User blog:Lost Labyrinth/The future of The Sims series and how long we can really play it for

This blog consists of personal thoughts and opinions that may or may not reflect the views of other users or the community of The Sims Wiki in its entirety.

Remember a little while ago when The Sims 2 and The Sims Stories had all their content removed from Origin with no explanation at all as into why. This week's news blog also touched on the marmite-esque The Sims 3: Katy Perry's Sweet Treats being "retired" and removed from Origin and other digital storefronts, even Steam. Although you can still purchase these from a store and install them, as they run independently without the need for a distribution client like Steam or Origin, I can't help but be concerned about something. If EA are killing off select titles digitally, how will this affect The Sims 4?

There's little to no doubt that Origin will be required to run TS4, even if you're buying the physical version (despite EA's plans a while back). Wherever you buy the game, you will probably have to activate it on Origin. This has been the case with every EA game since Crysis 2.

If withdrawing titles from their service is a habit EA wishes to keep up, I believe this could be nothing but bad news for TS4 in the future. Whereas you could just find your TS2 disc and reinstall it without any hurdles, if EA removed TS4 from Origin in 10 years time or something, what if you couldn't activate the game anymore? That breaks playability completely. EA are known for killing off server support for games with online functionality but to remove the ability to play your game at all is, quite frankly, an insult to their customer base.

It's obvious that EA wishes to run their own digital distribution platform to rival Steam and to lure customers into using it, they make it a mandatory requirement to play EA games (like Valve did when Half-Life 2 came out). This is fine if they want to go down that road and as courtesy, all gamers could ask is that they can play their games. That is it.

As far as TS4 is concerned, Origin is essentially a form of DRM. You need it to run the game and updates will be distributed through the service. Across the world, people who play The Sims have probably put in more hours of gameplay combined than the population of several countries. Having an independent installation of what's currently available to consumers allows for this to continue for many years into the future. TS2 still has a strong community and TS1 still has a cult following. While having TS4 being controlled by Origin may have some advantages to the consumer (such as a possible ease of updating the game, especially in comparison to TS3), it's hard to ignore EA's unorthodox approach to long-term support strategies for their games and with TS4 almost certainly requiring Origin for functionality, eventually removing support for the game altogether is not only a strong possibility but an inevitability.

To finish off, I'd encourage anybody reading this to leave a comment and share their thoughts, even if you disagree with the views I've expressed.

12:56, August 18, 2013 (UTC)