In a new policy update by EA that directly affects the Sims 4 community, the ability for players to charge for their creations has been taken away, but mods can still be shared.
On July 21st, EA provided new ‘conditions’ for the thriving Sims 4 modding community via a post titled “The Sims 4 – Mods and game updates“, and among these guidelines is a clause stripping the ability for creators to effectively monetize their work
The first guideline strictly forbids creators for using licensed trademarks, such as logos, or in game art designs in promotion of mods. This is a far less controversial requirement than what has the community up in arms, however. The second part of the post is as follows:
Mods must be non-commercial and distributed free-of-charge. Mods cannot be sold, licensed, or rented for a fee, nor can Mods contain features that would support monetary transactions of any type. However, Maxis recognizes that creating Mods takes time and resources. Accordingly, Mod developers may recoup their development costs via passive advertisements and donations as long as:
Passive advertisements and requests for donations must be limited to the Mod website or distribution site, and not appear within the Mod itself.
All users must be able to access the Mods in full for free regardless of whether they donate.
– Help, EA Website
This has effectively split the community as a whole, considering creators who mod Sims 4 do so with their time and resources, while those on the other side of the spectrum believe they should be able to access all of the created content without extra fees. It’s notable that prior to the requirement for modded content to be free, there were plenty of free mods readily available.
The tricky part in the new guideline, is the “Accordingly, Mod developers may recoup their development costs via passive advertisements and donations…” which can help the creators who spend larger amounts of personal resources and time on mods.
As stated by the many responses on Twitter, the community is effectively split on the new policy, with one side saying paywalls shouldn’t exist, and the other side suggesting that not being able to charge for created work will disincentivize the more popular creators in the community.
Whichever side fans fall under, it remains to be seen whether this new policy will make a lasting impression on Sims 4 as a whole.
Either way, these changes came at a bad time, as the community is already reeling from a slate of unpleasant bugs that were introduced with the new expansion, The Sims 4: High School Years—bugs that have Sims texting themselves, yearning to romance family members, or dying abruptly of old age.
