The Sims franchise community has long had disputes over whether players should pay custom content creators for their work. Due to the fact that custom content relies on the intellectual property of Electronic Arts, lots of fans lean towards a Free Content Only verdict. Now, Electronic Arts have officially weighed in.
On Aug. 2, 2022, Electronic Arts released a post clarifying their feelings on Mods and the monetization of them. This comes after some renewed community drama around custom content creators aggressively defending their perceived entitlement to charge for their work. The problem comes in that EA asserts that these modders do not, in fact, have the entitlement to charge for their labor. This is because custom content and mods made by these players use The Sims 4 as a base for their designs. Effectively, they are making content with the copyright of EA.
Related: Are Sims 4 Mods dangerous or safe?
As covered by Sims Community in Apr. 2022, some of the modders who released paywalled content did not take well to community pushback against their action. This included mod creators placing trackers inside of their mods to pull private information of those downloading their mods. There were even discords that shared these downloaders' personal details in chat. Obviously, this created a major ethical problem that Electronic Arts did not want to be held responsible for.
It's not as if Electronic Arts had never stated their stance of paying for mods and custom content. They had just never done so in explicit terms as part of their policy standards. That has now changed and players have no justification to continue charging for their content. Additionally, any mods or custom content published by modders must no longer contain copyrighted EA content, like the Plumbob.
Want to read more about the Sims community? If so, check out Top 10 Features We Want To See In The Sims 5 on Pro Game Guides.
Published: Aug 2, 2022 09:53 am