Feedback: Shopping Cart Icon and main menu ads

I was blessed as a player who didn't have this stupid shopping cart icon ... until I opened my game today. There it was, in all its hideous cash-grabbyness. Immediately closed the game to look for a mod to remove it.

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@LadyAofPineapple wrote:

Maybe next week is the week we will hear back! 😉

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@Coraychi  wrote:

The silence is adding insult to injury, and reaffirming my low opinion of EA as a company.

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In my experience, during sales EA tends not to release many statements, or even patch updates. So I'd say wait until after Easter, when news about the two kits missing from the road map will also come out.

I've actually been getting mods for The Sims 2 and downloading lots of things to modernize it and make it look better, since the gameplay is better and there are less bugs! I'm even looking into doing the same with TS3 - so you could use other Sims games, since TS4 has become a buggy, heartless cashgrab hamster wheel? At least until other life sims come out! That said, I'll comment for a second time on this thread:

No one wants this button. It is scummy and cashgrabby. It is wildly disrespectful to longtime customers. There are already multiple ways to purchase packs that are less invasive. There is literally no reason for this button to exist, and the outcry against it, alone, should be enough...not to mention the myriad of other reasons that it was a defunct 'feature' even before it was launched.

I had deliberately stayed away from this topic as it makes me angry and frustrated and a lot of other negative emotions, aggravating the pain and issues the shopping cart causes.  Sims 4 has been a recognised part of my rehabilitation from serious injury after an attack in the workplace.  It has helped me through many issues and has been a major part of ongoing generations of family life for my (now deceased) parents, myself, my children and now my grandchildren.  It has been as big a part of our lives as the extended-family board game events.

I have discussed this issue and related feelings with my medical team.  Their advice: we are now looking for alternatives for The Sims.  It will not just be myself who will be changing - it will be all their patients who participate in this project.  Admittedly, this may be only a small drop in the EA bucket; but each drop wears away at the rock.  Over time, water wins - constant drops of water create rot in structures, erosion of soil, huge chasms… or many other issues when looking at a larger global scale.

Many people have expressed their displeasure about the shopping cart, openly stating that it is causing them pain (physical, psychological, emotional…).    The EA response seems to be to ignore this issue… which ultimately seems to ignore their stated “inclusive” and “play with life” attitude.

Many people (especially the long term players) have stated that the shopping cart is the last straw for them.  It would be interesting to have access to statistics about how gameplay volumes; numbers of cancelled accounts versus new accounts and whether these are actually free accounts or accounts with purchased content (and I don’t believe the packs that have been recently provided as free content should be included in the paid section).  Transparency???

The Sims monopoly is about to be broken and I am watching and waiting for the fallout!

Agreed. Remove the button entirely from in-game. Leave this microtransaction advertisement nonsense in the main menu and the launcher. No need for it in the middle of my game to constantly harass me to spend more money after I've already spent enough on various expansions, stuff packs, etc. Stop harassing me EA.

That's a great article and sums up quite well what I'm thinking about the shopping cart icon as a strategy. While it may tempt some to make yet another purchase, I can't even imagine I'd be the only one out there who is making a conscious decision to not buy anything ever again.

And when it comes to next iteration of The Sims - this "Project Rene" - I haven't even been thinking about it. I completely forgot about the whole thing. And there's a good reason for that too. With the way things have been going for these past weeks, I can't see myself touching another Sims game even if the cart was removed. Because I know "Project Rene" will have something similar, since it's going to be free-to-play from launch. Meanwhile, my curiosity towards upcoming InZOI is growing by the minute.

This whole situation really has killed my motivation to play the game, as I was playing pretty actively (almost every night of the week) before this update — I haven't touched the game since.

The silence is adding insult to injury, and reaffirming my low opinion of EA as a company.