Folks who opted to download a torrent of The Sims 4 are finding something completely unexpected: censorship.
As veteran Sims players know, the game will normally pixellate Sims when they’re nude (like, say, when a Sim takes a bath, or goes to the bathroom.) According to various reports around the web, pirated copies of the game make Sims permanently pixelated, which gives the game a goofy, censored look — as you can see in the initial image in this post, by nihwtf.
The funny thing is, some pirates looking for fixes to this bug are trying to play it off as ~some random glitch~ that happened to them. Of course they do: the pirates don’t initially know the bug happens because they torrented the game.
But some people do know what’s up. Guides are popping up specifically telling people how to get rid of the glitch if you downloaded the game illegally, and new torrents which purport to fix the issue can also be spotted:
Granted, it’s entirely possible some people actually bought the game and have encountered a glitch like this, too. Overall, though, pirates seem to readily admit this happened to them on their torrented copy of the game.
According to Joystiq, EA has “no plans to aid those players unable to enjoy their pirated copies of The Sims 4. Instead, the publisher urges affected players to purchase their own copy of the game which should lack the telltale pixelation.”
We contacted EA to ask about this, and will update if we hear back. It’s worth noting that shenanigans like this aren’t unique to The Sims, and have been a funny method that developers use to trick pirates into outing themselves for quite some time.
Comments
12 responses to “Anyone Who Pirates The Sims 4 Is In For A Surprise”
I was more than happy to pay for the new instalment of The Sims like I have every other iteration but they can blow it out their ass if they think I am going to stand by and let them remove game features to sell as an expansion at a later date.
Screw you EA I am going home ( with my money )
2018 4 YEARS LATER
EA has implemented 28 DLC and if you want the full experience of the game it’s time to mortgage you home because that’s a total of just $799.72
Yeah it’ll be patched soon like all of these ‘attempts’ at making the game unplayable to pirates.
I guess more people would’ve bought it if it wasn’t stripped of things.
Has already been done – yesterday sometime to my knowledge.
20 second fix in word pad.
Agreed. I give it a couple of weeks, tops, before a workaround for this is found.
I kind of dig the pixel look. Kind of like the ultra low-res mode of Broken Age.
8-bit sims!!!!
This is one of those games that is so insulting its not even worth Pirating.
Just watching a few videos on youtube it looks like EA’s most shameless money grab to date.
Its unbelievable how little is in this game compared to 3 and its so disgustingly obvious that they have it all ready to go to sell back to the consumer in small chunks.
they do have 3 or 4 day 1 dlc’s or something like that
The thing is the Sims 3 had far less than the Sim 2 when it launched and then there were tons of expansion sets.
The Sims 5 will be just the Sim creator…
Company realises DRM doesn’t stop piracy cos pirates just crack it on day one, so puts in censorship to stop piracy. Censorship gets cracked on day two… GOOD WORK.