#paywallssuck

Truth: Mods, CC, and other content for the Sims 4 are useless without the game. Once they are created/uploaded to the game, all copyright to those objects IMMEDIATELY transfers to EA. 

I teach art in a Missouri public school. Our state standards dictate that when art students are in middle school grades, they have to learn about copyright, fair use, and creative commons. While I am not a copyright lawyer, I have had to learn enough about this subject to teach it. So allow me to break down a few facts about copyright: 

First, when ya make it, ya own it. There’s not a process to apply for a copyright. The moment you create something that is 100% your own work, you hold the copyright to it. 

Second, when you make something that is created based off of or USING someone else’s intellectual property as a reference or resource it is a fan creation. In art, we call this “fanart”. It is not 100% your own work. Someone else’s intellectual property is involved. 

Fan creations always have tread a very thin and shadowy line when it comes to different companies and the legality of them. You can easily search google for various articles explaining it, but to summarize it in a short method: 

Most companies do not actively go after those who create fan creations unless they are making profits that could instead be going to the creators of the intellectual property. If the fan creation is discovered to be making profits and/or taking the intellectual property in a direction the creator does not approve of, they have legal options to pursue (court, cease and desist letters, etc). 

Third, Copyright can be transferred from person to person. In most cases this is done through a written document that both parties sign, however there IS an exception to this that EA uses to allow itself to transfer your copyrights to your content to them: 

EA’s agreement with you is non-exclusive, meaning that the moment you hit “agree” on the sims 4 terms and conditions, you have handed over your rights to any CC you create for the game. 

If you want to maintain full creative rights over the mesh/mods/etc you make then, you have to not make that content for the sims 4 and make your own platform to host it on. This is way easier said than done. 

Truth: There have been various examples in the past of CC creators who have stolen meshes, bases, bits/pieces of work, or “inspiration” for CC from other sites/companies, who have been called on it publicly. 

The most recent event concerning this was drama concerning itsbrandysims and their use of meshes from imvu/secondlife (you can see my opinion on the subject HERE), but there have been other documented cases. Leosims, for example, has been listed as an example of someone taking meshes from secondlife creators and reuploading them (when it was told to me, I was shown THIS thread as evidence). Another well known creator was accused by a former sims 4 cc creator (who now makes content from second life), and was called out in THIS post in 2019. 

The horrible part of this? Many of these creators are charging people (often at not so great rates as well), for STOLEN content. Content they don’t even own, that they ripped from another place. This should not be accepted by a community that loves a game as much as the Sims 4 community.  Truth: EA has provided a way for people to make money while not hiding content behind paywalls entirely, and the INTENT of this was to OFFSET COSTS.  Almost every post about content locked behind paywalls features this post found on the Sims Forum from 2017. In it, SimGuruDrake, who was the community manager at the time (she has since left the Sims 4 team for another job).  Most of you who have seen this discussion topic before know this post by heart, but I’d like to highlight one important aspect of it: 

One thing that is always important about communication is the intent behind it. The intent for people to be allowed to make patreons and allow early access wasn’t so people could just make money for themselves, the idea was to offset costs to buy programs to make the content. For example, a yearly subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud (which has photoshop, illustrator, etc) costs a couple hundred dollars US a year. If someone was using photoshop to help them create their CC in addition to blender or other free programs, EA/Maxis wanted to allow the creator to not have to pay for making the CC out of pocket.  Can EA/Maxis control what people spend the money they make off of patreon on? No. But it should be noted that the intent of this action was to help people pay for supplies for their hobby more than to make a business out of it. 

Onto the next truth! Truth: There is an image that disputes this post above, however the authenticity of it and timing of it are very disputed. 

This image is often thrown around by people who lock content behind paywalls, but I would like to take a second and try to provide an honest assessment of it.  First of all, I have a bit of a problem with the fact that the original person who “messaged” SimGuruDrake this question has not been identified. This image was not posted on the tumblr of a CC creator who claimed “Hey I reached out to a sims guru and this is the answer I got!” The main pages that have this image are either tweets from CC creators using it to defend their stance on paywalls (ex: here), or tumblrs/tweets “debunking it” (ex: here, here).  I even reverse image searched this image using google, and another platform and could not figure out where this originated from. Of course, I’m not an expert, but...still. 

The fact that the origin of this picture is unknown casts doubt on it. If it were a well known CC maker who is known for being honest, that’s one thing. But the fact that we don’t exactly know where it came from is suspicious. Because frankly, anyone with some decent editing ability could photoshop this. 

Here’s my imperfect edit, but I’m just a self-taught graphics nerd and I am not as dedicated at faking screenshots as some. (And the crap photo quality didn’t help.) Another common issue is that at the supposed “time” that this question was being asked, some state that SimsGuruDrake had already left the Sims 4 team. I will admit, this photo is within the correct timeline, as SimsGuruDrake did not officially depart the sims 4 team until February 2018. (There is a post on the sims forums that has a timestamp that confirms this.) But, if you were in the process of leaving your job within the next month (as a two week/30 day notice is common when leaving a job), would you REALLY be answering questions in DMs on twitter, or be focusing on packing up, and training your successor?  The last thing that really makes me doubt the validity of this picture is the fact that it’s not really easy to message the sims gurus on Twitter. This appears to be twitter from the screenshot (although there are some things that are a little out of place from the current UI): But when I attempt to direct message a sims guru I get this message: 

I even tried seeing if I could reach out via DM to Drake herself, (who now posts under a different twitter) to see if it was possible: 

Could the policies have changed since 2018? Possibly, but I feel that opening up direct messages is just asking for Sims 4 team members to get angry messages, so this could very well be a long running EA policy. I have also reached out to her via a twitter tag (as of 1/2/21), and will update y’all if I get a reply:

Okay, so now that we’ve gone through all of this, let’s talk about the last truth that’s really important:  Truth: Putting content behind paywalls has generally been considered disgusting by many in the sims 4 community, and TAKES AWAY the choice of people to support CC creators they love/appreciate WILLINGLY.  A few notable posts sharing the disgust with this practice can be found: HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE). And these are just what I can find from a simple precursory search.

Okay, Brainiac. So what can we do to solve this problem? 

Well, there’s a few methods we can employ, and sadly, it’s going to take a bit of a commitment and concentrated effort from the community. 

Step #1: Make the COMMUNITY the VICTIM instead of EA. 

Now when I say this, I don’t mean we’re actually victims, but mean that instead of constantly saying things like “WHEN YOU DO THIS YOU VIOLATE EA’S TOU!”, thus making EA the “victim” of the crime. We change the dialog to saying “When you lock stuff behind paywalls, you cheat the sims 4 community and disrespect their choice to support you or not.”  Because let’s be honest. Maxis/EA really doesn’t give much of a care about if people aren’t following this rule. You can report people to the team, but as far as most people have seen, it doesn’t get anywhere. But if we make it where the community is the party being “wronged” it is much harder for those who have paywalls to not be scared. Because the community, in the end, has to be with them.  DepthofPixels had a really amazing post about this HERE. 

Step 2: Decide to not support anyone who puts their content behind exclusive paywalls and do not hesitate to spread the word about why you choose not to do so. 

By that, I mean

not paying any patreon accounts that don’t offer either their content 100% for free, or offer early access.

And sharing about why you choose to do that on your social media. Something I might suggest would be to make it a bit personal and share something like:

Instead of spending $15 a month to get exclusive content from Leosims (or any other patreon/paywall creator here) I’m spending that $15 supporting creator x, creator y, and creator z, who don’t put their work behind paywalls! 

Link their patrons, share why you like their content, and why you take the stance to make the community better. Make it a positive thing, praising the people who are doing RIGHT by the community. 

Yes, you may not get their content for a while (although there are some different places (

x

,

x

) to find them *cough*. But in the end, is it worth supporting someone’s content when they’re treating the community badly? 

Step 3: Report creators who actively steal content from IMVU/secondlife to those respective companies, and all others to EA. (Even though nothing may happen.)

Here’s the deal. When people steal from either of those sites, they are infringing on someone’s copyright, as well as Imvu/secondlife’s copyright as well. It’s not okay, and they should be held accountable for it. Here’s the LINK for submitting a ticket to Secondlife. I haven’t been able to find one for IMVU, but maybe someone else will find one. Let those companies know and allow them to handle those specific creators.  As to the other creators, EA may not handle them at the moment. But IF (and this is a wishful thinking “if”) there were suddenly a flood of messages about certain creators...? I think they might have to pay attention to some of those messages. There is an official report form, but it might even be worth tweeting to SleddingGuruFrost, who is the current community manager asking about their stance on paywalls.  And last but not least: 

Step 4: Make sure that those who are doing the right thing and not putting their work behind paywalls feel appreciated. Show them some love via a tumblr ask, or by tagging them on twitter, or by going up a tier on their patreon (or pledging for the first time). Celebrate these heroes who are creating content and not forcing it on us. 

Us asking for people to give us a choice to support them isn’t being greedy, or disrespecting their time. We just want transparency, and respect from those who create content for the game we love so much versus them treating us like we’re just a source of income. I know it might seem a bit hard to do this for some of you, and for some it may seem like I’m preaching to the choir, but we have to decide where we stand on this issue and stop letting those who abuse this system keep doing it. We can make a difference if we decide as a COMMUNITY to work together.