I am a long-time fan and avid player of the Sims series.  I am deeply
concerned to hear that EA staff failed to block an upload to the
official Sims 3 website which apparently contained images of a highly
offensive and illegal nature.

I understand that EA staff then failed to act in a timely manner to
remove it once at least one person had informed them via the Sims 3
forum on that site.

I am deeply concerned that EA does not appear to take enough care in
moderating uploads from the general public to an official community
site which is visited by children as well as adults, every day.

As a Sims fan, I feel that I should not have to even hear about such
an incident occurring, let alone read about it on two separate blogs
in the public domain, outside of the official EA Sims 3 site. But as I
read the posts in this very discussion, I see that this is not even
the first time.

I understand that there will be those who attempt to spam the EA Sims
3 website with these types of obscene images.  What I find inexcusable
is the lack of monitoring which should be there to prevent it from
actually being published on a site frequented by children. EA is
responsible for what it does and does not allow to be made available
for viewing by the general public on its own official website.

It is my hope that EA will take appropriate action to inform the
proper legal authorities of this incident, and to better monitor
community uploads to the Sims 3 website in future.

regards,
Galatea0

I am in complete agreement with you. There's rarely a day goes by that I
don't find myself reporting corrupted third party content, that someone has
uploaded to The Exchange. A younger player, or someone who is new to the
game, and The Exchange, might not be aware of what this bad content can do
to their game. They like a player-made Sim, or an outfit, and download it.
And then, one of their Sims has a baby. This corrupted content seems to,
most often, attach itself to infants and Toddlers. So, what the new Mom
brings home from the hospital doesn't look like a baby at all. What Mom is
carrying in her arms is something resembling a long stick, or laundry pole,
that extends from the hospital, over the roofs of the houses and buildings,
and ends at the home of the family that is currently in play. When Mom puts
the new baby in it's crib, the elgongated stick-thing extends up,
and through the roof.  When the player rotates the camera, the scene
glitches out of focus, blurring, pixelating, and in some cases makes the
scene go black altogether! The only way to remedy this, is to wait for the
baby to age up to Toddler, or use the "testingcheatsenabled true" cheat,
click on the stick thing in the crib, and then click "trigger age
transition" from the menu. One of the adults, or the teens will immediately
come to the nursery, take the baby from the crib, and place it on the floor
where it is then free to age up.

HOWEVER, what takes the place of the stick-infant, does not even remotely
resemble a Toddler! What evolves is a grotesque, nightmarish creature, with
grossly elongated arms, that end in oversized, monster-like hands that end
with hideous, pointed, claw-fingers. Sometimes, the head is in the normal
place, at others, the Toddler's face is now protruding from his/her chest.
The Toddler will be wearing clothes and shoes that should be
catagorized for young adults and adults. These articles of clothing will
almost always be one of the following...1. A layered top tt resembles a
patterned Tee Shirt, over a plain Jersey top, with three-quarter length
sleeves. 2. A Baseball-style, Jersey top with a graphic print of a Vampire
girl on the front. 3.A Baseball-style Jersey, with a print of singer,
Taylor Swift on the front. 4. A pair of ugly, thigh-high, high-heeled boots
that lace up the front (These are labelled "Day Time, Night Time, Every Day
Shoes"). 5. And, positively the worst of all of them, a positively HIDEOUS
(usually it's all grey, and totally ghostly, and featureless) horse
costume. The outfit is labelled (Horse body, all ages, both genders). If
your infant is wear the horse costume when he/she ages up, you end up,
you'll have a ridiculous-looking thing, half horse, half Toddler, that is
almost ALWAYS also wearing those ugly, laced-up boots, as well. It looks
very creepy, crawling about on the floor, and behaving very bit like an
ordinary Toddler would! There's no need to pannic, though, this creature
can be easily cured of it's malady. Have the child crawl to the nearest
dresser, click on the dresser, and select PLAN OUTFIT. The moment the
Toddler is dressed in proper attire, it becomes a normal, everyday
child...playful, and as cute as a button! Next, have the Toddler go to the
nearest floor-length mirror, click on the mirror and select CHANGE
APPEARANCE.Now you can choose the hairstyle you like best for the little
tot.

The most infamous bit of corrupted Custom Content, is a little item named;
GIRL DOLL DRESSED. It looks like a harmless toy. A little doll with blond
hair, and wearing a cute, pink dress and white, buckle shoes. BUT, this
little, poorly crafted toy has the ability to totally screw your game! She
is known to cause repeated crashes to desktop. She will also cause your
game to develop an infuriating lag, plague your game with repeated freeze
ups, and cause numerous parts of your game to glitch and become utterly
unusable! In my game, she caused all of the large appliances in the game
catagory to glitch. The moment I selected a washing machine or clothes
drier, a kitchen range, or even an outdoor, barbeque grill, the game would
instantly freeze! Oh, the music would go on playing. the interior of the
house was crystal clear, as was the back yard when I had selected the
grill. But, no matter how long I waited, and how franticly I clicked, the
game refused to unlock. I couldn't even save my game! My only option was to
use the Ctrl+Alt+Del option and bring up the Task Manager. Invariably, Task
Manager would tell me: "The Sims 3...Not Responding". Well, no duh! That's
kind of obvious. I can't remember how many times, I had to use Task Manager
to shut down the game. Afterward, I ran ALL THREE of my Regestry Cleaners,
Defragged the Registry, Scanned my hard drive for malware and spyware,
deleted all of my game caches, and used Delphy's Dashboard Tool to scan my
Mods/Packages folder, and my DCCache folder, before restarting the game.It
was when I scanned the DCBackup older that I found my problem. I had
foolishly downloaded some lots, hair colors, and patterns from The
Exchange. Even though I told myself, I'd NEVER download from The Exchange
ever again.When I scanned the DCCackup folder with Delphy's tool, the scan
revealed DOZENS of corrupt files! More than half of those had other files
hidden inside them. No doubt that was where that Damn Doll  was hiding, and
how she had gotten into my game, as well!

Also in the DCBackup file, were a couple of dozen duplicate files, and 30
or 40 conflicting files. No wonder the game was glitched and acting
wonky! Anyway, while I was in the process of hunting down corrupted
content, I had also managed to clean out most of the stuff I had gotten
from The Exchange. I ended up with a few odds and ends that I had
downloaded from third party sites, and a couple of my favorite Mods. When I
ran my game fter the clean up, IT WORKED! No more glitchy appliances. BUT,
the game had tried to compensat for all of the missing content, by
substituting something from the storage bins. Some of it looked okay, but
other stuff turned out really, really ugly! I had to go shopping or some
new patterns, flowers for the garden,and some assorted clutter (you know,
all of those little odds and ends that make a home look lived in. I LOVE
clutter!).

As for all of this corruputed content,EA is well aware of it. They even
posted warnings in thier Blog about the Doll and other bad content. So, why
can't they police The Exchange, and clean out all of the corrupted content?
It should be easy for them. They can afford the very best computers and the
Servers that keep those computers, and everything else at EA running
smoothly. But, instead, EA does nothing. They prefer to concentrate on the
console gamers and cater to THEM. Why? It's obvious. The disks for console
games COST MORE! On the Average, a game disk/s for a console game runs
$49.95 to $89.95 and higher (for Delux Editions, Collector's Editions,
Special Limited Editions, and Compilations that include one or more
additional Expansion Packs). Pricey! On the other hand, PC and Mac games
sell for $19.99 to $59.95 for special editions. Some of the fancy
Collectors Editions and Compilations CAN be fairly expensive. I paid $79.95
for The Sims 3 Collector's Edition, which included a nifty Plumbob
Keychain/Flash Drive thingy, that could hold 2 GB of data, some cool decals
and the Prima Guide. Yeah, it was pricey, but, worth it, I think. I paid
$49.95 for the Delux Edition of Spore, which included, the Prima Guide, a
book of Concept Art from the game, and a book detailing how the game came
about, and all the work that went into it. The book of art, made the cost
worth it...in my own oppinion, of course. All of this taken together
explains why EA and it's ceaseless, ever-growing greed would prefer
to concentrate on the console crowd. Profit negates player loyalty for EA.
They all too quickly forget that it was the PC gamers who made The Sims
Franchise, the most popular game series in the WORLD, and has netted them
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS I think it's about time that EA starts listening ( and
paying attention to) the people who made them rich in the first place. Many
have already jmped ship, and no longer play The Sims. If ...

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