Back In February I wrote an article entitled Secrets Lies and Shady Dealings. In the shady dealings section I wrote about the TSR sims 3 tool, to refresh, here is an excerpt from my article..

“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?”

Since this article TSR has suddenly backtracked on their unpopular plan, and while now admitting they have been working on it all this time,  they have suddenly decided to give the tool to everyone for free! But at what cost..

What you may already know

As you may be aware, TSR has made 2 announcements a few days ago confirming that they are making a sims 3 tool, and stating that this one will be made public and not kept to themselves as was the sims 2 tool.  ( The first news announcement was originally made by Tom was replaced by a more carefully worded effort by Steve. ) View

The second part is in the new workshop section confirming that work started on the tool in January 2009 as soon as Steve returned from the creators camp at EA, ( Steve makes sure he mentions that twice on the same page ) and that the tool will be ready within days of the game release date.  It also confirms they will have their own EULA. View

What you may find surprising is that Steve also stated that the tool will be public, free and   “Our development will be quite public, inviting support and input not only from our staff artists but from the entire community”  That is quite surprising I admit, if only because with less than 1 week to go before it’s launch, and Steves admission that the tool has been in development for 6 months, what could the public possibly offer towards the develpment apart from their names to a public endorsement and their upwardly pointing thumbs.

What you may NOT know

Steve is putting more work into snaring future downloaders than he is actually making the tool, by all accounts the real version of the tool is already complete with just a few finishing touches. Steve and Tom are holding chats with several members of staff to discuss how they can get as many people to download the tool as possible, especially from the ‘free community’ They have came up with several ideas including advertising, letting the community think they are contributing to the development and putting “trusted free community faces” to spearhead the campaign, and to get the trust of the free community.  2 ‘respected’ community tech members are already on board. Both seem to be oblivious to the fact that they are working on a completed tool, and that this ‘work’ may be distracting them away from working on any tool of their own. At least one of these people seems to be blissfully unaware of Steve ‘face’ plan and actually thinks that no one will find out they are ‘working’ on the tool.  The only real use TSR has for these people is their public endorsement of the tool, and the fact they think they have worked on it will make it seem more safe and trustworthy to the free community.

The real questions you need to ask before you download

Why is Steve so keen to get “as many downloaders as possible” for this tool, and why is he specifically targeting the free community members to download it?

Why is he going to such lengths to get people the community trust on side?

Why are they asking ‘trusted’ community members to work on a tool just one week before its launch, when work started on it in secret 6 months ago.

If this is simply for the good of the community, why is he in a race against other sites and even with EA themselves to get this tool out to everyone.

DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT.

My advice to you all is DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT. Even out of curiosity. Remember this tool comes from the people that:

• Shared members personal and private information gained from Paypal in their forums.
• Carried out DDos attacks on websites.
• Hacked into a free creators account on a rival site to change her TOU and deleted items that Shakeshaft stole and sold on TSR as her own.
• Shared someones full address and phone # and encouraged abusive phone calls to them.
• Added trackers and trojans to their downloads.
• Coded those trojans to crash users computers if shared, as publically admitted by their own FA Black Garden.
• Used a dying man for a bogus charity scam.
• Hacked sim secret.
• Hacked a petition against them to EA.
• Have YOUR unencrypted passwords on their site.
• Brought down Reflex sims forum. ( Now fully restored as the black pearl )
• Sent an Email virus to their OWN STAFF, in order to blame and discredit pirates.
• Built a very large luxury 2nd home with your $$
• Lied until they tied themselves in knots ( see their ‘myths’ failure )
• Make their own artists sign a confidentiality agreement to stop them from talking.
• Faked a screenshot of this blog and featured it on their front page news  in a very desperate attempt to make their followers think I had confessed to making everything up!  Yes really! check it out.
• LIED that EA gave them the means to develop such a tool, or that they were even working on it, only to ADMIT this week they have been working on it for 6 months and have still not explained how they can complete a tool for a game that has not even been released yet, without the special help from EA they DENIED having.

ARE THESE THE PEOPLE YOU WOULD TRUST ENOUGH TO DOWNLOAD A PROGRAMME TO YOUR COMPUTER FROM? IS IT WORTH IT?

Do you really think that people who were caught red handed putting trojans in their downloads are all of a sudden going to give you something out of the goodness of their hearts? NO people, there is a catch, be sure of it.

Chill out and wait

There is something clearly not right about the whole tool. Instead, take time out enjoy the game and wait for a clean tool completely unconnected with TSR. Even EA themselves are bringing one out. so no need to infect your computer or leave your personal files wide open to criminals.

“Secondly, it was announced and has been made public by those who attended the Creators’ Camp that we will release custom content tools. However the dates and specifics for these have not been finalized”

Not everyone who attended the creators camp are shouting about this to their flock. WHY IS THAT?

Update 02 June 09

Just as planned, TSR have gone ahead and exposed their endorsers or ‘faces’ as Steve like to call them, it is hoped that the free community targets will trust these names and their avid endorsements on this tool that they are ‘working’ on. Keep in mind you are trusting these people who will have worked on this ‘tool’ for anything from a few days to a week, while TSR have worked on this in secret for over 6 months.   Also keep in mind that not all of this tool is ‘open source’ just a small part, the majority of this tool is more of a  ‘closed up sims resource’ and we all know what that means! They can not possibly know the full intended contents of this program until after TSR put the final version for download, assuming they re download the final version upon its release. Not forgetting that some on that list are not even working on the tool, TSR simply lied. Again.

Here is what Tom had to say..

Not everyone agrees..

I can confim that I personally have seen nothing to suggest Mootilda is involved in any way. Although the mention of one name on that list has solved a lot of unanswered questions I personally had.

Virus

TSR have hardly been upfront with any of this, when I first reported that they were working on the tool back in Feb, they denied it.  Now they admit they have been working on it since they left the camp in Jan. It reminds me very much of that nasty little virus Steve sent out  recently via Email to all the staff and artists in the guise of a new version wizard, what followed were many questions on how easily it was detected by our AVs and a claim it was sent by ‘pirates’. Oddly enough TSR were more interested in the AV detection then they were with the fact that someone with Steves Email was mailing viruses  hidden in their own tool! Dummy run anyone?

Naive

The ‘faces’ are very naive to think TSR will allow them any credible recognition after they have served their purpose of endorsing the tool, and why should they, after all, TSR have ‘worked’ on the tool for 6 months, the endorsers will have only done anything between 1 week to a few days.  TSR are giving them nothing they would not have gained anyway by simply downloading the finished tool next week. They are also naive to believe that after 6 months on the tool, and many other tools and programmes under their belt, that in the final few days TSR suddenly needs the free community to put it all together? TSR could easily do that themselves, which again brings forth the question of why do TSR need them so badly. The TSR man made famous for the words ‘bait’ and ‘lure’ certainly knows the answer to that one.

TSR will certainly be a blight on the sims 3,  any future tool produced by the free community, and indeed all creations made from these tools, will always have Steve bleating his own praises  in the background. Then there is the question of their EULA, which they will naturally deem more important then they did any EULA belonging to EA.

My personal hopes for the near future

• My main hope is for a tool by Pescado, the only person I would personally trust at this moment in time. ( Note: My personal opinion only )
• I hope EA release a tool.
• I hope the ‘faces’ will download the finished public product directly from the TSR site and not just blindly endorse the version they have been ‘working’ on.
• I hope that the free community release is a trojan free version of the tool that has been 100% coded or cleaned by themselves, and not just a rehash of TSRs shady program.
• I hope the free community starts to ask more questions on why EA gave such a huge ( and up until now secret ) advantage to a site with such an illegal track record.
• I hope that whatever is in this tool that Steve wants the free community to have so badly is found quickly and destroyed.
• I hope Steve finds a better name then ‘the faces’ It sounds too sci fi, I would suggest ‘endorsers’ or ‘mini tools’.