User blog comment:Lost Labyrinth/Remember when you wanted Open for Business for The Sims 3? Well you've basically got it.../@comment-7040864-20140406002944/@comment-2201555-20140406151129

I'd say it's more that they're caring for their money like it's their offspring.

I read somewhere that some people playing FIFA and Madden who do that silly fantasy card game are losing all their paid content due to a glitch and they weren't hacked, yet they're still not getting their content back. Not even an apology. They want to start again? They have to pay EA all over again.

It's been pretty much confirmed that EA sells patches for TS3 inside the code for new EPs. I remember when University Life came out and a few IRC users claimed a lot of their bugs were fixed just by installing that EP (please enlighten me, because I actually think it made it worse). Apparently it started as an accident when they wanted to fix the bugs for World Adventures and the patch failed but now it's just business and the patches that everybody gets is mostly new content that the next expansion depends on.

I think I read that everybody does get the relevant patch but the "free" version will just fix Sims wandering into a dead-end or something, while the "paid" in-depth patch comes with the EP. I wouldn't be surprised if TS4 kept this tradition going too.