I think a lot of the emotional response is specifically in reaction to the condescending way they said "just go play other Sims games! " as if we weren't aware that newer games even existed or where to find them.

You had made some well thought out points and I actually agree with most of them however what I'm trying to say is when a game is that old that it's incompatible with newer OSes in the future there would likely be emulators made for them that would be able to run them such as Dosbox. Fortunately I have nothing to worry right now because I could run it fine on my Win 10 laptop and what does EA have to lose putting an old game available for purchase on Origin if they're a multi-billion dollar corporation? If anything it should make them even richer because there are a lot of people that still love that game and are willing to pay for it.

@FranH
That's the thing, though: EA ISN'T losing customers. At least not a net loss. Where they might lose one, they gain another to replace them. EA is doing just fine, even without you and me and probably bunches of other TS2-clingers, Fran.

Sears, on the other hand, is suffering the same thing as most other large brick-and-mortar retailers: With the advent of online shopping, people just don't want to go to brick-and-mortar stores anymore. Why deal with the traffic, the parking, the hassle of lines, the weather, the rudeness of fellow shoppers, the overly-pushy salespeople on commission, etc., when you can order whatever you need from your own home and have it delivered to your door? Even Walmart knows this; they're backing away from brick-and-mortar stores and starting to view them more as distribution centers, places where people can go to pick up the things they've bought online, if they don't want to wait or pay shipping for them to be delivered. I predict that, sooner rather than later, the only brick-and-mortar stores that will exist will be food-related. Grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, farmer's markets, etc. Because you can't (yet!) buy fresh food online, unless you happen to live in a very large urban market close to a distribution center, where businesses can offer same-day delivery. The mistake that Sears made was sticking with brick-and-mortar too long. They had to know the potential of online sales and they even already had the infrastructure to get in on the ground floor of that, given that they have long had their mail/phone-order catalog-sales arm, all the way back to the turn of the 20th century. Instead, they chose to expand brick-and-mortar and then conservatively cling to them, banking on older people -- their customer demographic IS older -- not embracing online sales...but they were wrong. And now those older customers who DID eschew the online thing....are dying along with the company. Sears likely would've been OK, maybe even flourished, if they'd made a different decision. But they didn't. Shopping centers and malls are dying a rather quick death, and Amazon already has a chokehold on the online market that will be tough to loosen. Because Bezos, love him or hate him, is way smarter than than the people making the decisions for brick-and-mortar store companies. (Am I happy that I bought a chunk of Amazon's stock at its IPO in 1997, and then held on to it when many people bailed during the dot-com bust? Why, yes! Yes, I am! ) So, it'll be interesting to see where things go...but yeah, it's a major economic upheaval we've got going on now. The old is going out and the new isn't quite here yet, so we're all in a bit of limbo.

And all that off-topicness aside...Yeah, EA is doing fine. Sure, many of its customers complain about stuff...but they still go ahead and buy what EA sells. Sure, many folks in the fan community won't buy from them (or say they won't, at least), but many, many other people do and will continue to do so. EA will keep pushing the limits as much as it can, slowly, and slowly customers will adapt and start seeing the "new" as simply "normal." EA and other large game developers/publishers are masters at this sort of thing.

EDIT:


It's not "What do they have to lose?" so much as "What do they have to gain?" The answer to both questions is "nothing," but it's the "nothing" in answer to the second question that makes it likely that they won't do it. Not impossible, mind you, but not likely. Corporations don't do things to make people happy. They do things that push their business forward. As I've said, they've moved on, and they want their customers to move on, too, and not look back. I'm not saying that I agree with this, personally, because I as a player want TS2 to live forever. But it IS the better business decision, in the end. (I also suspect there might be some backlash if they started to sell the UC. Of the "You gave it to my friend's cousin's friend's younger sister for free, but *I* have to buy it? THAT'S NOT FAIR!" variety You KNOW that would be some people's attitude...)

That's true and very sad that had gotten some greedy that they no longer care about their consumers. I'm just glad that I had got to experience the golden era of gaming because it went all went downhill. That's a good reason why we need competition to challenge those companies to do better and i'm glad there are some companies that still care about their consumers and good games being made today that tells that there is a market for well made games. I would like to say that you're really knowledgeable when it comes to business and it's very interesting that you had brought a part of Amazon's stock back when they were just getting started. How long had you been in that field?

See, that's a common misunderstanding. Companies DO care about their customers. Without customers, they have no business. But as companies become larger and/or as they absorb smaller companies (as EA acquired Maxis, for example) and as their market share expands, they have to start making decisions. They're no longer niche, as smaller companies tend to be. They no longer only have one or two products to market. And they have a MUCH more diverse market with different interests, wants, and needs. So then it becomes a question of "Which PART of our market do we concentrate on?" because they know they won't be able to please everyone. For the people who are outside of whatever part of the market the company chooses to concentrate on, that can seem like a slap in the face. And to some extent it is...but that's where smaller, newer companies can get their foot in the door. And then sometimes THEY become big and start to alienate people, and then another smaller/newer company gets that business. It's how business works.

As for Amazon...I always have my ear to the wind for burgeoning tech companies because I've been a geek for as long as I can remember. I've been messing in the stock market since I was about 12 or so, when my dad would buy penny stocks that I wanted on my behalf. I have good instincts sometimes, but I'm odd because I actually kind of hate business -- I'm really a communist at heart -- but I like the "gambling" aspect. It's an adrenalin rush. Tech either goes really huge or it crashes very, very hard, so it's the ultimate adrenalin stock, so to speak. I KNEW that online shopping would be HUGE if it really caught on, and Amazon seemed to have the most shit together, of the companies that were starting to embrace it in the early 90s. It was easily the best decision I ever made. I bought 150 shares at about $20 apiece during that IPO 20 years ago, so an investment of about $3000. The stock quickly split, three times as I recall, one was 3:1, which means you got two more shares for each one you already had. Then the dot-com bust happened and a lot of people bailed on Amazon and a lot of other techs as the stock prices tumbled. I chose to hold on to Amazon but did dump some others. (Regrettably, in some cases.) Techs are the basis of my portfolio, and that includes EA. And now that Amazon stock is worth...Well, a lot more than $3000, now that Amazon's stock price is averaging about $1800 per share.

Thanks for the business lesson. I don't really don't know how business works because I had never took any business besides that Economics class that I had took in 12th Grade. I still don't like the way EA done their consumers for years now but I do understand a little bit why they had done the things that they done.

I have seen 'expansion as failure' first hand. I used to work for a major retailer (I will not divulge the name but if you've seen my previous posts, you can guess) that expanded too much too fast, took on too much debt in a shrinking and extremely competitive market.

They got eaten alive by their competition. One of whom bought half of the company. I'm working now for that competitor as a result of that buyout. Companies make the biggest mistakes when they mistake growth for improvement of sales. Often it is not even remotely tied together.

Also, there's one other little adage that most companies that fail often fail to heed: "Stick to what you do best". Most don't listen to the market, instead they claim they have foresight enough to know what lies ahead. EA has been lucky so far, but in the past they nearly got wiped out as well.

Now I wish that someone with too much time on their hands would release a heavily modded, improved version of the sims 2 with all the assets other games lack, that could match ts4 popularity if done right, to show EA and all the customers they're ripping off just how well done the sims games can be.
Shady, yes, but some of the gameplay mods ts2 has, really change how you can play the game and I've been upset with how little things you can do with the sims 4 while paying the same amount of not more as for the previous games.
The worst part is, that most of ts4 players are kids who are unaware that they're paying so much for pretty much nothing. I realise a lot of us here are biased, but the truth is that with the sims 2 you really got what you payed for and sadly it's not the case with the current games.

They'd need the source code and they'd have to pry that out of EA's cold dead hands.

Yeah, sadly. Not like anyone would even mod ts2 like that anyway with all the issues it has, it'd be too much work for nothing in return ://

About this situation:

I disagree. I know a number of modders who would love to get their hands on the source code, and I am quite sure if EA ever did hand it out there would be a swarm. Also, what are 'all these issues'? Apart from corruption sims 2 has very few issues.

I assumed they meant corruption.

If the source code was available I think some 80-90% of corruption could be fixed by three changes: Disabling the 'delete' button from the family bin, not allowing occupied lots to be moved to the bin, and incorporating the changes that nounlinkondelete makes. There'd still be the occasional issue, such as people removing CC that uses NPCs, but it'd be reduced significantly.

hmmm...I was wondering about something. Origin changed the code a couple of years ago that made us have to log in to play. Then that of which we do not speak came along and we quit having to do it.

I'm sure they have a program that tallies logins and games played. I wonder whether they got the idea no one was playing the game anymore?

https://simsvip.com/2018/10/15/ea-e...ate-collection/

And news from Simvip.

Someone on Twitter wrote that he or she managed to get a copy of the game after this news.

Agree. I treat mine extremely nicely, I have even bought it some brand new spare hardware in case something goes wrong in the future.
Although I have this habit of building a new PC every 3 years I never change OS unless I'm forced to. Right now I'm running Win 7 and have kept the last good PC I had had with XP installed. No one can take TS2 away from me. EAtards can go wild with all their anti-consumer practices, I couldn't care less. The last time they heard from me was when I was shopping for my Niece (bought her TS3) and took the opportunity to get a couple of TS3 expansions for myself. Origin has never been, and will never be installed on any PC of mine.

*holds on to my discs for dear life*

Yeah make sure that you do that because EA sure isn't making isn't the game more easily available. It's as if they want to erase all the progress that the previous games had made.

It's more like EA wants to erase Sims 2 as the best people simulation game ever made. Which it was.

Which it is.

@FranH, you wrote sound like "conspiracy theory" against the game.

No, it wasn't a conspiracy theory of any sort-but EA probably wishes that they could just move onto the next wave of making money from games they've made recently.

Because it's not making money from that title.

I agree. Even though I use UC and love it, I have ALWAYS kept my discs, some of which are duplicates. I have them in my go bag in case of a fire.

What kept you from saying that Sims 3 is the best life simulator? I agree that Sims 2 is the best but i'm curious.