Pay sites?

WOAH People, slow down!

Such negativity, my my...

First of all, I am NOT the owner/partner or designer of any Sims site, pay or not. I am, however, an avid Sims fan and a single mother on a very tight budget. That said, I am definitely IN FAVOR of some of the really good quality pay sites out there. Namely 8th Deadly Sim.

First off, I'm an adult. I am more inclined to have a little more adult content in my game. Secondly, the designers they have are amazing. Yes, occasionally you'll get an object with a Z buffer issue (it sticks out of walls, etc.) but people are human and sometimes they don't get all the details. Or sometimes certain objects are just plain stubborn and won't take all 4 sprite angles correctly, or something along those lines.

Anyway, the point is that by paying (and the fees are generally very reasonable, like $3 a month -- where you people are getting $30 I'll never know) and this helps pay for bandwidth, which is expensive -- the loss of pop ups and banners (YAY) and the server (remember, someone is running a large computer for their site and they have to pay the light bill, or they're paying for the service from a provider, even more expensive). You say you can get the same stuff on a free site?!! Umm no. Most sites have a way of detecting theft of their items and do NOT allow people to take their things and redistribute them. There are actual laws preventing this.

Trust me, no one running a Sims pay site is getting rich from it. The fees are to keep it up and running smoothly and ad free. Most of them used to be able to remain running from player donations. But (as can be gleened from the above commentary) most people don't want to pay ANYTHING for what they download. Thus the more popular sites with the more popular object makers and skinners began to require membership to keep their site from closing down.

As far as getting a virus or downloading a Sims item and having your computer crash, how in the world can you blame that on pay sites? That's utterly ludicrous. Go get Norton or McAfee or something. You can contract a virus in many ways. Someone imbedding a virus into a Sims item is much less likely to happen than just surfing the web and clicking on the wrong link.

Seriously people, I respect your right to refuse to pay for stuff, but don't berate these people until you've seen their side of things. I don't have a lot of money either, but if a couple bucks a month will get me much better quality objects, ad free, pop up free, quick downloads, sign me up. You should be more afraid of the downloads you get from the fly-by-night free sites you seem so fond of. Especially skins. Once you download all those files, good luck trying to figure out what came from where and which files to get rid of if something happens to your game.

And more to the point, we don't even know how objects are going to be made for TS2 yet. There's no TMog program or anything in place yet, so it will be a while until any site, pay or not, has a lot to offer where we have to worry where our hard earned dollars will be spent should we decide to join one.

So, for you adult simmers, I strongly recommend 8th, it's got a great community and wonderful items. If you are younger or have kids that play there are many others out there worth a look. But please, don't bash the people trying to bring us quality and only asking us to help them maintain their bills to keep their site running.

/end of rant

 

I have to agree with rhaevyn. I've paid for a few of the top sites for one month and downloaded everything! lol I, too, like a little of the adult content that can't be found on the "free" sites. I'm willing to pay a minor amount for a large site. Technically all sims items are copyrighted by Maxis and fansites cannot make a profit from donations. The money can only be used to pay the bandwidth fees. I have donated money to a few free sites that have made my sims gameplay a joy. C&C, Cheap Thrills, and Persimmon Grove comes to mind..they have items that have made The Sims soooo much better for everyone. Why should those that are creative and take the time to make these items have to bare all the cost for everyone? I'm just sorry that paypal is the only payment option for many sites. I keep a small account for groceries and internet transactions that uses a VISA debit card. Unfortunately most European sites use Mastercard or Pay-Pal. I'd purchase a few cd's from 2 or 3 sites if they offered some other pay options.

 

unfortunately, paypal is one of the only way we can take donations and payments for anything without going an expensive route and getting whatever software/hardware is needed to take credit card orders. the only other way that is easy to take donations/payments is either by cash,check, or money order which is also not good because it is succeptable (sp?) to mail theft which i have had happen to me more than once.

one thing i can recommend though for those taking donations is to find some other stuff people can donate and not neccessarily money. for example, i run my own internet radio station. myself as well as a few other station managers have taken donations such as cd's, new computer hardware, etc.. and this seems to go alot farther than monetary donations.

 

The funny thing to me (well, not funny ha ha...) is that if you look now there is an announcement started by Josh, something about Microsoft, stating (in the 2nd posting) that WorldSims is now desperate for donations to keep their sites going. Just like I said, any good site will eventually need funding. Making people pay a small membership is really the only way to get it done and keep it even and fair across the board.

I agree that we would all like to keep everything free, but hey, someone's gotta pay for all that traffic in cyberspace, right?

 

i agree completely. i just had to move to a new host just last night because i went over my 4GB monthly bandwidth limit. just finding a cheap host was hard enough. being able to keep the hosting paid for almost a year and then some i just cant understand how i did it with having no job and all.

but there are tons of opportunities for funding out there, just have to look. advertising, donations, maybe stuff like merchandise (cafepress.com is a great place to start), stuff like that.

 

I'm not a big fan of CafePress. Their base prices are so ridiculous that it's next to impossible to set prices that people are willing to pay and still be able to make a profit.

 

Let me give you my unsolicited 2 cents on that idea tho V. As a consumer, I would rather pay a couple of dollars to go to your site for my downloads knowing there will be no annoying ads, pop ups and distracting banners while I'm shopping. Yes, those are viable ways of helping to support your costs, but they really don't quite hit the mark from all I hear.

And if I know I want to go to your site to get something, I certainly do NOT want to be attacked by flashing banners and popups asking me to buy something else. Nah... I say membership is the only way to really contain and guarantee your costs. Just be sure you have the goods to a sufficient quality to warrant asking the fee. And word of mouth spreads fast in this community. If you have good stuff, they will come.

 

I have to say that unless the content is really good and perhaps unique...and there is a lot of it..I'm not willing to go to the trouble of paying. I know among many sim hackers TSR is not popular but as a consumer I find that I get a lot of choice for my dollar. I just wish they would vet the items better and remove the really bad stuff. I wish more people would go this route. I do look for particular designers so if they are good they still have their following. Have all the sim web masters really considered what they are asking of the fan? I'm an adult with credit cards...many fans don't have this luxury...but I'm not paying 3 bucks a month for 20 separate sites for a few items. I'm not a fan of the "mall" concept either. TSR's download program is wonderful! TSR, The Well Dressed Sims, and Sim Freaks are about the only sites that I have been willing to pay for because they are easy to navigate and the quanitity and quality is under one roof.

I cannot figure out why I can't set up a pay-pal account. I've tried 4 or 5 times and either I'm using the wrong url or my limited account credit card doesn't pass their criteria. I just want 100 bucks to pay for some sims sites or give donations to those that have earned it. I'm not willing to give pay-pal access to my main bank account! lol I'd really like to buy the Wood For Sims cd. I just love her stuff and I've never been able to pay to download. At this point I'd be happy to buy the cd because she has sooo much stuff. With Sim2 out I'm terrified many of the older sites will fade away. (I'd love to get into 8th deady sims, too. It's the main reason I've tried to get pay-pal.) Can someone give me the addy for signing up for pay-pal? I'll try again. :lick: I really want to donate something to dincer hepguler's site...and get one of the donation items to complete a set I use often.

 

www.paypal.com

 

Don't I feel really dumb now! Thank you for the addy. I know that I'd usually click a link on sites I wanted to register for. I think I was sent to some sub section for receiving pay-pal funds. I've got my card handy and as soon as I finish checking today's posts I'm running right over to sign up.

 

I dont mind paying for quality,as long as its a reasonable price. I had a sub at TSR, but didnt renew because i have a slow connection and it takes me too long to go through hundreds of things to find the good ones. I agree that they should get rid of some of the things that nobody downloads. I will take quality over quantity anyday. I have found a few sites that are well worth the money. I also donate to my favorite free sites when i can.

 

This may sound drastic...good.

Comrades,

Paysites= absurd. Come on- you've already PAID FOR THE ACTUAL GAME. You've already paid your dues to Maxis or E.A. to be able to play the game. That should be the extent to which you have to pay. Why would you go to sites where you have to pay to download objects for a game. I mean, I love Sims- I've been addicted to Sims since the very original one came out and now I'm just as addicted to Sims 2. But I would never put more money out to a site that doesn't really update as frequently as I want it to, might go down- because well, if you're a paysite, you're either greedy or need money to keep the site up and simply gives me objects for a COMPUTER GAME.

I've already paid for the game, I've already put my fifty bucks into the corporations to chug out an expansion pack, I'm not paying a single dollar more then that because that's highway robbery. If you don't think so- waste your money, I know I'm in college and I don't have money to waste and most reasonable people don't have money to waste on additions to computer games.

Furthermore- I've always been able to find things on freesites that are just as good- that is if I look around. There are some great foreign sites that do some awesome objects. You just have to look around.

As to 8th Deadly Sim- I think that's the absolute epiphany of highway robbery of us Simmers. They completely stopped caring about their old site once they put up 8th Deadly Sim, and chances are for Sims 2 they'll just close down 7 Deadly Sims. I appreciated that they even had a free site even if they had a pay site to go with it- and that's why I'm not gonna rack on Sims Resource- because they may be a paysite, but at least they offer people who don't want to throw their money away some objects and skins. 8th Deadly Sim has some awesome objects, I only want a few and I'm not willing to pay.

Forget highway robbery, I already paid tribute the robber-barrons of gaming.

 

What's annoying is not that these pay sites exist, but that Maxis appears to have given them top-list billing on the fansites list, so that the first 5 or so sites are all useless pay sites. Then again, this is probably not unexpected: Pay sites, unlike free sites, actually have enough money to pay for their top-slot billing, which I'm sure carries some sort of fee or bribe. Fortunately, at least Maxis indicates whether the site is pay or not, so you can ignore those.

 

I'm not sure who this post is directed at, but I didnt say TSR sucked or anything. I subscribe to paysites Sometimes , for the same reason that people buy paintings, because I appreciate the work that goes into it. It has nothing to do with ea. I dont get my links from the official website. There are a few popular sites that I agree, is highway robbery. Have you ever made an object? I have , and I dont envy anybody that does it every day, because it is a LOT of work. I havent been to a paysite in 6 months, but if I find one that I think is a good deal, I will pay.

 

I want to add one more thing......

If nobody donated to most of these free sites that everyone goes to, you wouldnt be getting diddly squat for free.

 

Okay- cool- go ahead and waste your money. If I developed an entire game, yes I'd charge for it- but objects to add onto a game modelled most likely with no new features that change the game- those don't deserve to be on paysites. Ironically the objects I HAVE found that modify the game, most of them are on free sites.

 

I dont think a small fee (like 3.50 ) to keep a site that i like open is a waste of money. I think this --> http://www.simfreaks2.com/skins/outfits.php?GotoNumber=10 is a total stupid waste of money. I wonder if anyone has actually bought anything.

 

Good greif!!! Are they charging by the download??? A whole dollar per recolored outfit? Now that is greedy!!

I think that someone who goes to all the trouble of putting up and maintaining a website and making a huge volume of custom content available for download isn't being greedy, it's being fair. As long as they charge a small amount for membership. (I too think TSR is too expensive for some of the stuff they have for download.) Someone who does quality work and makes it available for free is a total angel.

I don't agree with the argument "I paid my money for the game, I should get all the downloads free". You paid the EA Game Corportation for the game. You did not pay the people who make the items or programs for download, or pay for the maintanence of the site. Neither does EA or Maxis. That comes out of that person's pockets, their time and energy. Now, luckilly, many people see designing Sim Items as a hobby, part of the fun of having the game, and put them up for free. Again, they are angels to those of us who either can't or don't do it oursleves.

 

Its not even a whole outfit! Its a dollar for 1 pair of blue pajama pants