Plagarism of Content

Thanks for your congratulations on 'my' skins poobaloo - but don't you think you should be thanking maxis? After all, according to your premise, I own 'squat' - therefore none of your praise should come to me at all.

 

nice one

 

Well, just cuz you don't own it doesn't mean you didn't make it. I also happen to be a believer in the concept of "stole it fair and square". After all, isn't it said that good artists imitiate, but great artists steal?

 

Believe me, I thank Maxis greatly. Simcity is by far my favorite game of all time, from the original, thru SC4. The Sims is a close 2nd or 3rd. (Sorry Maxis, but Blizzard's Warcraft series I think beats the Sims, but Simcity is still topps!)

True, you don't own it. True, I could upload those images to the Sims2 site, and put whatever comments I want in. All LEGALLY, and without plagirizing you. But I wouldn't, nor would most of the fans. We have a certain amount of respect. Not all. But most. And all it takes for a good community is most. The cheaters will get their own rewards out of life, so be it.

All I can say is stop worrying about ppl "stealing" things you never even owned the rights to. Just enjoy playing the game, and the respect that you do earn for your talents. You ARE noticed, and appreciated.

 

How does Maxis stand to this? I'm not sure, but if I created a game and sold it, I'd be a leeeetle irritated if someone then opened a website and offered downloads for a prize. They'd be using my game as 'platform' - and in the best of scenarios, might also have bought instead of copied/pirated it - but making money off of me, in a sense. Shouldn't Maxis be as irritated if someone is making money off of something they started/produced, without paying them royalties, so to speak?

( Not trying to start a fight, just really interested in that. )

 

Judging from the fact that Maxis appears not to care, and openly lists sites as pay or free on their fansite list, I'm going to hazard a guess and say that the answer is "No".

Of course, with the "exchange", all of these "pay" sites are, in essence, shooting themselves in the foot, since absolutely nothing is stopping a user from downloading all of their content, then uploading it straight to the exchange where it's free....and there's not a **** thing those sites can do about it. They won't even be able to identify the perp, and I doubt Maxis is going to care about their problems.

 

That is toeing a rather thin line, you see: In theory, the idea of only supporting the site, I.E., not profiting from it, sounds fair. Obviously, of course, the cost of supporting the site is fixed: However much your webhosting service charges, that's how much it costs to support your site. At the same time, expanding subscriptions increases income at a fixed rate. At some point, the amount of income you take in will exceed the cost of supporting the site: This extra cash, we refer to as "profit".

Obviously, if it were entirely not for profit, the actual cost of running the site would be posted, and the fee would thus be a variable: The cost of the site divided by the number of people who wish to sustain subscription. However, the cost of the subscription remains fixed, which indicates that either they have not yet reached the break-even point and are simply absorbing the losses out of their own pockets, rather than raising rates to make ends meet (something I find unlikely), or they are making a profit.

 

Either you meant that not all costs are FIXED, or you were just rephrasing what I already said: Costs as a rule, in nearly all webhosting packages, are fixed: They change only when you expand services, and if you do not, they can, for all intents and purposes, be considered to be fixed. Change of service is not an automatic thing, and certainly will not occur without your action and approval.

Wonderful. I just thought I'd politely point out that your ads suck, though. Couldn't you at least advertise something I might actually want to buy, preferrably at reasonable prices, and preferrably something I don't already know about? I know it seems relevant and all, but it seems kinda pointless to advertise TS2, seeing as people who come here are certainly already aware of it and often have it already....

And some of your ads just have me plain baffled, since I cannot, for the life of me, discern what it is they were trying to sell or why I should be interested if they have nothing to sell me.

 

I'm not sure Maxis are that bothered about this kind of behaviour even the sites that are making money from downloads. In the long run, as you pointed out Ningengirai, for people to make use of those downloads they need The Sims as a platform which, ultimately, means more money for Maxis.

One of the main reasons The Sims has become such a phenomenon is the huge community of players who create custom content for the game. Maxis has provided a fantastic framework of core gameplay and it's the fans who keep it constantly fresh by adding to it. Unlimited new content means greater longevity for the game. The community also provides fantastic free advertising for Maxis which also helps sales.

If Maxis clamped down and enforced draconian rules on distributing custom made content it would kill or severely reduce the community behind it and do nothing but harm sales for Maxis.

As for taking other peoples creations and claiming they are your own, that I don't condone at all. Sure, the original creator may not have any legal rights, but lets face it, it's just not nice. The original creator has but time and effort into designing and creating it so it's unfair for anyone else to claim credit for it.

 

True. On the flipside, life ain't fair. You're not getting out of it alive.

 

Isn't that exactly what they've done this time? All you can do is "color" makeup and clothing. It seems to me they went to extraordinary lengths to make sure there weren't tools available to make real custom content. I remember reading the forums at TSR and how many of the top designers were furious with maxis and their decision to only allow content to be uploaded to EA with no credit and their concerns with plagerism. It appeared that Maxis met with some of these people to hear their concerns. They came away feeling that Maxis didn't care. Since fan sites do have the ability to offer downloads and names are credited on content on the EA exchange they must have made some concessions. I'm sure I will purchase the next expansion pack but if I don't have access to more choice in objects, skins, clothes, build items..it will be my last purchase. I never used the items or people bundled in the game itself. My neighborhoods from TS1 are exclusively populated and decorated with items downloaded from fansites. It's all that kept the game interesting over the years. The handful of extraordinary hackers and designers certainly deserve credit for investing time and funds sharing their work with the sims community. Without them I think the sims would have died a natural death upon the release of House Party..the worst expansion pack of the series! lol

 

As much as I love a good paranoid conspiracy theory, I have to assert that it just seems untrue that they went to "extraordinary" lengths to make sure there weren't tools available. In TS1, the only real tool ever released was TMOG. Everything else had to be reverse-engineered by the users, a process Maxis did nothing to assist in. At some point, "Edith" was allegedly intended to be given to users, but like the empty promises of all politicians and corporations, this never materialized, and ultimately, "hacked" objects were created mostly by reverse-engineering.

Frankly, Maxis is, as is custom with corporations, fundamentally opposed to releasing any of their tools they used to create the game. The reason is rather obvious: The longer it takes people to reverse engineer the game, the larger a window they have to shovel expansion packs down the throats of their customers. By making vague promises of releasing tools, they then impede the reverse-engineering efforts by making people think that this will become unnecessary, and thus some people are discouraged from attempting to reverse-engineer the game. The tools, of course, will never really materialize. All in all, this is a logical, if not necessarily honorable, strategem.

Exaggerated nonsense. Content can be uploaded and downloaded from any website. It's not as if packages can only be uploaded to EA, and are saved to disk in a format fundamentally incompatible with the game unless first uploaded to EA.

As for "credit" and "plagiarism", if I were a Maxis employee, my thoughts on the matter would have been "That sounds like a personal problem to me, soldier.". I mean, think about. Let's suppose I sell "smart" waffle irons. The waffle irons remember what ingredients were placed within them, and how they were operated on. You have the option to publish this recipe on my company site, or do whatever you please with it, including deleting the database. Now, some miscreant steals your family waffle recipe from the waffle iron's database, and now claims he invented it.

How is this *MY* problem? You're the one who can't keep your waffle iron under your control.

Why should they? This is a personal problem.

Well, the drawback to this is that uploaded content bears only the name and commentary of the first uploader, who can, essentially, "steal" the credit of any object uploaded to a fansite without being uploaded to EA at the same time. Boo frickety hoo.

I rest my case. Maxis has never released real tools, and the current situation does not represent "extraordinary" lengths. Objects have always been created by hackers.

No way. I'd have to say that the Vacation and Superstar packs were the ones REALLY scraping the bottom of the barrel here, with content that just didn't seem well-integrated with the core game at all

 

Thus, the trials and tribulations of putting your work online. If you don't want it copied, keep it tucked away safe in your game. As much as everyone would love to flame Maxis on this, I'm sure that not even they can come up with an ever ending solution to the multiples of prepubescent morons that scatter brainlessly throughout their website. Lest we forget that sooner or later, with the limited options and tools available to us, there's only so many ways you can modify a hairstyle or color before it's done the same way by someone else. And that, my friends, could be purely coinsidental. Not to mention, why would you waste your time, money, and sanity in pursuing someone that you "think" has stolen your idea? Child's play in my eyes...

 

Well said. It is crazy that the word "plagirism" even comes up in regards to how we play a game. If you don't want your game-play methods used & shared by others, then don't post them.

Every time I see a posting on the s2 site, that says "do not distribute, copy, or modify", I just want to slap that person and say "Why the heck did you post it out there then???" It's just ridiculous.

 

It's not crazy at all. If someone has gone to the trouble of designing and creating and outfit, offers it for download completely free of charge so that others can enjoy it and then some punk takes that file and redistributes it removing the original authors name and claims they have made it, how is that fair?

I can only imagine the huge amount of hours people like Nanshi_Nibble and Amy Sims have put into their many creations. They've not just taken original Maxis skins and modified a few colours here and there, their work features original artwork that shows real skill. They don't profit from their creations, they distribute them to benefit the fans of the Sims. They deserve the credit for their work.

If you condone other people taking that work and then claiming they have made it then you show no respect for the hard work the real designers have put into it. I find that sad and insulting.

"Why the heck did you post it out there then?" Yes, wouldn't the Sim community be a richer place if everyone heeded your advice and kept their creations to themselves? I think not.

Download one of my outfits from SimStuff, Poobaloo. Take a look at the readme text file and feel free to slap me across the face.

 

I'm not "condoning" anything. I'm simply stating that this is what will happen when you take risks such as posting something online. Do you not realize that this happens everyday with everything that touches the net?? Believe me, I've posted enough messages that refer to how much I love and adore fansites for everything they're worth. And if having things stolen means I will have to pay for these sites in the future, then so be it. Just one more thing the dishonest buggers can ruin for us...however, if you put something out there and it gets copied, I'm not going to cry for you. Risk my dear...risk.