Re: Sims 3 expansions missing

Hi @EA_Mai & @GMGamerGirl,

I read in the origin patch notes, that they (several patches back Version 9.6.1)  "Added the ability to uninstall DLC for some games". I am assuming you would then be able to install a new version of the same pack then.

I am not sure if that will include the Sims 3 DLC or not, (I have not tried it) but it is worth checking out  - Unless someone else in the forum knows and can let all of us know.

If you do check it out and it works - let us know 🤔

@Catlee2  I mentioned previously that I'd already tried EA_Mai's instructions for the missing expansions in the Launcher, (indicated as installed in Origin) twice, to no avail.  Which is why I followed up for myself, and others, that couldn't even repurchase.

I'm in a holding pattern with EA's CS and TOS, and until they make a decision and change the status of those expansions, there's literally nothing I can do.

I have bought origin codes off ebay and in origin it says all of my expansion packs are installed but when i go to launcher, only some expansions show up, not all. I reinstalled the expansions but no difference. I have no cc or anything like that so I dont understand what is wrong. Anyone know what to do? But one thing for sure, I am NOT going to be buying all the sims 3 expansions all over again. 

@GMGamerGirl @JaseSylish @Queen_Unlimited Could you please try to uninstall the packs, clear Origin cache (you can find how here) and let me know if the expansions still give you the option to download them?

Thanks,

Mai

@GMGamerGirl,

I was just trying to help with your question about "what if someone wanted to re-purchase" - I also had been going through this same problem, so I totally understand your frustration. I would imagine most everyone is not going to want to re-purchase something they already paid for. And to make matters worse, because it has been so long since the packs/games were purchased, they do not even have the option for a refund anymore. I am just hoping EA will go after the person(s) that started this whole mess and come up with a solution that can work for everyone.

Hi @Stormsinger25 @Kyle4141 @jervarian2003 @PetrHipik @serenamaria @Kharsa12 ,

I've merged your threads/posts into this one because we are discussing the same situation you were asking about here. Please, read this and this posts for more information.

Thanks,

Mai

Thanks!

Just to clear up what I've done/haven't done....I've done all the suggestions posted and inevitably had to go through the CS team.

At that point, they flat out told me that those expansions were flagged on the account and there's literally no file deleting, cache clearing, reinstalling, etc. that I can do to change that until the TOS people finally get around to changing that on my account, which...by the way...is in no way connected to the CS Team, and is why most Help Chats and callbacks end up escalated, because the CS Tech Advisor told me that they're not allowed to change that unless it's cleared from the TOS Team.

I did receive one response from the TOS Team, in which they referenced "your FIFA account", which I don't even have, and another that laughingly said (and I quote) "a third-party retailer who has requested that the code should be disabled" and those were purchased TWO YEARS ago.  Neither CS or TOS can seriously suggest to me that someone who sold me something TWO YEARS AGO, and just out of the blue called EA up and said "yeah, you should disable those!"  That led to yet another case being opened to follow up on just who's account they were referencing, because it clearly wasn't mine, especially regarding the "FIFA" nonsense. The CS Team asked that I forward two different screen shots of emails that I'd received because when I read the response to the CS Advisor, it was so ridiculous that they had to see it for themselves.

Annnnnd...I'm still waiting.

Hi all,

Thanks for letting me know clearing your Origin cache was not helping with the repurchasing issue. Please, in case you are having issues to repurchase a pack, contact one of our advisers through EA Help.

Also, you can find a list of our trusted retailers here: https://help.ea.com/en-au/help/faq/where-to-buy-ea-games-v2/

@Monstress247 I have merged your post here as you are describing the same situation. Please, read this and this posts for more information.

@GMGamerGirl, please, take a look to the private message I have just sent you (you can read it from here).

-Mai

So I phoned up EA's Origin department and went through many questions to rule out the possibility that my in-access is due to client-based errors. After that, I was told that a case/repeal would be put in with EA's TOS department.

Now, after 3 days, I have received this email:

Thank you for contacting us regarding your inability to access Sims 3 expansions .

After reviewing your case, we found that your game was disabled due to a chargeback against your account.

A chargeback may occur if a game code has been purchased from an unauthorised source and/or if you have initiated a chargeback. You can resolve this issue by contacting the retailer.

You can review the full Terms of Service at [LINK HIDDEN]

Thank you,

EA Terms of Service

Is that it? Even if I contact the retailer and they issue me a new code, how am I meant to use that code if I apparently already own the expansion on Origin (despite it being a disabled version)? EA hasn't resolved anything for me and this was a waste of time.

It's very clear that EA simply want us to buy The Sims 4 and don't care about The Sims 3 fanbase any longer as it can no longer make them money. It's like when apple release new IOS updates that break older iphone models to force you to buy the latest ones. Simply huge corporations with so much money that they can get away with whatever they want.

---

@lewisclark123G wrote:

It's very clear that EA simply want us to buy The Sims 4 and don't care about The Sims 3 fanbase any longer as it can no longer make them money. It's like when apple release new IOS updates that break older iphone models to force you to buy the latest ones. Simply huge corporations with so much money that they can get away with whatever they want.

---

This situation has absolutely nothing to do with EA!

What looks happened is that a scam artist (or bunch of scam artists) bought tons of keys for the Sims 3 off of Origin using either stolen credit cards or fake information. They then turned around and resold them to other people, and you and everyone else wind up buying these stolen keys at eBay, Amazon Marketplace and other third market seller places. Later, the scammers did a fraudulent charge back to get all this money back, perhaps as part of a money laundering scheme. 

(Money laundering, as in, "I just scored $10000 in drug deals. I need to make the money look legit. So I'll buy a bunch of stuff with it, pretend to be a seller online, sell the merchandise to people, then charge back some of the sales so I can get this money back. Except now the money I am getting back will look nice and innocent because it'll all be in the form of credit card charge backs, like a business normally would do.")

If that's what happened, EA does not owe anything to you. The third party sellers screwed you over. Not EA. EA is just trying to get its stolen merchandise back. You're not entitled to now get these stolen packs back just because "you paid money for it."

It's no different than if you wanted to buy a brand new Gucci bag. But instead of going to a Gucci store or a reputable department store, you went to buy them at some seedy flea market. If it turned out that the flea market vendors had stolen those bags to sell to you, Gucci doesn't owe it to you to let you keep the stolen bags. You're out money, yes, but it was the vendors that took your money. Not Gucci.

Instead of raging at EA, you should be taking a very valuable lesson from all this--never buy digital goods (video games, music, etc.) from anyone except reputable sources (Amazon, Target, Origin, Steam, etc.). When you buy this stuff from "third party sellers" you're always assuming the risk of being scammed by them because there's no way of verifying who those people are and where they got their codes and keys from.

---

@GMGamerGirl wrote:

Neither CS or TOS can seriously suggest to me that someone who sold me something TWO YEARS AGO, and just out of the blue called EA up and said "yeah, you should disable those!"  

---

@GMGamerGirl: I understand you're upset but if you do a little research into this situation, it will be clear what happened.

Someone (or a bunch of people) bought a bunch of keys off of Origin with stolen credit card information, then sold those keys at third party sites like eBay, Amazon Marketplace, etc. Then they charged everything back.

From what I understand, it's part of some kind of a scheme to make "dirty money" look clean. In other words, it's a money laundering scheme. 

As for the "two years" thing, maybe the scammers didn't charge back the stuff you bought two years ago. But he (or they) might have charged back a ton of stuff recently, which raised a red flag. When EA looked into it, their investigators probably figured out that this was all part of an elaborate scam. They then probably tried tracing all the other keys these scammers had purchased and were able to trace the ones you bought years ago back to them.

Incidentally (and this can't be a coincidence), two years ago the exact same thing happened to another developer, Ubisoft, which also had a bunch of keys stolen off of Origin: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/28/ubisoft-key-resellers-stolen-cards/. So your keys from "two years ago" might be connected to that incident from 2015. 

I know this all sucks, but your rage is misplaced. You're acting as if this is all EA's fault or that it's acting shady, but it's not. You got hit by third party sellers who sold you stolen content. EA has the obligation to explain to you why it deactivated these keys you bought two years ago, but beyond that, any problem that you have is between you and the third party sellers you bought this content from, not EA. 

@thesims1depot  I'm pretty certain you're taking my dripping sarcasm as angst, rage, my posting history is pretty much filled with it.

I have done the research, I am aware of the circumstances, and I am following up.  Let's not derail the thread with your condescending *.

@GMGamerGirl Have you had a response from EA yet? I got a useless response just telling me my code has been revoked, no solution other than "contact the retailer". I emailed EA again and told again to wait three days, which I have, no response yet. 

@Kyle4141  No, unfortunately, I have not had a response from the Terms of Service team yet.

I did follow up with CS again yesterday, but once the case is escalated>>then moved on to the Terms Of Service Team, you have to wait out the TOS Team looking into your particular issue.  Meaning, while you can attempt to follow up through the EA Help center and a tech adviser there, once the issue is escalated to the Terms Of Service Team, it's essentially out of the hands of the help team that we all have access to through the EA Help center.  (i.e.; they're two separate/individual teams)

If I'm honest, the responses that I've been hearing about through other players haven't been good at all.

But for others reading, and/or looking for a particular solution to an issue.....I don't want anyone to get the impression that my/one particular case is a blanket for "all" cases, as individuals may be having different issues entirely that may just "appear" similar to the issues specific to this thread.

So has EA basically screwed all of us over just to get us to repurchase games for more money?

Yep. I only play sims 3 with ea. They are just money hungry and i will never buy an ea game again. Steam summer sale is June 22.

yeah this is still very much an issue.  I'm only missing Late Night, Pets and Into the Future (which I don't really care about that much to begin with) But I do with Late Night and Pets.  I had disk versions of them  Both games I had from a friend and I registered them because she never did so I wouldn't have this problem but I clearly can't play them or I wouldn't be complaining lol.  I really don't want to rebuy games that are actually installed on my computer.  I guess if I'm desperate enough I will just have to.  But 20 bucks for games that are almost 10 years old is nuts.  

@AtomicPanduh  Are you sure that your friend never registered the packs?  Because their disappearance is exactly what would be expected if you both had registered the codes.  EA only got around to checking its account data years later and has in the past year been systematically deactivating codes, although most of the time the cause for action is slightly different.

If you want to be sure that the packs are no longer available to your account, you can contact EA customer support and ask someone to check your account details.

https://help.ea.com/en/contact-us/

P.S.  Both Origin and Steam have periodic sales of TS3 and its packs.  If you're not in a rush, you could wait and potentially save some money.

---

@thesims1depot wrote:

---

@lewisclark123Gwrote:

It's very clear that EA simply want us to buy The Sims 4 and don't care about The Sims 3 fanbase any longer as it can no longer make them money. It's like when apple release new IOS updates that break older iphone models to force you to buy the latest ones. Simply huge corporations with so much money that they can get away with whatever they want.

---

This situation has absolutely nothing to do with EA!

What looks happened is that a scam artist (or bunch of scam artists) bought tons of keys for the Sims 3 off of Origin using either stolen credit cards or fake information. They then turned around and resold them to other people, and you and everyone else wind up buying these stolen keys at eBay, Amazon Marketplace and other third market seller places. Later, the scammers did a fraudulent charge back to get all this money back, perhaps as part of a money laundering scheme. 

(Money laundering, as in, "I just scored $10000 in drug deals. I need to make the money look legit. So I'll buy a bunch of stuff with it, pretend to be a seller online, sell the merchandise to people, then charge back some of the sales so I can get this money back. Except now the money I am getting back will look nice and innocent because it'll all be in the form of credit card charge backs, like a business normally would do.")

If that's what happened, EA does not owe anything to you. The third party sellers screwed you over. Not EA. EA is just trying to get its stolen merchandise back. You're not entitled to now get these stolen packs back just because "you paid money for it."

It's no different than if you wanted to buy a brand new Gucci bag. But instead of going to a Gucci store or a reputable department store, you went to buy them at some seedy flea market. If it turned out that the flea market vendors had stolen those bags to sell to you, Gucci doesn't owe it to you to let you keep the stolen bags. You're out money, yes, but it was the vendors that took your money. Not Gucci.

Instead of raging at EA, you should be taking a very valuable lesson from all this--never buy digital goods (video games, music, etc.) from anyone except reputable sources (Amazon, Target, Origin, Steam, etc.). When you buy this stuff from "third party sellers" you're always assuming the risk of being scammed by them because there's no way of verifying who those people are and where they got their codes and keys from.

---

I get what your saying but I don't think that is the case with everyone who is having this issue, and the situation does absolutely have to do with EA, since EA is making the accusation of using stolen goods, and as far as I know without any proof. For example I could buy a game/expansion/pack from steam which I did during their xmas sale for $.4.99 for each expension/pack, I could then sell the unused code on ebay for $10 a piece which isn't illegal that I know of, yet EA could revoke it just because it was bought on ebay?

I don't know what EA end game is, 'cause I own both the Sims 3 and Sims 4. This evening I noticed all the vehicles and bikes are missing out my game and the base game is missing but it runs. I purchase the base game and another game from Best Buy, all the rest were purchased through Origin. I registered all games with EA. Now I don't even see the base game to purchase again.

@monovia  There may be some error with your account, which only EA customer support would be able to fix.  But the first step is to clear Origin's cache and restart your computer.  If that doesn't help, try uninstalling Origin ("the hard way") and reinstalling; this wouldn't affect your installed games.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/faq/clear-cache-to-fix-problems-with-your-games/

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/origin/origin/manually-uninstalling-origin/

If neither of these steps help, you'll need to contact EA and ask someone to look into your account.  Best Buy is an authorized third-party seller, so there shouldn't be anything wrong with your codes.  But sometimes EA deactivates a code by mistake, and the only way to fix it is to get a CS rep to lift the block.  It would help if you could provide proof of purchase or ownership (receipts; photos of discs, cases, inserts with codes printed on them; etc.) during the chat.

https://help.ea.com/en/contact-us/

The same thing happened to me.I had all expansions and stuff packs. I tried everything with them and have been trying to deal with this issue for two years, and the problem yeah I bought them from Ebay back in 2015 and then almost 3 years later they get disabled. I tried contacting my seller, nothing, EA told me my only solution is to rebuy from origin. Which is not an option. I tried calling them like everyone suggested but all I was offered was a 15% discount on my next purchase. EA is just greedy at this point. Look at all the overpriced dlc they are releasing for sims 4. Anyways I've tried everything still haven't got anywhere with them besides, "your codes weren't bought from an unauthorized seller" ect ect. At this point we should just go to the BBB maybe then they work with all of us that spent our money. 

@Parakeet_Savior  The issue is that the deactivated codes were likely originally stolen or otherwise fraudulently obtained.  (There's a reason those codes are so cheap.)  EA only recently, as in a bit more than two years ago, started accounting for those codes, and cancelling them on users' accounts.  Even though the end users usually had no idea there was anything wrong with their purchases, the codes themselves were still not legitimate, and so EA is within its rights to deny use of the packs tied to those codes.

The message about unauthorized sellers is saying that the only way you know you've received a valid code is to go through either Origin or an authorized vendor of EA games (Amazon, Best Buy, etc.).  While an unauthorized seller might provide a legit code, there's no guarantee, and no protection if the code doesn't work, or if it's deactivated later.  As for the high pricing, it's been this way for a while.  If you don't like it, wait for a sale.  Origin discounts Sims 3 content a couple of times a year, and so does Steam.