Custom content:Pay sites

A Pay site is a fan website that charges subscription fees or donation fees for access to custom content. These charges are often intended to cover bandwidth costs, although some pay sites offer adult content, and require paid access as a means of limiting their content to adults only. Many pay sites have both paid-access only and freely available custom content. Most pay sites have requested that their content not be posted on The Exchange or on other websites, though this content is often uploaded elsewhere anyway.

Conception

The overwhelming popularity of some fan sites caused them problems. Popular fan sites were overcome with traffic, so many servers could not handle them, and most sites on free servers spent part of the day down. In order to handle the traffic, webmasters had to pay for more bandwidth. Some of the most popular sites were paying thousands of dollars a month from their own pocket to keep the site alive.

To solve the problem of webmasters paying large amounts of money for downloading, some sites, such as The Sims Resource, sold CDs of their content, and/or went pay. Subscriptions pay for the bandwidth and have allowed some sites to have their sites put on more reliable servers. Nevertheless, SimsHost closed because it "never reached break-even and the gulf between operating costs and revenues from subscriptions and downloads grew to the point that SimsHost was losing more money than [they] could possibly afford."

Instead of becoming a pay site, some fan sites have elected to take donations, some even offer a gift in return. Around the Sims is one of these sites that has traditionally offered donation gifts. Patreon is a common means that sites have used to take donations or offer early access content.

Paysite Models

Physical content distribution

One of the first method of financing the costs of running custom content websites that were designed to handle high server loads was to distribute physical copies of the content itself, usually on CD or DVD disks. A cost was charged for these CDs or DVDs, and for a time, it was a win-win situation for several custom content sites: The players could obtain all of the content available from the site on one or two discs, saving themselves hundreds of hours of time spent downloading and installing each piece of content individually. The site owner and custom content provider did not have to use expensive server bandwidth to provide the content shipped on these CDs and DVDs. Several hundred sets of TS1 (The Sims 2000) custom content could be loaded on to one DVD.

However, some other people began compiling their own custom content collections on CD and DVD, and auctioning them off on eBay. Between security concerns, and the increased file size of custom content in The Sims 2, most pay sites switched to other models.

Ad-based Models

To finance the increasing cost of server bandwidth and domain maintenance costs, many custom content sites resorted to placing advertisements on the website. Usually these were in the form of ad banners. When ad-blockers became common, third party ad delivery services were used, such as video embedding, Google Ads, ad-fly, or short-est.

Ad-fly and Short-est were ad-based models designed to force the player to view five seconds of an advertisement before continuing to the download. A shortened link brought the player to an ad link which the player needed to watch for 5 seconds before continuing to the download. Unfortunately, unlike Google Ads, neither Ad-fly nor Short-est screened their advertisers, but relied on the honor system and the ability for people to report ads that violated their terms. Unfortunately, Ad-fly and Short-est quickly became sources of malware, once hackers realized that if the page displayed actually froze the browser and/or the system within the 5 seconds, they could add a scam warning message advertising a "cure" for the "virus". This is now commonly known as a Trojan horse/ransomware exploit - in downloading the "cure", they actually were infecting computers, then charging users to fix the computers they just infected. When security updates to modern computers became available to automatically report this kind of malware during or after the fact, sites like ad-fly and short-est were quickly marked as known malware hosts and blocked as dangerous sites by updated browser security features.

Subscription Models

Subscription models typically locked most or all of the site content behind a pay wall. The player was required to sign in to the custom content web site to access the content. Often both a free membership and a paid membership were offered. The free membership would have metered downloads requiring a wait, and/or a limited custom content selection. The paid membership would offer things like unmetered downloads, the ability to download larger archives or complete sets instead of individual files, banner ad removal, access to forums, access to exclusive email lists, groups, and so on.

The most well-known subscription model sites currently are The Sims Resource and Patreon. Patreon is a third party subscription hosting site that became available during the development of The Sims 3. Due to the way Patreon works, most Patreon content is linked to from the content creator's separate blog or public posts. Creators typically set up subscription levels on Patreon for their fans, including a free/public level. Posts and privileges are restricted by tier level. For instance, a public post might show a picture of an upcoming set, but the download link is in another linked post that is pay tier restricted. Other Patreon privileges frequently given to subscribers are Discord invite links, Discord roles, fan polls, feedback comment channels, exclusive cloud drive folder links, and exclusive YouTube videos. After EA Games addressed this issue directly and made a statement prohibiting permanently locking content behind paywalls, early access (which was not prohibited) became another benefit - subscribers would get the creator content from one to three months early before it was released publicly. Other pay sites began categorizing their custom content and meshes as 3-D models. Those who subscribed would get a working model for the Sims.

Historically, Mall of the Sims, SimsSlice, the Well-Dressed Sim, Pandora Sims, and the Eighth Deadly Sim, and Sexy Sims were all subscription sites. Some pay sites began as subscription sites due to mature content. Others started with a free model, then went pay when they attracted enough players to put a strain on server bandwidth from all the downloads. TS1 sites often attracted lots of players when object mods were available on the site, so new object mods were typically locked behind the pay wall.

Some subscription sites went offline after they stopped continuing to produce new content for the latest Sims game. Others, like Eighth Deadly Sim, removed any and all mature content from the site and granted all visitors to the site free access. .

Premium Gift Models

Most custom content creators do what they do for fun, rather than for profit. But to break even, many found themselves asking for donations. Some, like Around the Sims.com, found success by offering premium gifts of special custom content for donators only.

Many of these premium donation sites often offer other special perks to their donators as well, such as forum access, whole set downloads, and so on.

Curseforge

Curseforge added Sims 4 to its library of mods upon EA approval. on December 6, 2022. Curseforge also hosts mods for other games, such as Minecraft, Stardew Valley, and more.

Curseforge is sponsored by ad banner content but all custom content and mods are free for all to download. Creators get paid from a percentage of ad revenue collected. Downloading Sims 4 mods on Curseforge now requires the player to install the free Curseforge app. A premium Overwolf subscription can be purchased to remove the ads. Current advantages of Curseforge (as of Dec 2023): Curseforge can tell you which creators have uploaded updates to their mods hosted on Curseforge if you let the app manage all your Curseforge content for your game. You can search broadly by mod type to find mods and custom content you want. Disadvantages of Curseforge (as of Dec 2023): Curseforge only hosts mods for the Sims 4. When Curseforge "organizes" your mods, it puts ALL of them directly in the Mods folder, never in a subfolder. Plus if you manually move them to a subfolder, it will not recognize the mod or custom content as Curseforge content and will no longer notify you about updates. Curseforge does not take into account for script mods that have different versions, such as translated versions, or versions adapted to certain other mods. Curseforge also does not let you finetune the categories for search as much as other large sites, notably Mod the Sims and The Sims Resource.

Controversy

There is controversy over whether it is right to charge for custom content or fair to recoup costs of bandwidth. This controversy stems from certain clauses in the game's End-User License Agreement (EULA); people and websites that oppose the concept or practice of pay sites will often cite the EULA and challenge the legitimacy of pay sites.

However, Electronic Arts has taken no legal action against pay sites or their policies and released this statement:

"The Sims celebrates creativity, humor, and community. We strive to provide players with tools that enable them to customize and personalize their game experience. We are proud that so many of The Sims and The Sims 2 players create their own art for the games and share it with others. Sharing art online is a hobby that involves an investment of time, energy and money. Whether players choose to share their original artistic creations with the community is up to them: some custom content creators design work for a fee; some host their works on sites that organize, store and serve an enormous amount of content for subscribers; some artists request donations; and some artists allow all players to download their creations for free. These artists set their own terms for how they want to share their talents with the community at large. Those terms should be respected by other players."

Despite that and a few changes to the EULA, the creators of custom content do waive the rights to their content once it is shared. The following is an excerpt from The Sims 3 EULA, 2009:

"4. In exchange for the right to use content contributed by other users through the Software, when you contribute content through the Software, you expressly grant to other users of the Software the non-exclusive, perpetual, transferable, worldwide, irrevocable right to access and use, copy, modify, display, perform, and create and distribute derivative works from, your contributed content in connection with the Software, and to distribute and otherwise communicate your contributed content as a component of works that they create using the Software, for example, The Sims lots or The Sims videos, without further notice, attribution or compensation to you. You hereby waive any moral rights of paternity, publication, reputation, or attribution under applicable law with respect to EA.s and other players. use and enjoyment of such content contributions in connection with the Software."

External links

• About.com The Sims Pay Sites

Examples of pay sites

• The Sims Resource
• Simslice
• Pandora Sims
• Sexy Sims
• Patreon

Sites against pay sites

• Paysites Must Be Destroyed

Now defunct pay sites (Internet Archive)

• The Well Dressed Sim (archived August 2000)
• Mall of the Sims (archived June 2004)
• SimsHost (archived June 2007)