Secrets

TSR have long described themselves as a ‘fan site’ and despite employing a large payroll of staff,  buying out or hacking the competition, making thousands per month in profit, throwing EA’s EULA in the virtual recycle bin and let us not forget DDos attacks on rival websites plus sharing the paypal info of anyone  even suspected of sharing  ‘their’  files, and in some cases even people who leave comments considered ‘too nice’!  ( see the paypal sharing pages ) But of course they insist all of this is done for the good of the community, and that they are merely a fan site with nothing to hide and EA loves them. If they have nothing to hide then why go to these astonishing lengths to protect their secrets..

read on

Hi there!

Welcome to The Sims Resource Team!

Enclosed is your NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) which we ask that you complete before being given access to our private discussion areas. We have in the past been on the receiving end of some malicious activities that were indented to cause harm to both TSR and other FA’s and Staff. To protect ourselves and *you*, all staff, artists and moderators that have access to (or take part in) confidential discussions in their role at TSR are bound by NDA to keep those discussions private.

The NDA is totally optional, which I must stress from the start. If you are not comfortable signing our NDA you can continue in your role as Features Artist or Moderator, but you will not have access to the private discussions that we hold in either our forums or the IRC chat. That said, we would encourage you to take part in these discussions which are provided as a tool to help you play your part and be included in the friendly team that we have here. The NDA is a legally binding document but is purely there to protect all of us against having our opinions and thoughts distributed against our wishes.

We appreciate that some of our Artists and Staff have difficulty reading English, especially some of the awkward but necessary legal jargon used in the NDA. Feel free to ask us any questions that you have about the NDA or for clearer explanations of what any part of it means.

The process is quick and easy. Your NDA is attached to this email. Print off 2 copies and sign them both (you may input your name and home address before printing, or write it in afterwards). You must complete sections 2 (name and address) and 7 (left-hand box). Pop them in the mail to:

IBIBI HB
Kungsgatan 3
826 30 Söderhamn
Sweden

We will sign both copies, put one on record, and return your copy to you by post.

We will gladly refund your posting costs. FA’s will get this through PayPal to the usual address. Moderators, please include a note explaining the mail address to send PayPal payment to. If postal charge is not clear on the stamp/envelope please let us know what it is!

As soon as we receive your signed NDA your access to the FA/Mod forums will be activated as appropriate.

If you wish to opt out and not sign the NDA, please let us know, your FA/Mod status will *not* change. Also give me a shout if you have any questions at all.

Regards,
The Sims Resource Team

Nothing to hide eh?  so if you DON’T sign the agreement you can still be MOD/FA and part of  all discussions pertaining to the sims game and creating, just like an average ‘fan site’ but if you do sign you can join in on private discussions about what exactly? as a ‘fan site’ discussions should be about nothing more than tools and creating, but as a cut throat and illegal business they would stray into conversations of DDos attacks, shady dealings and paypal information sharing, just like the TSR screenshots featured here. Let us take a look at this NDA..

Download tsr_nda MS word, or   tsr_ndadoc wordpad doc.

Oh lord, did you have Atwa type that up?

How legal can that be?

Tom: ” Yes judge, that is correct, we are suing [insert name] because s/he told people that we were preforming illegal DDos attacks on websites and illegally sharing personal address’ and paypal information on a internet forum.

Judge: s/he would have been breaking the law if they knew about your crimes and withheld that information.

Tom: ( pouting ) But s/he signed an agreement!

Judge: If s/he signed an agreement with Al Capone, it would not be legal to withhold information about his crimes either… No Tom put your money away I cannot be bought, no I don’t want to be FA either, go away.

I would gladly share with any court my reasons for sharing your screen capped admissions of DDOS attacks, your screen capped admissions of putting illegal trojans in your files designed to crash and potentially damage users computers, your huge paypal sharing thread in which YOU publish full names, emails, home address’ and telephone numbers of people without their knowledge or consent. You even published the address/phone of one of your creators and then send the others an ‘agreement’ asking for their full address? YOU ARE A CRIMINAL and yet you think you can sue anyone who shows evidence of YOUR CRIMES?.

Lies

Just a fansite or something more? TSR have self -labelled themselves EA’s number 1 exclusive fansite, but do EA really want this type of site representing them as a legitimate company? so far, with the exception of Securom, EA have marketed themselves as a wholesome above board company, a company that sells games of all genres to you and your children, Ignoring the breakage of the EULA for one moment, EA must answer all these questions before making a bank breaking decision such as this:

• Do they really want the ‘official’ site of the sims to be a group of thugs who publicly admit to, but try to justify, sharing personal information, who openly talk about and were screencapped talking about DDossing GENUINE fansites?
• Do EA want TSR as the ONLY ‘fan site’ because it is no secret that they buy out rival sites, or that they have preformed hacks on resistors? Their aim is to be the ONLY fansite.
• Do they want their official EA downloads to contain trojans specially coded to crash computers, all this admitted, but ‘justified’ in public by their own paid staff?
• Do EA want to handle the lawsuits for damaged computers infected by these TSR trojans?
• Will EA be refunding all the subscriptions to players who have paid money to TSR, only to have been banned without refund for the crime of visiting a rival fansite?
• Will EA be refunding all the subscriptions to players who have paid money to TSR, only to have been banned without refund for being suspected without proof of visiting a rival site?
• Will EA be refunding all the subscriptions to players who have paid money to TSR, only to have been banned without refund for making a comment deemed as ‘too nice’?
• Will EA be refunding all the subscriptions to players who have paid money to TSR, only to have been banned without refund for not planting their lips firmly on Atwas fat ass?
• Will EA be refunding all the subscriptions to players who have paid money to TSR, only to have been banned without refund or any reason what-so-ever.
• Do EA want to involve themselves with a site so up front and open that you have to sign a confidentiality agreement to view their secrets? Should a squeaky clean website have such dark secrets?
• Will EA be paying royalties to the designers of the clothing, who’s work is crudely copied and pasted on to the files then sold?
• Will EA be paying royalties to the photographers whos pictures are used, then sold?
• Will EA be paying royalties to the labels such as Disney and Gucci, whos labels are stolen and sold on TSR?
• Will EA be paying royalties to the painters, who whole paintings are copied and pasted onto in game wall hangings and sold by TSR?
• Will EA be paying royalties to hundreds of actors and actress’, singers and celebs and their photographers, whos copywrited images are used in EVERY file SOLD by paid staff  such as Jirka and Chaz?
• Do EA want their PG13 customers being exposed to ad links for porn, gay and straight online dating, gambling and ‘teen babes’ sites?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, EA should make it clear they have no affiliation with the liars at TSR, if the answer is to any of these questions is yes, some of you should be contacting YOUR lawyers, because EA would owe a lot of people compensation.

Shady Dealings

TSR is confident that the launch of The Sims 3 will secure its monopoly. EA have allegedly given their blessing for TSR to make it’s own exclusive meshing/CC tools. TSR are hopeful that they will have the tools ready shortly after the launch date and be the first to have such a tool. They plan to make the tool available for FA use only and not sharable with any other creators throughout the community, thus making TSR the only site to offer true CC for TS3, and therefor taking most, if not all, of the market. This is to be kept secret as they know this will piss off not only free creators, but other paysites as well, ( so don’t tell anyone or they may sue you! ) As a site that makes barking mad amounts of money using the tools created by other community members, this is a selfish and greedy move by TSR, but are you really surprised? I am not entirely convinced this is with EA’s full blessing as TSR claim, but EA must have provided them with ’something’  to work with as they say they have made a lot of headway already with this project. Did EA provide the freesite reps attending the camp with the same?

I will be writing to EA Community Manager Andrea Wendland and executive producer Rod Humble to see if any of them would like to give me an answer. I will be including printouts of all the pages here and asking them all the questions above. The address can be found here

http://images.ea.com/legal/piracy/anti-piracy-brochure.pdf

The Sims Label

Electronic Arts Inc.

209 Redwood Shores Parkway

Redwood City, CA 94065-1175

U.S.A.

Update: June 01 09

I have invited EA to deny these claims, however since writing to them via regular snail mail, ( sent approximately 1 week after this article ) I have had no response either to the Email or the postal address I provided. Their lack of denial says it all.

Other News

Re madisim, he threw a hissy fit and deleted all his downloads, he has yet to give a formal explanation for his actions either on the forums or to Tom, but in private he has spoken out to several people who contacted him. His nose is out of joint over the EA camp, and especially hatshepsut. It seems ’someone’ who he will not name, but we can guess, had hinted he was on the camp invite list, then to his horror, hatshepsut was invited to represent lot builders. He feels he is not wanted anymore and that he has been replaced by ‘better talent’ and that, coupled with low downloads, indicates it’s time for him to move on. Tom seems to have taken no action, either to move his FA status or to restore the backup, so no one is really sure what is happening there, nor do they care.

Neptune Suzy got canned again, as expected, but she begged to be allowed to stay on as FA for free, to save her embarrassment. Tom agreed, he’s never been one to turn down free workers!  and not the first time he’s had an artist down on her knees either.

I’m crap at keeping secrets

SO SUE ME ALREADY.