it.  Once that happens, this idea will tank.   

Every time EA tries to come up with a way to make things pay, like EAland or SimsOnline, it never seems to go over well. 

[Anouk]

Unless they stomp and destroy fansites all together, this will not be a very good succes during Sims 2. During Sims 3, they can forbid fansites offering content all they like and make it into a system like Second Life where they grab a huge portion of the income withouthaving to create anything. Paying a Sims 3 team to make new content is alot more expensive than letting custom content creators sell their items through them.

[Saraswati]

except if they go down that road, they become at least partially responsible if the content is totally borked or a breach of copyright.