Money-Grubbing Parasites
Jan. 3rd, 2012 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianI am not in a great mood. There are multiple reasons for this. One of the main ones, however, is EA, who have once again gone out of their way to prove that they are more than willing to annoy the living shit out of their customers.
So this weekend, I thought that Sims 3 might be feeling a little neglected, so I switched it on as something to do in between bouts of WRITE ALL THE THINGS (which didn't happen as much as I'd have liked due to lingering bad mood). There was a patch. I installed the patch, then played. It loaded slow, as always, but eventually I got to the Create-a-Sim screen and set to work. All was going fine - I'd fixed the face so that it didn't look quite so ... um ... malformed - and then I went to pick a hairstyle.
At the very top, where you couldn't miss it, were the Sims Store's top three buys of the week or month or whatever. Outlined in gold so that they'd catch the eye. Buttons were gold too, and basically screaming, "CLICK HERE TO SPEND MONEY! LOOK! WE MADE IT EASIER FOR YOU TO BUY OUR STUFF AND THIS ANNOYING GOLD EYE-CATCHING STUFF-YOU-DON'T-HAVE IS JUST GOING TO SIT HERE AND PISS YOU OFF EVERY TIME YOU SWITCH ON THE GAME UNLESS YOU BUY IT!"
I ... was not impressed.
It wasn't just the hair, either. Every. Single. Category of clothing, with the exception of accessories, had three big gold "BUY ME!" button-items at the top of the screen. I was more or less livid. I have spent enough money on this game - on the base game and the expansions and the stuff packs and the occasional splurge on Sims points - that I expect to be allowed to play the damn game in peace without being asked to spend money while I'm playing.
But I got through it with a relative minimum of teeth-grinding and made my Sim and her pet cats. Then I moved them into a house and proceeded to redecorate.
...This "SPEND REAL MONEY!" shit? It's in the Buy Mode too. So now you can spend real money on the fake furniture while you're playing, too. And are, in fact, strongly encouraged (nay, even badgered) to do so while just trying to play the game you've already spent a fair wodge of real cash to enjoy in the first place. I didn't even have the heart to see if that held true for wallpapers and things. I just ragequit.
I also notice that the patch notes don't say a damn thing about them saddling us with this shit. I AM DISPLEASED. At least be up-front about your utterly arrogant intrusive cash-grab, you toffee-nosed, shit-eating babbons' backsides!
The worst part about all this is that I cannot actually get away with not ever supporting EA ever again. Look, they own Bioware. I want to support Bioware. Bioware has provided me with endless entertainment and gave me a fandom again, if indirectly. But if I support Bioware, I am supporting EA too. This displeases me. I don't want EA to have my money. I want Bioware to have my money. But I can't give my money to Bioware without benefitting EA and it sucks.
It's like EA cannot bear anyone else having any money ever in the entire world; they must have ALL THE MONEY ... at the expense of the people giving them ALL THE MONEY. I mean, the game's not there to be played by the people who actually bought it already - oh no. The game is there to make money. So why not dig into the source code and, under the guise of making the game less buggy, add in a little bonus intrusive marketing bullshit? Because you know people are going to click those buttons by accident. Maybe they can't spend money unwittingly, but it'll annoy them enough that they might just buy the crappy custom content to make it go away ... which it will until the next patch, if not sooner.
I love Sims, but the one thing I play it for - the creation of custom characters and living spaces - has become more irritating than I like. So I honestly don't know what to do anymore. I wish they'd just knock it the hell off already.
So this weekend, I thought that Sims 3 might be feeling a little neglected, so I switched it on as something to do in between bouts of WRITE ALL THE THINGS (which didn't happen as much as I'd have liked due to lingering bad mood). There was a patch. I installed the patch, then played. It loaded slow, as always, but eventually I got to the Create-a-Sim screen and set to work. All was going fine - I'd fixed the face so that it didn't look quite so ... um ... malformed - and then I went to pick a hairstyle.
At the very top, where you couldn't miss it, were the Sims Store's top three buys of the week or month or whatever. Outlined in gold so that they'd catch the eye. Buttons were gold too, and basically screaming, "CLICK HERE TO SPEND MONEY! LOOK! WE MADE IT EASIER FOR YOU TO BUY OUR STUFF AND THIS ANNOYING GOLD EYE-CATCHING STUFF-YOU-DON'T-HAVE IS JUST GOING TO SIT HERE AND PISS YOU OFF EVERY TIME YOU SWITCH ON THE GAME UNLESS YOU BUY IT!"
I ... was not impressed.
It wasn't just the hair, either. Every. Single. Category of clothing, with the exception of accessories, had three big gold "BUY ME!" button-items at the top of the screen. I was more or less livid. I have spent enough money on this game - on the base game and the expansions and the stuff packs and the occasional splurge on Sims points - that I expect to be allowed to play the damn game in peace without being asked to spend money while I'm playing.
But I got through it with a relative minimum of teeth-grinding and made my Sim and her pet cats. Then I moved them into a house and proceeded to redecorate.
...This "SPEND REAL MONEY!" shit? It's in the Buy Mode too. So now you can spend real money on the fake furniture while you're playing, too. And are, in fact, strongly encouraged (nay, even badgered) to do so while just trying to play the game you've already spent a fair wodge of real cash to enjoy in the first place. I didn't even have the heart to see if that held true for wallpapers and things. I just ragequit.
I also notice that the patch notes don't say a damn thing about them saddling us with this shit. I AM DISPLEASED. At least be up-front about your utterly arrogant intrusive cash-grab, you toffee-nosed, shit-eating babbons' backsides!
The worst part about all this is that I cannot actually get away with not ever supporting EA ever again. Look, they own Bioware. I want to support Bioware. Bioware has provided me with endless entertainment and gave me a fandom again, if indirectly. But if I support Bioware, I am supporting EA too. This displeases me. I don't want EA to have my money. I want Bioware to have my money. But I can't give my money to Bioware without benefitting EA and it sucks.
It's like EA cannot bear anyone else having any money ever in the entire world; they must have ALL THE MONEY ... at the expense of the people giving them ALL THE MONEY. I mean, the game's not there to be played by the people who actually bought it already - oh no. The game is there to make money. So why not dig into the source code and, under the guise of making the game less buggy, add in a little bonus intrusive marketing bullshit? Because you know people are going to click those buttons by accident. Maybe they can't spend money unwittingly, but it'll annoy them enough that they might just buy the crappy custom content to make it go away ... which it will until the next patch, if not sooner.
I love Sims, but the one thing I play it for - the creation of custom characters and living spaces - has become more irritating than I like. So I honestly don't know what to do anymore. I wish they'd just knock it the hell off already.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-04 12:10 pm (UTC)If you hit them by mistake though, it just asks you if you want to buy points if you have none, which isn't so bad, I suppose. It could be worse, they could easily go the Sims medieval route and disable the ability to create Custom Content all together :(
no subject
Date: 2012-01-04 06:43 pm (UTC)(Also ... given Tumblr, sometimes your icon confuses me. So I thought I'd just be a twin. *g*)