No fucking way. I fucking hate microtransactions anyway, I’m certainly not going to let the Saudi Royal family or Jared fucking Kushner see a penny from me for pixels on a screen.
I love my Sims. I love ‘shopping’ for CC and posing photos and playing out family dramas. But I have everything I need to do that already.
Please remember what your ‘moola’ supports: continued enshittification of the game with microtransactions and forced generative ai implementation and, if that alone isn’t enough, the bigger picture includes public executions and private murders by hitmen in Saudi Arabia (for heinous crimes such as… being gay, or being a journalist critical of the government…), and the United States’ ongoing descent into fascism under the Trump administration.
Hello everyone - obviously i’m not a bigger account or someone people necessarily follow for gameplay, but I have been missing as of late and i’m sorry!
When my like 15 gen legacy household completely corrupted, I can’t lie, it killed my appetite for the game a little bit.
Not only that, i feel i can’t return without addressing the elephant in the room - the EA buyout to PIF.
If you’ve been living under a rock, i’m envious of you. The news essentially equates to EA (probably) being sold to PIF, which is Saudia Arabia’s government investment fund.
There are lots of concerns as to whether the gameplay will change at the moment, but honestly i don’t think this will occur. EA is a massive company, the buyers are probably more interested in the sports titles that EA has, as well as the Sims essentially branding itself on diversity since the dawn of time. Not only would it be downright stupid for them to no longer support these minorities within their game financially bc a LOT of consumers would boycott it - but it would also be INCREDIBLY expensive to remove these features.
That being said, I don’t have concerns (as of right now) for potential gameplay changes. I am of the opinion that the sims will stay as is.
Where i DO have concerns, however, is this support coming from the Saudi Arabian Government. Regardless of where you stand on LGBT rights etc, i think we can all agree that people DO NOT deserve to be publicly executed for being queer, and sadly this is something their government supports. Not only this, we have seen numerous free speech abuses like reporters being murdered, as well as the hundreds (if not thousands) unjustified deaths of queer people - this is NOT something i can continue to support in any capacity.
i have attached some articles regarding the issue below and i hope that you take the time to read them! it’s important that we as consumers DO NOT continue to support a company that is firstly willing to be sold to such a corrupt government but also that we DO NOT support this government financially.
whilst i will, of course, continue to play my game and post occasional screenshots from it - i can not in good conscience ‘promote’ it like i used to. My characters are POC queer people and using them to advertise a company that would murder them if they were real sickens me to my stomach.
i hope you all join me for this next iteration of my gameplay - both by joining the campaign as well as moving onto bigger and better things.
i am, like most of the sims community, incredibly excited for the release of Paralives on Dec 8th and will 100% be supporting and playing it upon its release! If you’re stuck for games to play, i would recommend that one hehe :)
thank you to anyone who’s read this far. if you need me to further clarify something, please let me know.
but also, don’t leave a nasty comment for the sake of it. engage constructively with the conversation if you’d like to argue, thank you<3
Links below the cut:
Country profile of Saudi Arabia. LGBT people are Saudi Arabia criminalises same-sex sexual activity between men and between women. The gende
As Saudi Arabia secures top footballers, takes over UK clubs and seeks to host the 2030 men's world cup, find out 10 ways the oil rich count
Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Here's what we know.
The death of Turki al-Jasser was the first high-profile killing of a journalist since the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi
I’m certainly not buying battlefront two, but I️ can’t step away from bioware (even though they’re squeezing gamers for money too right now). Thoughts?
Call us suckers. Call us nutcases. We are, after all, making a big stink over the loss of some virtual pets. Those who have never played Pet Society may never understand why we are working so hard to save what is really just some pixels on a computer…
