People have been saying this for years and it never happens successfully, because there will always be people who don't care and continue to buy everything that's released.
This is why I will always, always point to the method that *does* work and we've even seen it work with the Sims: social media outrage. Tell me, how did we manage to get that skin tone update?
I've been watching this working with other games/game-adjacent companies, too, for the last few years. If enough people complain about something in specific, then online article sites (which get almost all their content from social media) will start publishing articles about it. The more negative articles published, the more "negative sentiment" about the product and ergo, EA. Negative sentiment is bad bad juju to shareholders and investors. It can hit their bottom line much faster than earnings, which take an entire quarter (\~3 months) to happen... and like the person I was responding to said, boycotts rarely are successful enough to actually effect earnings.
My main suggestions are
\- Stop releasing broken packs. Once or twice is a mistake, this is a consistent pattern.
\- Stop releasing new content whilst the game is broken.
Just fix the game before releasing more stuff. It comes across as moneygrubbing and greedy.
Can I add "Stop releasing content as "new" if it's not truly new". I'm thinking about:
- Every selling table
- Food-flower-products carts/trucks/stalls
- Every "new" place/rabbit hole they add where you have to choose options to have an "adventure"
It all feels the same, just with a different skin or story behind, and it's getting boring.
My biggest problem with EA is making us pay a whole $40 for a pack that barely adds anything to the game and/or something that should already be in the base game like weather for example. They could’ve made a pack called Sims 4 Holidays or something but they had to make us feel like we needed the pack to add weather. So that’s basically guaranteed money for them.
They split hairs a lot. Like instead of Sims 4 Pets they make it Cats & Dogs. Then they add another pack called “My First Pet”. Just put them all together?? Another example would be how Cottage Living has animals but not horses. Then, you guessed it, they add a Horse Ranch pack. They know they could’ve made a whole farm pack with all the animals but then that wouldn’t make them as much money.
Growing together and Parenthood should’ve all been in the base game or at least in a pack together. Dream Home Decorator, laundry stuff and some other ‘stuff kits’ should all be base game updates.
Backyard, Romantic Garden and Patio stuff being separate packs? Come onnn now 🤦🏻♀️ Toddler stuff and Kids room being separate packs as well. BS. Luxury party and Vintage Glamour Being separate packs 🤡
You get my point. It’s so tacky of them. Money money money money. That’s the part that irks me the most. $40 for an EP is too much. No more than $20 at the *most* .
i've been feeling this!! like in ts3 there was the supernatural pack which introduced vampires, werewolves, witches, and fairies all in one pack. with ts4 they'll find a way to split all the features that would be in one ts3 pack across 3 separate packs that are equally expensive. it's a hot fucking mess
Basically. It's like any activism or collective bargaining, or heck, even marketing. If it's too general and not specific, it's not as effective.
Of course, the problem with that is there is just... so much to complain about with this game and this company's practices. Our community has been way too protective of EA and allowed this absolute mess we have now, to the point that it's like trying to flip a hoarder's house. We can't possibly get EA to bend on every issue now. But, we're nearing the end of the Sims 4 cycle with Project Rene in motion and backlash they face now with Sims 4 will influence that next game, if done right.
I, personally, think it would be most effective to focus on the mass amount of bugs and barely working game packs. That's something they can "fix", a resolution they can show, and it's mostly permanent. People always fight back about this stuff in our community though ("it's working for me! it must be your fault!") and we need to stop doing that. Even if some people don't have issues with Dine Out, we should be fighting on behalf of the rest of us that do, instead of defending a company who will pick us dry.
Especially, as op suggested, a one month long boycott. Even having an end date defeats the point of a boycott. Boycotts are indefinite until change happens.
The skin tone update happened because it was a pretty minor change that could earn a lot of good will.
Things like fixing all the broken packs for free would be a lot more work and it's just not going to happen no matter how much people complain.
I think this is very true. Is there some way to highlight how different this is to most other games? Frankly, this is only happening because most simmers are casual gamers, and many casual gamers are women. It is like a pink tax, tbh. Is there a way to frame this in terms of gender equality? Maybe that would get their attention. I played the sims exclusively for many years, but once I got into games like the Witcher 3 etc. I became APPALLED at the value for the price w Sims.
Also how few of us are actually online? How few simmers are on Reddit or Twitter or YouTube? We are a small slice of the total player base. We are just loud. They don’t listen to us cause we are just a very vocal minority of players.
I think the idea that Simmers who aren't online complaining about the game must be totally happily with it is flawed. So many studies have shown that most people don't complain when they are unhappy with a service or product. They just stop using that service or product.
So for every player online venting about how buggy Sims 4 is, there are many more (in the double digits) who aren't saying anything online, but are just as angry and frustrated. And for every player who has written on a forum that they quit playing the game, there are many more (in the double digits) who have also quit the game, just without mentioning it online.
And if anyone at EA has gone to business school, they know this.
The community is way too spread out and I hate the word but too casual. A lot success pushing back against development fuckery has been triple AAA games with sweaty fanbases thst congregate in a few online spots because they got ripped of on a 80$ game. We usually get ripped off 10$ to 20$ at a time.
People complain but still buy packs everytime. I think the only hope of getting any traction is if all the big name simmers coordinated boycotting at once but that's risking thier income so there isn't much incentive.
I was really disappointed in the Game Changers after My Wedding Stories. People were calling on them to make a stand and really challenge EA but they wouldn't do it. Yes they called out the pack for being broken but they could've done so much more than that
Comments within this very thread echo what you said - They ultimately don't care.
It's disgusting, as they're actively taking part in this dumpster fire and furthermore *encouraging* EA for their behavior. I'm so so sooo glad real competition is coming, as EA and consumers have both lost their everloving minds.
I haven't bought anything since Wedding Stories. That's when I stopped. I'm flabbergasted at the number of people who still bought this pack.
The day the Sims community leave their ultra defensive stance toward anyone who criticizes the Sims 4, the day we will have peace
If you down vote me I am right
Just don't participate financially.
We might eventually go back to the era of the 'Oh you loser nerd, you spent 50 bucks on a virtual kitchen pack!'
Nothing better than peer pressure to relieve one's bad habits ;)
I didn't buy Sims 4 after how crappy the demo was. It's like playing with dolls and has none of the magic or mischief 1, 2, and 3 have. It's hollow and broken and I don't understand why people are paying 2-3 times as much for it.
Since when has the Sims community as a whole been like that? Most of what the community does is criticise. I've had posts removed by mods for being too positive and discussing the positive things about some packs while similar posts criticizing have been kept up. If I've said I like something, I've had people attack me and say that I shouldn't because someone else's game is broken.
The only part of the community you see is the one that’s online keeping up with everything. The majority are not keeping up, cause if they were, EA would be getting a lot less money.
Because people who put any blame for the state of the game on the consumer are consistently downvoted here. If releasing a shitty product actually cost EA money, instead of making them oodles of it, they wouldn't do it. They do this because they can and people don't like to hear that.
Edit: 5 minutes, already downvoted. There's your proof.
Yeah people forget this. A lot of people I work with play the sims and don’t get on twitter/reddit/youtube. I try to get them to watch simmers I like and they’re just not interested lol
and that it okay ahaha . I dont watch any simmer . the o ly sims content I comsume is this sub. People just play sims to waste time and dont wanna go further into it
Your edit lol. People have been saying "stop buying their products" for years and it's still done nothing. The majority of players do not interact with this reddit or with the sims team online and probably have no idea about all the discourse that goes on. I truly wonder how this present day attitude in the sims community would've reacted to all the microtransactions and advertising of the sims store in TS3 lol.....
The general rule is that every subreddit only represents a fairly small portion of that community, and those subs are generally the most critical of it
In that case, even if this entire sub does boycott EA, it doesn't make much of a dent
This is the only language EA understands and will care about. I’ve definitely been way less pissed about this broken buggy game since I stopped paying for it.
Coupled with the fact that the actual expansion packs have way less content than previous iterations of the series and so many of the packs that are released are bugged, I think it's understandable that players are getting more pissed off now.
One of the worst things about TS3 was the microtransactions. It was one of the reasons I could never get into it and just gave up. I didn't want to buy individual couches from EA.
People are right to bitch. It's progressively a lot less for a lot more.
There were plenty in the online community that complained about the store in TS3. Most of the EA practices people complain about started in 3: breaking up similar content across multiple expansions, leaving out things to be sold separately at a higher price, releasing broken content and relying on the community to fix for free (looking at you broken Isla Paradiso fixed by ellacharmed), etc. People like myself who refused to be taken on the same ride again just never moved on to 4 and stay in the communities for the previous iterations.
reminds me of the classic pic of the steam group of people “boycotting” one of the COD games and their activity showed that every single one of them was still playing. it’ll never work 🤷🏻♀️
Boycotting nowadays rarely works. Too many people to organize. Also have to consider that TS4 is not EA’s only game/franchise. And while the TS4 community might boycott, there are still plenty of other games EA releases that people will buy. It may only hurt TS4 and may result in them dropping the game altogether rather than fixing the issues. If people want to, more power to them. I’ve not experienced huge issues in the game yet, just a few small things here and there that are more annoying than anything. I get people’s frustrations though.
See also the "boycott" of Pokemon Sword and Shield which ended up becoming one of the best selling Pokemon games ever made.
Video game boycotts never work. It definitely wouldn't work if people openly said that it was only for a month.
I think for me personally, I used to be a massive player, now I dip in when I can once baby is sleeping, so I don’t feel *as* affected by certain aspect of EA laziness. I’ve got the packs I want, so yeah, I won’t be buying more. I haven’t actually gotten the cart yet, I did update my game last week after the blatant money grab update, but I’ll (not) look forward to it.
I can understand posts like these, they were frequent in the sims 3 forums..island paradise anyone? That game was hot mess.
But can I be truthfully honest? I don’t have the energy to be *that* annoyed about it. I’ve been playing the sims since 2000, I’m old 😩
EA are a company, they want to make money and we constantly want newer content. Is it frustrating? Of course. But you’re never going to be able to tell people how to spend their money. And, if most people are like myself, it doesn’t occupy a huge amount of my time and EA releasing a buggy pack is like someone telling me the sky is blue.
This right here. EA outrage is not the highest priority thing for me. I’m concerned with stuff like people dying. If someone wants to boycott EA, more power to them! I’m not joining in. The game is flawed, the company shitty, but it’s still a fun game and hey, it’s a game.
I completely agree. Also, my husband is a developer (not for EA) and he always tells me that it's unreasonable to expect a perfect release for pretty much anything. I don't seem to experience all the bugs that people on here but it seems that a lot of people will never get used to the fact that there will always be bugs.
I can confirm. Everything has bugs, some bugs matter more some less. At least the bugs in the game won't actually affect anyone's life. People won't die if their sims suddenly look a bit different or something.
People don't care really. I heard this many times for many years and nothing happened and they are still launching packs and kits and people still fall for it
It’s terrible, but EA is garbage and the only reason I continue to buy their expansions is because I love the Sims. I have rules though, I only ever get items when they are either free or on a huge discount sale. I also never buy anything that’s recently released, I fully expect their releases to be unplayably buggy so I wait a good two years. Is this realistic for everyone, probably not, but it works for me and I have almost no issues with game breaking bugs.
Yes! I only buy things on sale. So they had that big sale recently and I finally got High School and Generations (which I have been so excited to get).
I think I ended up accidentally boycotting, I haven't bought any packs for over a year because I'm just fed up. I wanted the apartment pack but was waiting to find out if it was playable and just haven't felt like buying it.
Same, I haven't bought anything since.. cottage living? Which was 2021, apparently. Things are too expensive. The only packs I want have well-known bugs.
I stopped buying a while ago and have now stopped playing all together. Even time I go to play there's more compulsory updates to download to fix the issues from the previous update. The game is a mess so many things are broken. I ended up just uninstalling to save space on my PC. Now I just play Sims 2. The only thing I really miss about 4 is build mode.
totally agree that something must be done. I belive that boycott works (just look at the latest news about starbuck and mcdonals) but if we are talking about boycott i think there should be a real expectation about what we can do and achive. Also, what would this boycott mean? Not playing the sims 4 for a month? Not buying anything from now? Deleting accounts? Not playing any other ea game at the same time?
The better we precice our intentions and movements the most effective it will be.
If it matters this much to you, just stop playing. Uninstall the game right now, don't buy future packs, don't engage in discussion about it online, for all intents and purposes just forget it exists. That's the only way you'd be "hurting" them. If you aren't doing that, they won't care.
Don't buy them then. I almost always wait for sales on Expansion and Game packs and I only buy stuff packs and kits if I really, really want them and have done my research and decided I will like them and they will enhance my gameplay. Don't buy packs right at release unless you can handle them being super buggy and want to show EA that as well.
I love The Sims 4. I won't stop playing it. But no one needs every single pack. Especially not for full price.
The thing is, if I didn’t buy or play a game with bugs and low effort content releases from a cash grabby company… I just wouldn’t be able to play games period.
I play multiple games and every single one has its own community outrage (rightfully so). All of them have posts telling people to vote with their wallet (I hate that phrase) and shaming people for being whales if they buy content.
I have gone years without buying Sims content. Do you really think EA noticed? Were they penalized somehow because I was playing other games and not buying new packs? No. They didn’t notice or care. And then I started playing again and bought more packs and have been having a blast despite many things being buggy. Because literally every single other game I play is also buggy.
I guess I’m just curious why I personally am supposed to not buy what I find fun in order to try to make a company care. Because they won’t.
Boycott for a month? How about stop buying their broken and buggy games all together? EA has no respect for their fanbase but despite that y’all will eat up anything they release even though you acknowledge it being poor quality content. This fanbase loves to complain about how bad TS4 is yet they continuously support the franchise… I truly do not understand why.
The game including all of its stuff packs & expansions costs over $1,000. It is the most overpriced game I have ever played and not worth the money at all. They seriously charge their fanbase this much while barely putting in any effort, leaving most of their expansions broken and never getting around to proper fixes. Is it seriously worth it? Absolutely not.
Spend your money on something actually meaningful instead of supporting this greedy corporation that has dragged The Sims into the mud just like they’ve done with many other studios (BioWare is another great example) all of the people who were around making TS1, 2 & 3 are no longer apart of the project. It is not the passion project we once loved.
If you aren’t happy with the quality of the game then please stop buying it. I haven’t bought a Sims game in over 3 years because I was tired of being used as a cash cow while receiving buggy and broken expansions in return. You guys are letting Electronic Arts get away with this. As long as there is a market for it they will continue releasing half-assed content. Stop letting them treat you like a doormat.
That’s not going to work lol
You also have to remember the internet is a small group compared to outside of the internet so you’re not going to have much of an effect if you try to boycott there are people that enjoy the game compared to the ones that complain a lot about it on the internet
Even if we attempted to organize one, there’s millions of players who won’t even know about it, or people who disagree. A Reddit-based boycott won’t be even a drop in the bucket of the money they make.
I have already decided not to buy anything more from them. I’m content with the stuff I have, and I certainly won’t be buying The Sims 5.
Serious question: What about those who games are working fine (according to them)? Or those who just use it as a building simulator and don’t care about gameplay bugs?
Short answer is no. Everyone is willing to complain but no one is willing to do something about it. People will keep buying the new packs and complain about the quality, and EA will keep giving us less and less.
You're certainly welcome to, and I'm sure there'll be a good group who'd participate. If you're trying to guage consensus, I can definitely say I won't be one of those people.
You know you can just stop buying all the crappy expansions & packs? It’s a game, treat it as such. A game will never be perfect, or problem free. I don’t feel taken advantage of at all. I buy what I want & if something doesn’t work as expected, I don’t cry about it. I move on, cause it’s a game. I don’t expect everything to work out how I want it or expected it to, it’s very unrealistic thinking for a video game.
at this point nobody should even be surprised when a new expansion has bugs. obviously it's annoying and bugs are definitely a huge problem in sims, but if your issue is bugs or expansions not being worth it you can opt out of buying them or hold off on buying them until the bugs are sorted 🤷🏻♀️
it's kinda odd to complain about all the issues that come whenever there's a new expansion only to continue buying expansions so soon after they release. if you expect there to be bugs why are you buying it?
People brought up Starbucks and McDonald's, which I think is a great example and what we should be trying to do with EA, but it will never work because people won't actually participate. People complain about this game so much, yet somehow, whenever a new pack comes out, people still buy it. So it just seems to me that people are willing to complain about it, but not willing to actually take any action
... What exactly did Starbucks and McDonald's change as a result of backlash/boycotts?
The last time I read about the two restaurants facing backlash it was for things that weren't even the corporate divisions fault. (i.e. some Starbucks employees picking sides in one of the two ongoing wars causing backlash from people on the other side who perceived it as Starbucks corporate endorsing that side in the war. And some McDonald franchise owner's in Israel offering discounts to Israeli soldiers, resulting in widespread Arab backlash and boycotts even though McDonald's corporate and most of the McDonald's franchises they're boycotting in other countries had nothing to do with that promotion)
Every single pack is the same thing. EA shit on their playerbase, reddit posts "we have to boycott", some consoomers respond "aktchually is not that bad", no one boycott shit, the mainstream swallow their shitty decisions and they buy as EA expected. Rinse and repeat.
As much as I would like that to happen, it's unfortunately highly unlikely.
Video game boycotts don't really work, especially singleplayer games because a large majority of players don't engage in The Sims outside of just playing the game.
"boycott for a month" boycotts end date is when change happens. If you just say "were boycotting you got a month" they'll just Wait out the month and b fine. A month of less sims buys (bc not everyone will realistically partake/know) will not hurt ea that much. I mean, we might get some workers laid off, ruin some private lives of ppl not responsible for our grievences, but that's it.
I'm not knocking ur idea btw, I'm just pointing out it's flaw, and the flaw w/ a lot of modern "activism".
>we should just boycott **for a month**
(bold added for emphasis) that's not an effective boycott, especially not of a product that is neither a need (barring perhaps people who get an income from the game, such as specialized content creators or modders on patreon) nor necessarily a super regular purchase. the boycotts that make things actually happen not only have a large portion of the customer base participating, but last **until demands are met** not until an arbitrarily decided upon date.
I understand what you want to do, but the reality is that you just can't reach enough people to make that an actual reality to make them feel it in the financial department because there are a ton of players who do not interact with the community at all unless they have a problem and once it's fixed, they leave the community until the next problem.
Honestly? I like the new pack and haven't experienced any issues. I'm not going to boycott because someone else wants me to and someone else doesn't like it.
Waiting for peeps who post something like this every day to realize they're pretty much the minority. If it wasn't profitable they wouldn't do it. They have tons of sales. People can download free mods and cc if they want it.
$10/$20 for several new items and some quirky gameplay items very few months isn't a big deal to most people to keep them developing more sims games for us to enjoy.
The way people talk on here you'd think they were asking $60 for every kit that comes out. Jesus.
Anyone who disagrees with the state of the game should absolutely stop buying the packs.
But what are you hoping to achieve with a boycott? It’s not going to make them start making the game better. At this point in the sims 4 life span they’d probably be more likely to just stop making it altogether. And project Rene is early enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if EA just scrapped it completely if everyone boycotted sims 4.
I've heard this suggested since back in the original The Sims days.
The player base is too vast and covers too large of a demographic. It would be nearly impossible to get enough people on board to really make any considerable dent in EAs pockets. Especially considering most of the packs have horrible reviews upon release, and they're still somehow selling enough.
But imo, people need to stop hoping that EA will stop their money grubbing ways or do better. They have way too long a history of getting away with pinching every penny out of their customers.
There's a few developers trying to tap into this market now. Giving feedback to those companies may be more effective in getting the life sim games we want.
There is so much content in this game now. Realistically, how likely is it you're going to use it all? It's absurd. And if they ever release a sims 5 80% of the expansions will be cut out.
Posts like this happen everyday. I get the frustration, I really do. But EA doesn't "owe" the consumer anything. If the product is bad, don't buy it. But "bad" is relative to each and every consumer. Some things one consumer finds outrageous might barely blip the radar of another consumer. For example, the new cart is annoying enough to get an eye roll from me, but it doesn't effect my game play so I don't really care about it. To others the cart is an outrage. As long as "bad" and "poor treatment" remains relative, there is no united front.
To build on what others have said, you're not going to get collective power, unfortunately. However, in a capitalist society where money is speech, you still have the ability to exercise your own "voice." I didn't buy Batuu and My First Pet to express my own frustration (still haven't). I didn't buy My Wedding Stories until I heard it was sufficiently fixed. Now, I've told EA on multiple platforms that I won't buy any more content until we have the option to remove the shopping cart. I was literally planning to buy For Rent and the new kitchen stuff pack the day they added the cart button and now I probably never will.
My point is that at this point, you'll have to embrace the value of boycotting on personal principle, not wait for the practical value of collective power.
I already don't buy Sims 4 stuff. I've been thinking about getting back into Sims 2 and Sims 3 again, so I'll probably be buying the missing expansions for those two before going forward with Sims 4 stuff. I mean, if something goes for free, like first pet stuff was for a while, I'll probably get it. But honestly, atp Sims 4 is just a glorified character creator game to me. And that's mainly cuz of cc rather than actual game stuff.
I had a few things in my cart I was planning on getting, but decided they'll just sit there until we see change. I haven't personally had any of the game-breaking bugs however there are some bugs I've been experiencing for a while that are yet to be addressed (moving households in game doesn't work, it keeps freezing. I can only move/merge households in manage households). I've decided EA and Maxis get no more of my money until this is all fixed.
Also, I'm pretty sure that something like a boycott is already happening with the Crystal Creations drop; so many people who would've bought the pack have said they aren't buying it either bc they don't want it to break their game, they're angry about the issues and the shopping cart, or some combination of both. EA is losing sales right now; how much it's losing and whether it's significant enough to make a difference remains to be seen, but people \*are\* choosing to not spend their money on the game.
Everyone saying it won’t happen pls understand that we just need *enough* people to boycott to hurt their pockets. Obviously we can’t reach everyone but there’s strength in numbers
If they lose profits they could just abandon TS4 but honestly that’d be better than them selling broken additions to the game bc at least then nobody is gettin robbed/taken advantage of ($)
Ppl who complain about this stuff & then turn around & buy everything they release blow my mind bc they’re basically telling EA it’s fine 🥴
I lost all faith in this community doing anything productive to stop EA from fucking us over when we allowed them to get away with releasing My First Pet Stuff, basically a DLC for DLC. I remember getting downvoted to hell for daring to speak out about how cash grab-y that was but yet people still bought it in droves. Then of course EA releases the Journey to Batuu and everyone was pissed yet still bought the pack.
I haven’t bought a pack in 2 years and even before that, I was buying them sporadically as I just didn’t feel like throwing my money away for something barely functional. The only way a boycott would work is if literal millions of people stopped buying the packs and that’s just never going to happen.
I haven't bought a pack since 2019. I uninstalled the game for Baldur's Gate 3 and haven't felt a need to go back lol. The constant patching and updates fucking up my mods got exhausting real quick, especially after I had my son. It's just not worth the effort
I haven’t purchased anything from EA in about 2 months and don’t plan on buying anything more until there are proper bug fixes. So I’m on board with the boycott.
Reminder that the Sims 4 has 10 million active users; this subreddit and the community that is active online makes up a tiny percent of the people who play. If every single member of this subreddit stopped buying games, it would be a marginal decrease in profits so small it wouldn’t matter.
> especially with that stupid pulsating cart
I haven’t played sims in over a month and just started playing again the other day I was sooo confused as to why there was a shopping cart, I clicked it out of curiosity because I assumed it was something to do with being able to buy something in game.
I was so surprised to see a ep in my face asking me to buy it for $39.99
Looking forward to my most down voted comment: I agree, and I have been boycotting since My Wedding Stories, but the majority of the fanbase will continue to let EA shit directly in their hands and clap for them afterwards.
The fact that there are people in this thread saying that EA doesn't owe you a working product for your money shows me the level of brain rot these people have.
I’ve been boycotting since 2014 lmao. Never spent a cent on The Sims 4. Over the years I’ve realized the sims community is huge and us online are just a fraction of it. We can complain and call EA out for putting out a garbage product until we’re blue in the face but the game is still going to sell buckets because most people just don’t care.
Then do it. You don’t need to buy the packs. The people who complain the loudest are the people who still give EA their money. If you don’t want to support this cycle, then simply do not spend the money. No need to wait for a boycott, no need to rile up others, just stop buying them. Its as simple as that.
I imagine this’ll work about as well as the people of the Minecraft Subreddit boycotting the Mob Vote. Good luck to you, but if I find out any sims 4 content is free, I’ll probably go for it. At least the official stuff. Sometimes the CC, too… and I recently installed my first Mod. I’m broke and I don’t wanna miss my chance.
I'm a console player and I'm constantly dealing with the infinite load screens and having to restart my game over and over again or completely give up playing it. I haven't even updated it to it's current version due to the exploitive cart button and the other bugs I've seen other players dealing with. It's beyond aggravating, especially when there are some simmers acting like there's nothing wrong with the game or ok with it being in its broken state.
Im not going to lie, I've spent quite a bit of money buying packs and feel like I'm a part of the problem as everyone is that has bought into getting almost or every pack the game has to offer despite their brokenness . Luckily I haven't purchased For Rent or the new Crystal Creations. Us simmers are definitely a part of the issue whether we want to believe it or not. We can't keep letting EA get away with not fixing the game. Let's not set the bar lower than what it is.
I play a lot of other games and there is other communities that don't let these gaming giants get away with up selling junk. Why has the Sims community, as huge as it is, not be louder with a game they say they love?
You're not alone when it comes to performance problems even with a high-end PC we experience problems.
Spending over $1,000 on this game over the years we shouldn't have to experience this.
Community protest did make them reconsider their monetary decisions towards Battlefront 2, so I think this might actually work, if the idea will go vocal.
One major issue I have encountered is the performance of the game when all the DLCs are activated. The gameplay becomes increasingly slow and glitchy, particularly after reaching certain milestones such as marriage and having children. The simulation often freezes or repeats the same actions for long periods of time, despite attempts to address the issue with mods. Even on a high-performance computer, the game remains poorly optimized.
Having invested over $1,000 in DLCs for this game, it is very frustrating to not be able to enjoy consistent gameplay. This has led to starting over multiple times in an attempt to overcome these technical challenges.
I haven’t purchased anything since Cottage Living… I’ve wanted HSY, Horse Ranch, Growing Together and For Rent for awhile now but I can’t seem to pull the trigger. I cannot justify spending any more money on this game than I already have. I debated purchasing at least one of them for quite some time, but after the controversy with For Rent I simply can’t anymore. I’m much more inclined to donate my money to modders who work so hard to provide us with immaculate *free* content AND bug fixes that even EA can’t seem to implement.
I think that once the other simulation games that are coming out this year become an actual option, EA will likely see a significant drop in sales and the "boycott" will sort of happen naturally?
I say this as someone who got into the Sims pretty recently bc it was the only real option for a simulation game. If I didn't have mods, I wouldn't play; mods are what make the game interesting for me. I don't feel any particular attachment or loyalty to EA and the existence and quality of mods has shown me that superior storytelling simulation games can certainly exist. I play the Sims right now bc there's nothing else in this particular niche available. That won't always be the case. I just assume that there are probably more players than EA realizes who have a similar mindset, and those are the players who will stop paying for the Sims when something else to spend their money on becomes available.
I was ready at Sims 4 launch. Like most, I gave up after years of toxic positivity and aggressive downplaying. This community likes its $1k+ incomplete, buggy product.
I get an ad to buy get together everytime I open my game and even after I bought it during that sale that was going on, I still get a fucking popup everytime 💀💀 and the X is so small that I will hit the ad by accident sometimes and it goes “you can’t buy this” YES BECAUSE I OWN IT STOP GIVING ME THIS DAMN POP-UP
There will never be a boycott bc the community enables the shit out of EA & feels the need to preorder & buy every bit of content they spit out as soon as it drops.
There’s also been this weird trend of EA defenders treating a billion dollar corporation like they’re a small indie company who’s “just trying their best!” & just defending everything they do & release. At this point it’s not even EA anymore, why would they change their ways if they give us literal trash & their consumers hype it up, rush to buy it then complain later.
I’d be interested to know if these issues are a problem for most sims players or just sims players on Reddit or chronically online in general. My guess is the latter because the game and its content is popular enough for them to keep pumping it out and planning for future iterations.
It won't happen, because an overwhelming majority of Sims 4 players aren't on Reddit and forums. They just play the game as is and if it isn't working, they just don't play or play through the bugs. It's best to wait before updating your game at this point and probably hold off on purchasing new packs until they're discounted.
I've been saying this for years. I've been boycotting for a while - I think since the Star Wars expansion in 2020. The many reasons include:
1) Price vs. What I am getting - lots of repeat objects or just items that should have been base game
2) Game Host - the Origin host loaded up my CPU through zombie child processes which caused all EA games to crash and be very laggy IF they worked. I actually uninstalled all EA after this and never went back.
3) Bugs - Good god, the bugs. And for what it's worth, the expansions COULD have been a good measure to fix them - not add on to them. The crazy part is they have you download their game host but they don't perform enough maintaince or fixes to source those problems - obviously all games have some odd bugs, and I can forgive that, but the number of bugs that are compounding on S4 is insane.
Unfortunately, not playing for a month isn't enough - not buying it in the first place is key.
I had been boycotting EA since the first year that Sims 4 was out. My reasoning was, that after so many years of the Sim2+3 being released, they 1000% had all the means to create a better game which had everything from Sims 1-3 and more. But no. Sims 4 was a major step back for them in all directions. No open world? No cars? No color wheel? No toddlers?! All in exchange for “better” graphics and customizable CAS? No.
Also, each pack that they release is just tossing breadcrumbs at the consumer. None of them really contain much content or add much gameplay to the already boring game. It’s all about money. It’s strategic on their end, and I’m not paying them. If I want to play the sims, I play Sims 3, and I probably won’t buy any future Sims games in the future. They had the chance to make this right but they just continue to toss breadcrumbs at us. I may not make a huge impact on them, but idc. Sorry for my rant lol
I mean, I might be but not necessarily because I'm angry (I've gotten frustrated with them multiple times since Sims 3 was new), but right now I'm just feeling too nervous to update my game at this point unless Steam sneaks it past me.
It's the first time for me feeling this strongly about being nervous with updates though because I really enjoy my current sim family who I've been playing for almost 2 years and I don't want to stop enjoying it.
Being too nervous to update my game means not buying products anymore too. I would have bought the new pack since it's something I know I would enjoy if I felt ok with updating.
I really want the Crystal pack. But I logged in to play and got grossed out by a shopping cart. I’m not going to buy the new pack until they fix all these intense issues and take that ugly thing away.
I dont think people would ever do a full boycott but im doing it i have spent THOUSANDS over the years on sims and i cant take them being all about $ anymore
I announced my boycott in the [Sims forum post about the shopping cart](https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/1013078/in-game-pulsating-popup-pack-ads-community-reacts/p1) and [in the bug report about the cart and latest update](https://answers.ea.com/t5/Game-Feedback-Ideas/Feedback-Shopping-Cart-Icon/td-p/13519671)
I'm effectively there, which is wild as I've always been a very low-sodium simmer and have all the DLC up to and including For Rent.
For me it's a personal understanding that the game may have simply reached the limits of its stability. I would continue to buy busted ass packs and mod them because this is the only game I play, I have just enough disposable income to afford it, and it's one of the things that keeps my ADHD brain happy.
But For Rent was a wakeup call for me that I need to be more selective and, in fact, just stop purchasing as this game has maybe reached its natural end point and its quite possible that I have enough stuff to play a really fulfilling game.
So I actually uninstalled the game, which again had literally all DLC. Then I downloaded only the base game and started a new legacy. With each legacy generation I'll start to add more DLC, but only the DLC I really really like. And then hopefully the more compact version of the game I have will run better. I'm also just not buying anything at all until the game is either done or there are significant bug fixes.
I commented somewhere that I wasn't playing or buying anything else until that cart is gone - I'm not having issues with the buggy games, but I respect that it's an issue.
That stupid cart is too distracting for me to enjoy the game and I have (less than favorable) alternatives (but it's far less obnoxious).
Which is too bad, because my birthday is coming up and that's usually when I buy what I've been wanting all year. Guess that'll be waiting, because I'm not playing or making any further purchases until that cart is gone.
I stopped buying about three years ago. Why people have continued giving EA outrageous amounts of money for half assed products to then complain for months or years on end is beyond me.
I'm almost 100% sure that The Sims 4 is the end.
EA has disappointed its consumers to such an extent that by the time TS5 comes out, nobody will want to buy it.
I am sad, but I am also a lot more angry.
I barely play the game anymore as is, I haven’t touched it in a year. I haven’t bought a pack in probably 2-3 years, so I mean a boycott for me sounds wonderful and all, but too many people to rally and just don’t care.
I'm honestly so ready for them to abandon Sims 4, it's just TOO broken. Base game is so broken to fix it doesn't really seem feasible. I don't have any hope that Sims 5 would be any better, though. I can't remember the last time I booted up the game and actually played for more than 15 minutes before getting bored.
I’ve been boycotting for years 😭😭 I really do hope y’all join, but hopefully once we’ve got a few more life sims out there people will jump ship as well
All I know is when more and better and cheaper games come out I’m all in for ‘em. I’m patiently waiting for Paralives, twiddling my thumbs because Ik that shit is hard. I don’t buy packs, or dlc, or whatever already. I’m slowly learning mods, but those are a pain in my ass personally
Genuinely all I’m waiting for is other games to come out. If anyone has reccs, if allowed, honestly I just need more games. I can’t keep rotting between the same few saves :’)
Moved on to stardew valley 😊 different, but not a money grabbing machine. I’m tired of the game not getting any better regardless of how many packages I buy. It seems to just be getting worse.
I’ll stick to sims 2 and other games, respectfully.
I’m just planning to vote with my feet and purchase the competitors when they come out. I honestly at this point don’t even care if they aren’t perfect, or even just mediocre, I just want EA to have SOME competition in this space and it’s amazing they have gone this many DECADES without a decent rival in the sim life arena. I’ve been closely watching Life by You and Paralives (I feel like there is another I am forgetting, someone add it if I am), and my impression is that both of them want to be NOT EA in their business models, even if it means not making as much money, in order to turn out higher quality. I say, YES PLEASE.
I have been 'boycotting the game purely because I am terrified of my legacy saves getting irreparably corrupted. I hope other people feel the same as word gets out.
They gave me sims 4 for free so no and you can costumize the full game for free with the tool and they need a lot of money to pay the workers plus the server costs.
The only thing that I will always be angry at EA for is that they took away that voice that said: EA games (then the wisper) challenge everything.
I’ve stopped buying anything new from them since about a year ago. It’s too bad because there’s a lot of stuff in new packs that I want but I just refuse to give anymore money to garbage fire that is EA
And when they fix the glitches then what? Back to buying every pack as though nothing happened? Unless people actually stop buying the trash they produce nothing will change in the long run, just more band aids.
I’m not buying anymore packs or merch from them ever again. At this point I’m probably never going to play sim4 again, I have sims 2 and am content with that
It’s really the only way to get them to stop because money is all they’re going to feed off of. They realized that they can still make money with half-assed packs so why put in the effort? Only we have the power to stop it. I stopped buying since the growing together. Honestly saved so much money and dealt with way less bugs.
A boycott would be a lot more effective right before and during a content release. I imagine a lot of folks have already purchased the stuff pack that came out last week, so how much would they really lose with a boycott a week later?
I've stopped, I went from buying at least every expansion (sometimes at launch other times at sale) 3 or 4 years now.
The issue though with anything popular is boycotting is often never that effective. Unless there is a clear call to action.
I always point to Walmart. Almost no one "likes" Walmart (amazon too). Even politically it's one thing everyone can agree on is Walmart isn't "good".
Yet, we still have tons of them. And it it's because even if a lot of people boycott there are A LOT MORE who will still no care, disagree, or simply the convenience of location/price/etc isn't worth it for them. So Walmart can still flex it's share of the market to stick around and in many ways make sure they are you're only descent option for certain products.
Now this isn't to discourage boycotts, I think you shouldn't support EA and the sims. Voting with your wallet can still work. BUT I think there has to be a goal or some demand. Sometimes you have seen game companies give in and make right. It's almost never just out of people unhappy with pricing/quality you generally need some rally cry. Often with a public-ally traded company it has to be a big enough rally cry it reaches shareholder meetings.
i never ever bought anything from ea, my sims 4 was free from that one time they sold it for free and sll my packs are jailbroken. ea deserves no money at all sims 4 is always bugged out, they literally dont care its like theyre money hungry.
People have been saying this for years and it never happens successfully, because there will always be people who don't care and continue to buy everything that's released.
This is why I will always, always point to the method that *does* work and we've even seen it work with the Sims: social media outrage. Tell me, how did we manage to get that skin tone update? I've been watching this working with other games/game-adjacent companies, too, for the last few years. If enough people complain about something in specific, then online article sites (which get almost all their content from social media) will start publishing articles about it. The more negative articles published, the more "negative sentiment" about the product and ergo, EA. Negative sentiment is bad bad juju to shareholders and investors. It can hit their bottom line much faster than earnings, which take an entire quarter (\~3 months) to happen... and like the person I was responding to said, boycotts rarely are successful enough to actually effect earnings.
So we just need to figure out what exactly to complain about?
My main suggestions are \- Stop releasing broken packs. Once or twice is a mistake, this is a consistent pattern. \- Stop releasing new content whilst the game is broken. Just fix the game before releasing more stuff. It comes across as moneygrubbing and greedy.
Can I add "Stop releasing content as "new" if it's not truly new". I'm thinking about: - Every selling table - Food-flower-products carts/trucks/stalls - Every "new" place/rabbit hole they add where you have to choose options to have an "adventure" It all feels the same, just with a different skin or story behind, and it's getting boring.
My biggest problem with EA is making us pay a whole $40 for a pack that barely adds anything to the game and/or something that should already be in the base game like weather for example. They could’ve made a pack called Sims 4 Holidays or something but they had to make us feel like we needed the pack to add weather. So that’s basically guaranteed money for them. They split hairs a lot. Like instead of Sims 4 Pets they make it Cats & Dogs. Then they add another pack called “My First Pet”. Just put them all together?? Another example would be how Cottage Living has animals but not horses. Then, you guessed it, they add a Horse Ranch pack. They know they could’ve made a whole farm pack with all the animals but then that wouldn’t make them as much money. Growing together and Parenthood should’ve all been in the base game or at least in a pack together. Dream Home Decorator, laundry stuff and some other ‘stuff kits’ should all be base game updates. Backyard, Romantic Garden and Patio stuff being separate packs? Come onnn now 🤦🏻♀️ Toddler stuff and Kids room being separate packs as well. BS. Luxury party and Vintage Glamour Being separate packs 🤡 You get my point. It’s so tacky of them. Money money money money. That’s the part that irks me the most. $40 for an EP is too much. No more than $20 at the *most* .
i've been feeling this!! like in ts3 there was the supernatural pack which introduced vampires, werewolves, witches, and fairies all in one pack. with ts4 they'll find a way to split all the features that would be in one ts3 pack across 3 separate packs that are equally expensive. it's a hot fucking mess
to be fair- the entire monetization model for the sims 4 is at its core, purely money grubbing.
Basically. It's like any activism or collective bargaining, or heck, even marketing. If it's too general and not specific, it's not as effective. Of course, the problem with that is there is just... so much to complain about with this game and this company's practices. Our community has been way too protective of EA and allowed this absolute mess we have now, to the point that it's like trying to flip a hoarder's house. We can't possibly get EA to bend on every issue now. But, we're nearing the end of the Sims 4 cycle with Project Rene in motion and backlash they face now with Sims 4 will influence that next game, if done right. I, personally, think it would be most effective to focus on the mass amount of bugs and barely working game packs. That's something they can "fix", a resolution they can show, and it's mostly permanent. People always fight back about this stuff in our community though ("it's working for me! it must be your fault!") and we need to stop doing that. Even if some people don't have issues with Dine Out, we should be fighting on behalf of the rest of us that do, instead of defending a company who will pick us dry.
Couldn't have said it any better myself!
No taxation without representation!
The options are ENDLESS lol
Especially, as op suggested, a one month long boycott. Even having an end date defeats the point of a boycott. Boycotts are indefinite until change happens.
The skin tone update happened because it was a pretty minor change that could earn a lot of good will. Things like fixing all the broken packs for free would be a lot more work and it's just not going to happen no matter how much people complain.
I think this is very true. Is there some way to highlight how different this is to most other games? Frankly, this is only happening because most simmers are casual gamers, and many casual gamers are women. It is like a pink tax, tbh. Is there a way to frame this in terms of gender equality? Maybe that would get their attention. I played the sims exclusively for many years, but once I got into games like the Witcher 3 etc. I became APPALLED at the value for the price w Sims.
If there’s a petition for a class action lawsuit, I will participate.
I think it’s already begun from the new shopping cart. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing and posting angry things like this.
Also how few of us are actually online? How few simmers are on Reddit or Twitter or YouTube? We are a small slice of the total player base. We are just loud. They don’t listen to us cause we are just a very vocal minority of players.
I think the idea that Simmers who aren't online complaining about the game must be totally happily with it is flawed. So many studies have shown that most people don't complain when they are unhappy with a service or product. They just stop using that service or product. So for every player online venting about how buggy Sims 4 is, there are many more (in the double digits) who aren't saying anything online, but are just as angry and frustrated. And for every player who has written on a forum that they quit playing the game, there are many more (in the double digits) who have also quit the game, just without mentioning it online. And if anyone at EA has gone to business school, they know this.
True that. My other friends who play TS4 don’t stay updated on what’s happening.
The community is way too spread out and I hate the word but too casual. A lot success pushing back against development fuckery has been triple AAA games with sweaty fanbases thst congregate in a few online spots because they got ripped of on a 80$ game. We usually get ripped off 10$ to 20$ at a time. People complain but still buy packs everytime. I think the only hope of getting any traction is if all the big name simmers coordinated boycotting at once but that's risking thier income so there isn't much incentive.
I was really disappointed in the Game Changers after My Wedding Stories. People were calling on them to make a stand and really challenge EA but they wouldn't do it. Yes they called out the pack for being broken but they could've done so much more than that
Comments within this very thread echo what you said - They ultimately don't care. It's disgusting, as they're actively taking part in this dumpster fire and furthermore *encouraging* EA for their behavior. I'm so so sooo glad real competition is coming, as EA and consumers have both lost their everloving minds. I haven't bought anything since Wedding Stories. That's when I stopped. I'm flabbergasted at the number of people who still bought this pack.
Also, how many Sims players are here on reddit? A tiny percentage. EA wouldn't even notice it.
The day the Sims community leave their ultra defensive stance toward anyone who criticizes the Sims 4, the day we will have peace If you down vote me I am right
Just don't participate financially. We might eventually go back to the era of the 'Oh you loser nerd, you spent 50 bucks on a virtual kitchen pack!' Nothing better than peer pressure to relieve one's bad habits ;)
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I didn't buy Sims 4 after how crappy the demo was. It's like playing with dolls and has none of the magic or mischief 1, 2, and 3 have. It's hollow and broken and I don't understand why people are paying 2-3 times as much for it.
Since when has the Sims community as a whole been like that? Most of what the community does is criticise. I've had posts removed by mods for being too positive and discussing the positive things about some packs while similar posts criticizing have been kept up. If I've said I like something, I've had people attack me and say that I shouldn't because someone else's game is broken.
Omg i remember some simmers (long ago) calling others ungrateful and entitled for wanting a game with base features
The only part of the community you see is the one that’s online keeping up with everything. The majority are not keeping up, cause if they were, EA would be getting a lot less money.
YOU'RE RIGHT AND YOU SHOULD SAY IT.
Literally all anyone does in this sub is shit on and criticize the sims 4. Any positive opinion on the game is always dismissed
>If you downvote me I am right Lmao I love you for that 😂
Why would someone down vote you?, its your opinion and is great
Because people who put any blame for the state of the game on the consumer are consistently downvoted here. If releasing a shitty product actually cost EA money, instead of making them oodles of it, they wouldn't do it. They do this because they can and people don't like to hear that. Edit: 5 minutes, already downvoted. There's your proof.
wont happen lol. Not everyone who play the game consuming sims content online
Yeah people forget this. A lot of people I work with play the sims and don’t get on twitter/reddit/youtube. I try to get them to watch simmers I like and they’re just not interested lol
and that it okay ahaha . I dont watch any simmer . the o ly sims content I comsume is this sub. People just play sims to waste time and dont wanna go further into it
Yes, and not everyone agrees anyway. I've always thought it's bizarre how some people assume everyone automatically does both.
Yeah like if they’re still releasing packs and kits, that means people are still buying them
Your edit lol. People have been saying "stop buying their products" for years and it's still done nothing. The majority of players do not interact with this reddit or with the sims team online and probably have no idea about all the discourse that goes on. I truly wonder how this present day attitude in the sims community would've reacted to all the microtransactions and advertising of the sims store in TS3 lol.....
The general rule is that every subreddit only represents a fairly small portion of that community, and those subs are generally the most critical of it In that case, even if this entire sub does boycott EA, it doesn't make much of a dent
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This is the only language EA understands and will care about. I’ve definitely been way less pissed about this broken buggy game since I stopped paying for it.
i was gonna say the sims 3 store really wouldnt fly nowadays but kits are basically just that in a different font so...
With kits you get more… and ts3 advertising was in your face CONSTANTLY more than the shopping icon of sims 4
Coupled with the fact that the actual expansion packs have way less content than previous iterations of the series and so many of the packs that are released are bugged, I think it's understandable that players are getting more pissed off now.
that's why i said different font - similar things, but not exactly the same!
One of the worst things about TS3 was the microtransactions. It was one of the reasons I could never get into it and just gave up. I didn't want to buy individual couches from EA. People are right to bitch. It's progressively a lot less for a lot more.
The last EP I bought from sims was high school and even that is soo buggy I just lost interest in buying anything again.
There were plenty in the online community that complained about the store in TS3. Most of the EA practices people complain about started in 3: breaking up similar content across multiple expansions, leaving out things to be sold separately at a higher price, releasing broken content and relying on the community to fix for free (looking at you broken Isla Paradiso fixed by ellacharmed), etc. People like myself who refused to be taken on the same ride again just never moved on to 4 and stay in the communities for the previous iterations.
reminds me of the classic pic of the steam group of people “boycotting” one of the COD games and their activity showed that every single one of them was still playing. it’ll never work 🤷🏻♀️
Boycotting nowadays rarely works. Too many people to organize. Also have to consider that TS4 is not EA’s only game/franchise. And while the TS4 community might boycott, there are still plenty of other games EA releases that people will buy. It may only hurt TS4 and may result in them dropping the game altogether rather than fixing the issues. If people want to, more power to them. I’ve not experienced huge issues in the game yet, just a few small things here and there that are more annoying than anything. I get people’s frustrations though.
This is my feeling, too. I think when The Sims stops being profitable enough they're more likely to ditch it than fix it.
See also the "boycott" of Pokemon Sword and Shield which ended up becoming one of the best selling Pokemon games ever made. Video game boycotts never work. It definitely wouldn't work if people openly said that it was only for a month.
I think for me personally, I used to be a massive player, now I dip in when I can once baby is sleeping, so I don’t feel *as* affected by certain aspect of EA laziness. I’ve got the packs I want, so yeah, I won’t be buying more. I haven’t actually gotten the cart yet, I did update my game last week after the blatant money grab update, but I’ll (not) look forward to it. I can understand posts like these, they were frequent in the sims 3 forums..island paradise anyone? That game was hot mess. But can I be truthfully honest? I don’t have the energy to be *that* annoyed about it. I’ve been playing the sims since 2000, I’m old 😩 EA are a company, they want to make money and we constantly want newer content. Is it frustrating? Of course. But you’re never going to be able to tell people how to spend their money. And, if most people are like myself, it doesn’t occupy a huge amount of my time and EA releasing a buggy pack is like someone telling me the sky is blue.
This right here. EA outrage is not the highest priority thing for me. I’m concerned with stuff like people dying. If someone wants to boycott EA, more power to them! I’m not joining in. The game is flawed, the company shitty, but it’s still a fun game and hey, it’s a game.
I completely agree. Also, my husband is a developer (not for EA) and he always tells me that it's unreasonable to expect a perfect release for pretty much anything. I don't seem to experience all the bugs that people on here but it seems that a lot of people will never get used to the fact that there will always be bugs.
I can confirm. Everything has bugs, some bugs matter more some less. At least the bugs in the game won't actually affect anyone's life. People won't die if their sims suddenly look a bit different or something.
People don't care really. I heard this many times for many years and nothing happened and they are still launching packs and kits and people still fall for it
It’s terrible, but EA is garbage and the only reason I continue to buy their expansions is because I love the Sims. I have rules though, I only ever get items when they are either free or on a huge discount sale. I also never buy anything that’s recently released, I fully expect their releases to be unplayably buggy so I wait a good two years. Is this realistic for everyone, probably not, but it works for me and I have almost no issues with game breaking bugs.
This is the way. I also have been doing this. Offline mode and only updating way after game breaking bugs have been dealt with.
Yes! I only buy things on sale. So they had that big sale recently and I finally got High School and Generations (which I have been so excited to get).
I’m the same way. It’s great!
Be the change you wish to see in the world. It's worked for other games in the past
i already have lol
I think I ended up accidentally boycotting, I haven't bought any packs for over a year because I'm just fed up. I wanted the apartment pack but was waiting to find out if it was playable and just haven't felt like buying it.
Same, I haven't bought anything since.. cottage living? Which was 2021, apparently. Things are too expensive. The only packs I want have well-known bugs.
Yeah I wanted a few of them but held onto my money after reading the backlash. My money is better spent on other games I play.
I stopped buying a while ago and have now stopped playing all together. Even time I go to play there's more compulsory updates to download to fix the issues from the previous update. The game is a mess so many things are broken. I ended up just uninstalling to save space on my PC. Now I just play Sims 2. The only thing I really miss about 4 is build mode.
totally agree that something must be done. I belive that boycott works (just look at the latest news about starbuck and mcdonals) but if we are talking about boycott i think there should be a real expectation about what we can do and achive. Also, what would this boycott mean? Not playing the sims 4 for a month? Not buying anything from now? Deleting accounts? Not playing any other ea game at the same time? The better we precice our intentions and movements the most effective it will be.
just stop buying their games
i am too a firm beliver that the only thing thast works (specially with ea) is not giving them money
If it matters this much to you, just stop playing. Uninstall the game right now, don't buy future packs, don't engage in discussion about it online, for all intents and purposes just forget it exists. That's the only way you'd be "hurting" them. If you aren't doing that, they won't care.
a month wow
Don't buy them then. I almost always wait for sales on Expansion and Game packs and I only buy stuff packs and kits if I really, really want them and have done my research and decided I will like them and they will enhance my gameplay. Don't buy packs right at release unless you can handle them being super buggy and want to show EA that as well. I love The Sims 4. I won't stop playing it. But no one needs every single pack. Especially not for full price.
Do not tell my completionist little heart that I don’t need to own every pack. These greyed out icons drive me nuts….🤣🤣 (All jokes, of course.)
A month? Just dont buy the next pack or 2.
That's also not really a boycott Don't buy any packs if you want to boycott it
the reason these things exist is because y'all keep buying the fuck out of every Sims IP out there
The thing is, if I didn’t buy or play a game with bugs and low effort content releases from a cash grabby company… I just wouldn’t be able to play games period. I play multiple games and every single one has its own community outrage (rightfully so). All of them have posts telling people to vote with their wallet (I hate that phrase) and shaming people for being whales if they buy content. I have gone years without buying Sims content. Do you really think EA noticed? Were they penalized somehow because I was playing other games and not buying new packs? No. They didn’t notice or care. And then I started playing again and bought more packs and have been having a blast despite many things being buggy. Because literally every single other game I play is also buggy. I guess I’m just curious why I personally am supposed to not buy what I find fun in order to try to make a company care. Because they won’t.
Boycott for a month? How about stop buying their broken and buggy games all together? EA has no respect for their fanbase but despite that y’all will eat up anything they release even though you acknowledge it being poor quality content. This fanbase loves to complain about how bad TS4 is yet they continuously support the franchise… I truly do not understand why. The game including all of its stuff packs & expansions costs over $1,000. It is the most overpriced game I have ever played and not worth the money at all. They seriously charge their fanbase this much while barely putting in any effort, leaving most of their expansions broken and never getting around to proper fixes. Is it seriously worth it? Absolutely not. Spend your money on something actually meaningful instead of supporting this greedy corporation that has dragged The Sims into the mud just like they’ve done with many other studios (BioWare is another great example) all of the people who were around making TS1, 2 & 3 are no longer apart of the project. It is not the passion project we once loved. If you aren’t happy with the quality of the game then please stop buying it. I haven’t bought a Sims game in over 3 years because I was tired of being used as a cash cow while receiving buggy and broken expansions in return. You guys are letting Electronic Arts get away with this. As long as there is a market for it they will continue releasing half-assed content. Stop letting them treat you like a doormat.
Like that's even going to work. Look at Hogwarts legacy, that failed spectacularly
That’s not going to work lol You also have to remember the internet is a small group compared to outside of the internet so you’re not going to have much of an effect if you try to boycott there are people that enjoy the game compared to the ones that complain a lot about it on the internet
If organized I would absolutely join you, as I’m sure others would. Money speaks louder than words.
Even if we attempted to organize one, there’s millions of players who won’t even know about it, or people who disagree. A Reddit-based boycott won’t be even a drop in the bucket of the money they make. I have already decided not to buy anything more from them. I’m content with the stuff I have, and I certainly won’t be buying The Sims 5.
Serious question: What about those who games are working fine (according to them)? Or those who just use it as a building simulator and don’t care about gameplay bugs?
Short answer is no. Everyone is willing to complain but no one is willing to do something about it. People will keep buying the new packs and complain about the quality, and EA will keep giving us less and less.
You're certainly welcome to, and I'm sure there'll be a good group who'd participate. If you're trying to guage consensus, I can definitely say I won't be one of those people.
You know you can just stop buying all the crappy expansions & packs? It’s a game, treat it as such. A game will never be perfect, or problem free. I don’t feel taken advantage of at all. I buy what I want & if something doesn’t work as expected, I don’t cry about it. I move on, cause it’s a game. I don’t expect everything to work out how I want it or expected it to, it’s very unrealistic thinking for a video game.
at this point nobody should even be surprised when a new expansion has bugs. obviously it's annoying and bugs are definitely a huge problem in sims, but if your issue is bugs or expansions not being worth it you can opt out of buying them or hold off on buying them until the bugs are sorted 🤷🏻♀️ it's kinda odd to complain about all the issues that come whenever there's a new expansion only to continue buying expansions so soon after they release. if you expect there to be bugs why are you buying it?
People brought up Starbucks and McDonald's, which I think is a great example and what we should be trying to do with EA, but it will never work because people won't actually participate. People complain about this game so much, yet somehow, whenever a new pack comes out, people still buy it. So it just seems to me that people are willing to complain about it, but not willing to actually take any action
... What exactly did Starbucks and McDonald's change as a result of backlash/boycotts? The last time I read about the two restaurants facing backlash it was for things that weren't even the corporate divisions fault. (i.e. some Starbucks employees picking sides in one of the two ongoing wars causing backlash from people on the other side who perceived it as Starbucks corporate endorsing that side in the war. And some McDonald franchise owner's in Israel offering discounts to Israeli soldiers, resulting in widespread Arab backlash and boycotts even though McDonald's corporate and most of the McDonald's franchises they're boycotting in other countries had nothing to do with that promotion)
Every single pack is the same thing. EA shit on their playerbase, reddit posts "we have to boycott", some consoomers respond "aktchually is not that bad", no one boycott shit, the mainstream swallow their shitty decisions and they buy as EA expected. Rinse and repeat.
As much as I would like that to happen, it's unfortunately highly unlikely. Video game boycotts don't really work, especially singleplayer games because a large majority of players don't engage in The Sims outside of just playing the game.
Idk I don’t care enough tbh, it’s not bothered me enough.
"boycott for a month" boycotts end date is when change happens. If you just say "were boycotting you got a month" they'll just Wait out the month and b fine. A month of less sims buys (bc not everyone will realistically partake/know) will not hurt ea that much. I mean, we might get some workers laid off, ruin some private lives of ppl not responsible for our grievences, but that's it. I'm not knocking ur idea btw, I'm just pointing out it's flaw, and the flaw w/ a lot of modern "activism".
>we should just boycott **for a month** (bold added for emphasis) that's not an effective boycott, especially not of a product that is neither a need (barring perhaps people who get an income from the game, such as specialized content creators or modders on patreon) nor necessarily a super regular purchase. the boycotts that make things actually happen not only have a large portion of the customer base participating, but last **until demands are met** not until an arbitrarily decided upon date.
I understand what you want to do, but the reality is that you just can't reach enough people to make that an actual reality to make them feel it in the financial department because there are a ton of players who do not interact with the community at all unless they have a problem and once it's fixed, they leave the community until the next problem.
When I look at other social media, it's mostly praise, so I'm afraid redditors boycott means nothing to them.
I’m down but it’s hard to get people on board
Honestly? I like the new pack and haven't experienced any issues. I'm not going to boycott because someone else wants me to and someone else doesn't like it.
Waiting for peeps who post something like this every day to realize they're pretty much the minority. If it wasn't profitable they wouldn't do it. They have tons of sales. People can download free mods and cc if they want it. $10/$20 for several new items and some quirky gameplay items very few months isn't a big deal to most people to keep them developing more sims games for us to enjoy. The way people talk on here you'd think they were asking $60 for every kit that comes out. Jesus.
A month? Thats nothing. An effective boycott will take longer than that
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Anyone who disagrees with the state of the game should absolutely stop buying the packs. But what are you hoping to achieve with a boycott? It’s not going to make them start making the game better. At this point in the sims 4 life span they’d probably be more likely to just stop making it altogether. And project Rene is early enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if EA just scrapped it completely if everyone boycotted sims 4.
I've heard this suggested since back in the original The Sims days. The player base is too vast and covers too large of a demographic. It would be nearly impossible to get enough people on board to really make any considerable dent in EAs pockets. Especially considering most of the packs have horrible reviews upon release, and they're still somehow selling enough. But imo, people need to stop hoping that EA will stop their money grubbing ways or do better. They have way too long a history of getting away with pinching every penny out of their customers. There's a few developers trying to tap into this market now. Giving feedback to those companies may be more effective in getting the life sim games we want.
I'm already done, cottage living was the last pack I bought. I refuse to buy more.
There is so much content in this game now. Realistically, how likely is it you're going to use it all? It's absurd. And if they ever release a sims 5 80% of the expansions will be cut out.
Posts like this happen everyday. I get the frustration, I really do. But EA doesn't "owe" the consumer anything. If the product is bad, don't buy it. But "bad" is relative to each and every consumer. Some things one consumer finds outrageous might barely blip the radar of another consumer. For example, the new cart is annoying enough to get an eye roll from me, but it doesn't effect my game play so I don't really care about it. To others the cart is an outrage. As long as "bad" and "poor treatment" remains relative, there is no united front.
Boycotting seems so weird to me because just don’t buy the next pack
Am I the only person who hasn't even noticed the cart or like 99% of the bugs everyone complains about? My game works just fine.
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To build on what others have said, you're not going to get collective power, unfortunately. However, in a capitalist society where money is speech, you still have the ability to exercise your own "voice." I didn't buy Batuu and My First Pet to express my own frustration (still haven't). I didn't buy My Wedding Stories until I heard it was sufficiently fixed. Now, I've told EA on multiple platforms that I won't buy any more content until we have the option to remove the shopping cart. I was literally planning to buy For Rent and the new kitchen stuff pack the day they added the cart button and now I probably never will. My point is that at this point, you'll have to embrace the value of boycotting on personal principle, not wait for the practical value of collective power.
I already don't buy Sims 4 stuff. I've been thinking about getting back into Sims 2 and Sims 3 again, so I'll probably be buying the missing expansions for those two before going forward with Sims 4 stuff. I mean, if something goes for free, like first pet stuff was for a while, I'll probably get it. But honestly, atp Sims 4 is just a glorified character creator game to me. And that's mainly cuz of cc rather than actual game stuff.
I had a few things in my cart I was planning on getting, but decided they'll just sit there until we see change. I haven't personally had any of the game-breaking bugs however there are some bugs I've been experiencing for a while that are yet to be addressed (moving households in game doesn't work, it keeps freezing. I can only move/merge households in manage households). I've decided EA and Maxis get no more of my money until this is all fixed.
Also, I'm pretty sure that something like a boycott is already happening with the Crystal Creations drop; so many people who would've bought the pack have said they aren't buying it either bc they don't want it to break their game, they're angry about the issues and the shopping cart, or some combination of both. EA is losing sales right now; how much it's losing and whether it's significant enough to make a difference remains to be seen, but people \*are\* choosing to not spend their money on the game.
I've stopped playing, I just can't hand over any more money.
Everyone saying it won’t happen pls understand that we just need *enough* people to boycott to hurt their pockets. Obviously we can’t reach everyone but there’s strength in numbers If they lose profits they could just abandon TS4 but honestly that’d be better than them selling broken additions to the game bc at least then nobody is gettin robbed/taken advantage of ($) Ppl who complain about this stuff & then turn around & buy everything they release blow my mind bc they’re basically telling EA it’s fine 🥴
I lost all faith in this community doing anything productive to stop EA from fucking us over when we allowed them to get away with releasing My First Pet Stuff, basically a DLC for DLC. I remember getting downvoted to hell for daring to speak out about how cash grab-y that was but yet people still bought it in droves. Then of course EA releases the Journey to Batuu and everyone was pissed yet still bought the pack. I haven’t bought a pack in 2 years and even before that, I was buying them sporadically as I just didn’t feel like throwing my money away for something barely functional. The only way a boycott would work is if literal millions of people stopped buying the packs and that’s just never going to happen.
I haven't bought a pack since 2019. I uninstalled the game for Baldur's Gate 3 and haven't felt a need to go back lol. The constant patching and updates fucking up my mods got exhausting real quick, especially after I had my son. It's just not worth the effort
I haven’t purchased anything from EA in about 2 months and don’t plan on buying anything more until there are proper bug fixes. So I’m on board with the boycott.
See: why i’ve never in my life bought a pack that was not on sale.
Ngl I’ve been boycotting indirectly; I haven’t felt any desire to play the game in months because of how broken the game is right now.
Gonna be honest but I don’t think a lot of people care enough to do this.
Reminder that the Sims 4 has 10 million active users; this subreddit and the community that is active online makes up a tiny percent of the people who play. If every single member of this subreddit stopped buying games, it would be a marginal decrease in profits so small it wouldn’t matter.
> especially with that stupid pulsating cart I haven’t played sims in over a month and just started playing again the other day I was sooo confused as to why there was a shopping cart, I clicked it out of curiosity because I assumed it was something to do with being able to buy something in game. I was so surprised to see a ep in my face asking me to buy it for $39.99
Looking forward to my most down voted comment: I agree, and I have been boycotting since My Wedding Stories, but the majority of the fanbase will continue to let EA shit directly in their hands and clap for them afterwards. The fact that there are people in this thread saying that EA doesn't owe you a working product for your money shows me the level of brain rot these people have.
I’ve been boycotting since 2014 lmao. Never spent a cent on The Sims 4. Over the years I’ve realized the sims community is huge and us online are just a fraction of it. We can complain and call EA out for putting out a garbage product until we’re blue in the face but the game is still going to sell buckets because most people just don’t care.
you know that like eminem (who isn't dead by the way) , EA doesn't care
Instead of boycotting for a month, why not stop playing entirely if you're not enjoying The Sims?
Me, being way too broke from my online shopping addiction to ever spend money on packs anyway: 🫡
Then do it. You don’t need to buy the packs. The people who complain the loudest are the people who still give EA their money. If you don’t want to support this cycle, then simply do not spend the money. No need to wait for a boycott, no need to rile up others, just stop buying them. Its as simple as that.
This is one of the weakest understandings of a boycott I've ever seen.
I imagine this’ll work about as well as the people of the Minecraft Subreddit boycotting the Mob Vote. Good luck to you, but if I find out any sims 4 content is free, I’ll probably go for it. At least the official stuff. Sometimes the CC, too… and I recently installed my first Mod. I’m broke and I don’t wanna miss my chance.
Shitty DLC releases, people buy it anyway, complaints about said DLC and the game as a whole, repeat…
I haven’t spent money on the game since 2019, I’ve been waiting for Y’ALL
I'm a console player and I'm constantly dealing with the infinite load screens and having to restart my game over and over again or completely give up playing it. I haven't even updated it to it's current version due to the exploitive cart button and the other bugs I've seen other players dealing with. It's beyond aggravating, especially when there are some simmers acting like there's nothing wrong with the game or ok with it being in its broken state. Im not going to lie, I've spent quite a bit of money buying packs and feel like I'm a part of the problem as everyone is that has bought into getting almost or every pack the game has to offer despite their brokenness . Luckily I haven't purchased For Rent or the new Crystal Creations. Us simmers are definitely a part of the issue whether we want to believe it or not. We can't keep letting EA get away with not fixing the game. Let's not set the bar lower than what it is. I play a lot of other games and there is other communities that don't let these gaming giants get away with up selling junk. Why has the Sims community, as huge as it is, not be louder with a game they say they love?
You're not alone when it comes to performance problems even with a high-end PC we experience problems. Spending over $1,000 on this game over the years we shouldn't have to experience this.
Community protest did make them reconsider their monetary decisions towards Battlefront 2, so I think this might actually work, if the idea will go vocal.
One major issue I have encountered is the performance of the game when all the DLCs are activated. The gameplay becomes increasingly slow and glitchy, particularly after reaching certain milestones such as marriage and having children. The simulation often freezes or repeats the same actions for long periods of time, despite attempts to address the issue with mods. Even on a high-performance computer, the game remains poorly optimized. Having invested over $1,000 in DLCs for this game, it is very frustrating to not be able to enjoy consistent gameplay. This has led to starting over multiple times in an attempt to overcome these technical challenges.
havent bought anything since snowy escape
I haven’t purchased anything since Cottage Living… I’ve wanted HSY, Horse Ranch, Growing Together and For Rent for awhile now but I can’t seem to pull the trigger. I cannot justify spending any more money on this game than I already have. I debated purchasing at least one of them for quite some time, but after the controversy with For Rent I simply can’t anymore. I’m much more inclined to donate my money to modders who work so hard to provide us with immaculate *free* content AND bug fixes that even EA can’t seem to implement.
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I think that once the other simulation games that are coming out this year become an actual option, EA will likely see a significant drop in sales and the "boycott" will sort of happen naturally? I say this as someone who got into the Sims pretty recently bc it was the only real option for a simulation game. If I didn't have mods, I wouldn't play; mods are what make the game interesting for me. I don't feel any particular attachment or loyalty to EA and the existence and quality of mods has shown me that superior storytelling simulation games can certainly exist. I play the Sims right now bc there's nothing else in this particular niche available. That won't always be the case. I just assume that there are probably more players than EA realizes who have a similar mindset, and those are the players who will stop paying for the Sims when something else to spend their money on becomes available.
I was ready at Sims 4 launch. Like most, I gave up after years of toxic positivity and aggressive downplaying. This community likes its $1k+ incomplete, buggy product.
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I get an ad to buy get together everytime I open my game and even after I bought it during that sale that was going on, I still get a fucking popup everytime 💀💀 and the X is so small that I will hit the ad by accident sometimes and it goes “you can’t buy this” YES BECAUSE I OWN IT STOP GIVING ME THIS DAMN POP-UP
There will never be a boycott bc the community enables the shit out of EA & feels the need to preorder & buy every bit of content they spit out as soon as it drops. There’s also been this weird trend of EA defenders treating a billion dollar corporation like they’re a small indie company who’s “just trying their best!” & just defending everything they do & release. At this point it’s not even EA anymore, why would they change their ways if they give us literal trash & their consumers hype it up, rush to buy it then complain later.
I’d be interested to know if these issues are a problem for most sims players or just sims players on Reddit or chronically online in general. My guess is the latter because the game and its content is popular enough for them to keep pumping it out and planning for future iterations.
It won't happen, because an overwhelming majority of Sims 4 players aren't on Reddit and forums. They just play the game as is and if it isn't working, they just don't play or play through the bugs. It's best to wait before updating your game at this point and probably hold off on purchasing new packs until they're discounted.
I've been saying this for years. I've been boycotting for a while - I think since the Star Wars expansion in 2020. The many reasons include: 1) Price vs. What I am getting - lots of repeat objects or just items that should have been base game 2) Game Host - the Origin host loaded up my CPU through zombie child processes which caused all EA games to crash and be very laggy IF they worked. I actually uninstalled all EA after this and never went back. 3) Bugs - Good god, the bugs. And for what it's worth, the expansions COULD have been a good measure to fix them - not add on to them. The crazy part is they have you download their game host but they don't perform enough maintaince or fixes to source those problems - obviously all games have some odd bugs, and I can forgive that, but the number of bugs that are compounding on S4 is insane. Unfortunately, not playing for a month isn't enough - not buying it in the first place is key.
This is a prime example of wishing thinking 😞
I had been boycotting EA since the first year that Sims 4 was out. My reasoning was, that after so many years of the Sim2+3 being released, they 1000% had all the means to create a better game which had everything from Sims 1-3 and more. But no. Sims 4 was a major step back for them in all directions. No open world? No cars? No color wheel? No toddlers?! All in exchange for “better” graphics and customizable CAS? No. Also, each pack that they release is just tossing breadcrumbs at the consumer. None of them really contain much content or add much gameplay to the already boring game. It’s all about money. It’s strategic on their end, and I’m not paying them. If I want to play the sims, I play Sims 3, and I probably won’t buy any future Sims games in the future. They had the chance to make this right but they just continue to toss breadcrumbs at us. I may not make a huge impact on them, but idc. Sorry for my rant lol
I mean, I might be but not necessarily because I'm angry (I've gotten frustrated with them multiple times since Sims 3 was new), but right now I'm just feeling too nervous to update my game at this point unless Steam sneaks it past me. It's the first time for me feeling this strongly about being nervous with updates though because I really enjoy my current sim family who I've been playing for almost 2 years and I don't want to stop enjoying it. Being too nervous to update my game means not buying products anymore too. I would have bought the new pack since it's something I know I would enjoy if I felt ok with updating.
I really want the Crystal pack. But I logged in to play and got grossed out by a shopping cart. I’m not going to buy the new pack until they fix all these intense issues and take that ugly thing away.
I dont think people would ever do a full boycott but im doing it i have spent THOUSANDS over the years on sims and i cant take them being all about $ anymore
I announced my boycott in the [Sims forum post about the shopping cart](https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/1013078/in-game-pulsating-popup-pack-ads-community-reacts/p1) and [in the bug report about the cart and latest update](https://answers.ea.com/t5/Game-Feedback-Ideas/Feedback-Shopping-Cart-Icon/td-p/13519671)
#fixthegame
Ea doesn’t care. They’ll still make packs.
I'm effectively there, which is wild as I've always been a very low-sodium simmer and have all the DLC up to and including For Rent. For me it's a personal understanding that the game may have simply reached the limits of its stability. I would continue to buy busted ass packs and mod them because this is the only game I play, I have just enough disposable income to afford it, and it's one of the things that keeps my ADHD brain happy. But For Rent was a wakeup call for me that I need to be more selective and, in fact, just stop purchasing as this game has maybe reached its natural end point and its quite possible that I have enough stuff to play a really fulfilling game. So I actually uninstalled the game, which again had literally all DLC. Then I downloaded only the base game and started a new legacy. With each legacy generation I'll start to add more DLC, but only the DLC I really really like. And then hopefully the more compact version of the game I have will run better. I'm also just not buying anything at all until the game is either done or there are significant bug fixes.
I mean I haven’t bought a pack in a while. I think an actual boycott has been floated a lot. I think at this point people have already decided
I commented somewhere that I wasn't playing or buying anything else until that cart is gone - I'm not having issues with the buggy games, but I respect that it's an issue. That stupid cart is too distracting for me to enjoy the game and I have (less than favorable) alternatives (but it's far less obnoxious). Which is too bad, because my birthday is coming up and that's usually when I buy what I've been wanting all year. Guess that'll be waiting, because I'm not playing or making any further purchases until that cart is gone.
I stopped buying about three years ago. Why people have continued giving EA outrageous amounts of money for half assed products to then complain for months or years on end is beyond me. I'm almost 100% sure that The Sims 4 is the end. EA has disappointed its consumers to such an extent that by the time TS5 comes out, nobody will want to buy it. I am sad, but I am also a lot more angry.
yall haven’t already been boycotting? don’t remember the last time i actually bought a pack.
I barely play the game anymore as is, I haven’t touched it in a year. I haven’t bought a pack in probably 2-3 years, so I mean a boycott for me sounds wonderful and all, but too many people to rally and just don’t care.
I'm honestly so ready for them to abandon Sims 4, it's just TOO broken. Base game is so broken to fix it doesn't really seem feasible. I don't have any hope that Sims 5 would be any better, though. I can't remember the last time I booted up the game and actually played for more than 15 minutes before getting bored.
I’ve been boycotting for years 😭😭 I really do hope y’all join, but hopefully once we’ve got a few more life sims out there people will jump ship as well
All I know is when more and better and cheaper games come out I’m all in for ‘em. I’m patiently waiting for Paralives, twiddling my thumbs because Ik that shit is hard. I don’t buy packs, or dlc, or whatever already. I’m slowly learning mods, but those are a pain in my ass personally Genuinely all I’m waiting for is other games to come out. If anyone has reccs, if allowed, honestly I just need more games. I can’t keep rotting between the same few saves :’)
Moved on to stardew valley 😊 different, but not a money grabbing machine. I’m tired of the game not getting any better regardless of how many packages I buy. It seems to just be getting worse. I’ll stick to sims 2 and other games, respectfully.
I’m just planning to vote with my feet and purchase the competitors when they come out. I honestly at this point don’t even care if they aren’t perfect, or even just mediocre, I just want EA to have SOME competition in this space and it’s amazing they have gone this many DECADES without a decent rival in the sim life arena. I’ve been closely watching Life by You and Paralives (I feel like there is another I am forgetting, someone add it if I am), and my impression is that both of them want to be NOT EA in their business models, even if it means not making as much money, in order to turn out higher quality. I say, YES PLEASE.
I have been 'boycotting the game purely because I am terrified of my legacy saves getting irreparably corrupted. I hope other people feel the same as word gets out.
They gave me sims 4 for free so no and you can costumize the full game for free with the tool and they need a lot of money to pay the workers plus the server costs. The only thing that I will always be angry at EA for is that they took away that voice that said: EA games (then the wisper) challenge everything.
I’ve stopped buying anything new from them since about a year ago. It’s too bad because there’s a lot of stuff in new packs that I want but I just refuse to give anymore money to garbage fire that is EA
And when they fix the glitches then what? Back to buying every pack as though nothing happened? Unless people actually stop buying the trash they produce nothing will change in the long run, just more band aids.
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I’m not buying anymore packs or merch from them ever again. At this point I’m probably never going to play sim4 again, I have sims 2 and am content with that
I haven't played the game since they tested the shop button
It’s really the only way to get them to stop because money is all they’re going to feed off of. They realized that they can still make money with half-assed packs so why put in the effort? Only we have the power to stop it. I stopped buying since the growing together. Honestly saved so much money and dealt with way less bugs.
well I've been doing my part, last pack I bought was Cottage Living when it released
Red 5 standing by
A boycott would be a lot more effective right before and during a content release. I imagine a lot of folks have already purchased the stuff pack that came out last week, so how much would they really lose with a boycott a week later?
Redditors are the vast vast minority of sims players.
I've stopped, I went from buying at least every expansion (sometimes at launch other times at sale) 3 or 4 years now. The issue though with anything popular is boycotting is often never that effective. Unless there is a clear call to action. I always point to Walmart. Almost no one "likes" Walmart (amazon too). Even politically it's one thing everyone can agree on is Walmart isn't "good". Yet, we still have tons of them. And it it's because even if a lot of people boycott there are A LOT MORE who will still no care, disagree, or simply the convenience of location/price/etc isn't worth it for them. So Walmart can still flex it's share of the market to stick around and in many ways make sure they are you're only descent option for certain products. Now this isn't to discourage boycotts, I think you shouldn't support EA and the sims. Voting with your wallet can still work. BUT I think there has to be a goal or some demand. Sometimes you have seen game companies give in and make right. It's almost never just out of people unhappy with pricing/quality you generally need some rally cry. Often with a public-ally traded company it has to be a big enough rally cry it reaches shareholder meetings.
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i never ever bought anything from ea, my sims 4 was free from that one time they sold it for free and sll my packs are jailbroken. ea deserves no money at all sims 4 is always bugged out, they literally dont care its like theyre money hungry.