Chao Patties

tl;dr: because they are doing something Maxis has asked them not to do and in most cases are lying about it.

The long version:

Partly because since the beginning of Sim time, Maxis has said "y'all, please don't charge for custom content" and paysite operators have gone "WHATEVA WHATEVA I DO WHAT I WANT" in reply.

Mostly because most paysite operators aren't even honest enough to tell you "hey, I'm making a fat profit off this site and Maxis isn't seeing a dime of it."

Paysites are the worst kind of piracy--the kind that turns a profit. I would be lying if I said I've never downloaded something that's not really supposed to be downloaded, and chances are you would be too. But there is a goddamned line. Charging money for goods you have no legal right to charge money for crosses it.

And paysite operators have the nerve to cry "OMG PIRACY" when PMBD distributes their stuff for free. Yeah, I don't get it either.

But we're not charging for the content! We're only charging for our bandwidth!

Yeah, that's a big old steaming crock o' shit and I'm prepared to prove it.

How would I do that? By making an offer to any and every paysite owner and pay content creator in the entire world...

My hosting plan gives me over 300GB of disk space and about 6.5 TB (yes, terabytes) transfer per month, and I have plenty of both to spare (I'm currently using a little over 2GB of space, and my bandwidth rarely breaks 3GB/mo; bandwidth overage is charged at a rate of ten cents per gig over). With your explicit permission and with full credit and link-love, I can easily mirror on this site, at absolutely no cost to you, any content you would normally charge for access to. If you are interested in allowing me to take some of your bandwidth load off, please contact me.

There's just one condition:

Any content mirrored here will be available to the general public FREE OF CHARGE.

Nobody will make a cent off it. Not me, not you, nobody. If you are truly only charging for your bandwidth, and not for the content itself, you will be lined up around the block to take advantage of this offer.

*crickets chirp*

Yeah, that's what I thought. 

[Update: I've now had this offer up for well over a year, and not a single paysite operator has taken me up on it. Not one. No further questions, Yer Honor.]

[Update #2: Whoops, looks like paysites DO turn a profit! Thanks for proving my point, Kathy, Eric, and Walt!]

See, paysite operators duck around EA/Maxis asking that content creators not sell Sims content by claiming to be charging you for their bandwidth, not for the actual content. Or, even better, in the case of another paysite I won't name, they claim they're only asking for your credit card information (and that $34-for-360-days fee--yes, 360 days, not even a full year) to keep wee kiddies from seeing their mature content.

All of which is neatly exposed for the utter bullshit it is when they flip the fuck out over sites like PMBD putting their pay content up for free download. Fuck you, you're not squeaking by on your bandwidth bill, you're not charging for your bandwidth, you're making a fucking profit by charging money for the fucking CONTENT after Maxis has asked you to please not do that. Butthurt over your content being released into the wild for free? You're lucky you're not getting fucking sued. All of us in the Sims modding community are lucky EA/Maxis hasn't looked at the worst of the paysites, gone "oh, screw all y'all," and withdrawn its support for modding altogether.

ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING THE FACT THAT EARLY SIMS2 CUSTOM CONTENT WAS NOTHING BUT RECOLORS OF MAXIS MESHES AND YOU WERE CHARGING FOR THAT TOO. YES YOU WERE, AND ALMOST ALL OF YOU STILL ARE.

Simple math, people. Look at the subscription prices on these sites. Look at the average Sims custom content file size. There is no way paysite operators are not turning a profit. Look, I'm sorry, but if you only have downloads open to "subscribers," and you're charging $5+ a month for access, there is no fucking way a single subscriber could be leeching that much content and $5+ worth of bandwidth from you in that timeframe unless you have a HUGE archive and I mean XBOX FUCKING HUGE, I'm talking gigs. I could maybe see it with Sims 1 content, where the average love bed ran about 2-4MB. Sims 2 content? Where the average new-mesh-with-a-few-recolors package runs less than 500K? Not buying it. Remember that offer I just made? Go back and take a look at my disk space and monthly bandwidth allotment, and particularly the overage charge.

In light of that, I find it extremely difficult to believe that any but the most ungodly humongous archives of custom content could be incurring hundreds of dollars a month in bandwidth charges. Maybe you should move to a webhost that gives you a decent amount of bandwidth without charging you an arm and a leg? Just a suggestion. 

Folks, you can cut that line of bullshit right now. You're not "charging just to pay your bandwidth bill." You are selling that content and you are making a profit by doing so.

And then there's the absolute bottom of the barrel, the scummiest of the scummy: paysites with poster/T-shirt/etc. recolors or Sims or objects or whatever featuring likenesses of famous real people or fictional characters or other properties they don't have rights to make money off of. And then, of course, scream about OMG COPYRITE INFRINGEMENTZ!!111!1 when PMBD gets hold of their stuff.

Do I even need to explain how stupid that is? Or why those paysite operators have no business getting all butthurt about that? Do I seriously need to explain why you are a fucking moron if you paste someone else's face or intellectual property on a texture, sell it without getting permission from the person or company whose face or property you're using and without giving that person or company a cut of the profit, and then throw a temper tantrum when someone takes that item and distributes it for free?

Apparently I do, because a lot of paysites are doing just that.

I'm pretty sure 8th Deadly Sim doesn't have Nickelodeon's permission to sell items with Spongebob Squarepants on them, and I seriously doubt The Sims Resource has Valve Software's blessing to sell Sim Weighted Companion Cubes (or Sony's permission to sell Sim Playstations, or Nintendo's permission to sell Sim N64s, et cetera, et cetera). And yet here they are, demanding money for things they don't own a single right to. And again, that excuse about only charging for their bandwidth is bullshit. If they were only charging to cover their bandwidth bill, they wouldn't have a problem with other sites (like this one! Still no takers! Surprise surprise!) mirroring their content.

These people are doubly lucky they're not getting fucking sued, and in addition they lose all right to bitch when someone "pirates" their bootleg wares.

You don't have the right to sell Sim Wiis or Sim posters that are nothing but direct copypastas of official movie posters whose text you haven't even covered over with Simlish babble or Sim Chucky dolls either, kids. I'm downloading a big pile of your shit from PMBD in another Firefox tab right this very minute and there is not a goddamned thing you can do about it. Cry moar.

But I worked so hard on that stuff! I deserve compensation for my hard work!

Honey, it doesn't matter if you spent three years photographing 20,000 individual Swarovski crystals to paste onto the bodice of your Maxis evening gown recolor. The amount of work you put into your custom content does not change the fact that Maxis does not allow you to sell it.

If you think you're entitled to compensation, then here's an idea: trade your stuff. Make it available only to fellow content creators, in exchange for something awesome from them. The people who don't make custom content can ...I dunno, write you some fic? Draw you something? Figure it out. You can be compensated for your hard work without doing stupid shit Maxis has told you not to do, people.

What about donation gifts, then?

Donation gifts on otherwise free sites? It still falls under the category of "charging money for Sims content when Maxis has asked you not to," and I'd never do it myself, but I have less of a problem with that. As long as there is no minimum donation amount necessary to get to the "gifts," I can see offering something nice to folks who give voluntarily.

Sites where a "donation" is required to download anything at all, or a minimum donation of $5 or $10 or more is required? See also "fire, die in a." You're no better than the subscription sites and in fact I would argue that you're even worse. Because not only do you not have the balls to be honest about the fact that you're making money off your site, you don't even have the balls to be honest about the fact that you're running a paysite and have to hide your spineless ass behind that "look, it's only donations" thing. Go stand in the corner with the rest of the paysites.

Well, you sell Photoshop brushes and Poser stuff! That's the same thing!

Um, no.

Adobe and Curious Labs allow people to sell custom content to work with their software. Poser content creators, with very few exceptions, allow people to sell new textures for their meshes--in fact, they encourage it, because awesome textures drive sales of the original product.

Maxis/EA does not allow people to sell custom content for The Sims.

It is that simple, people. Adobe/Creative Labs/etc. say "yes you can." Maxis says "no you can't." That's all there is to it. End of discussion.

 

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