Complaint, Dropping Mac Users

"lisamwitt;c-17267729" wrote:

"Cinebar;c-17267722" wrote:

"Cynna;c-17267353" wrote:

"Sk8rblaze;c-17267316" wrote:


From how EA explained it, the game would receive a patch and then become the legacy edition.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Anyone who is no longer able to update their game will automatically own the "Legacy" edition. It's a nice name for those who will be left behind if for some reason they can't upgrade.

Is this the first iteration of The Sims series that is dropping the OSes of MACs and PCs? Like dropping the MAC version noted in this topic and dropping Windows 32bit etc. I don't ever recall any of the other games actually dropping an OS in mid stream of production. Of course there were upates and announcements to be able to play newer packs sometimes, the player would need to have a better machine hardware, such as shaders, processors and or video cards to take advantage of a newer packs shading and or processor requirements, but I think this game is the first game I can recall that goes around dropping the OS of a MAC or a PC after the consumer has bought into the idea they can play the game since their OS was listed in 2014 etc. as being supported. Odd set of business ethics.

ETA: As TS4 continues, I wonder if at some point they say hey kids!, we are dropping XP, Windows 8, Windows 7, etc. after the fact those were the operating systems they claimed would play the series. (not just 32 bit) But if at some point they get cut out, too.

My guess is that's because no other Sims games released content past 4-5 years.
5 years is a long time in the tech world. I've never even owned a computer longer than 5-6 years, because technology is constantly improving.
If they made Sims 5, they'd be starting with newer tech, but, they've decided to continue with 4 instead. Which necessitates changing stuff mid-stream if they want to keep up.

Sure, but say you never played TS4, and decided to buy it now, the requirements are still the same though they are no longer going to support some of those OS types. Maybe there should be a big fat warning, such as If you download this game, be aware you won't be able to add all the packs you may want, nor continue past the early part of 2019. :o But leaving the requirements the same without a notice that not all packs will be available to you, or that at some point be aware your OS may be dropped would certanly sour the consumer from buying wouldn't it? So, the requirements stay the same, and worry about the longevity of a game/ new pack for later and ignore the assumption they would be able to continue for as many years as TS4 lives.

"Cinebar;c-17267722" wrote:

"Cynna;c-17267353" wrote:

"Sk8rblaze;c-17267316" wrote:


From how EA explained it, the game would receive a patch and then become the legacy edition.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Anyone who is no longer able to update their game will automatically own the "Legacy" edition. It's a nice name for those who will be left behind if for some reason they can't upgrade.

Is this the first iteration of The Sims series that is dropping the OSes of MACs and PCs? Like dropping the MAC version noted in this topic and dropping Windows 32bit etc. I don't ever recall any of the other games actually dropping an OS in mid stream of production. Of course there were upates and announcements to be able to play newer packs sometimes, the player would need to have a better machine hardware, such as shaders, processors and or video cards to take advantage of a newer packs shading and or processor requirements, but I think this game is the first game I can recall that goes around dropping the OS of a MAC or a PC after the consumer has bought into the idea they can play the game since their OS was listed in 2014 etc. as being supported. Odd set of business ethics.

ETA: As TS4 continues, I wonder if at some point they say hey kids!, we are dropping XP, Windows 8, Windows 7, etc. after the fact those were the operating systems they claimed would play the series. (not just 32 bit) But if at some point they get cut out, too.

They actually physically stopped supporting XP a good long time ago (like back in 2016 maybe? It was a while ago, I'm trying to find the announcement for it but my google-fu is failing me, there was a lot of activity about it on the forum at the time, and Microsoft themselves stopped supporting XP back in 2014. XP came out in 2001 it was a good system but it's almost 20 years old no one should honestly be trying to use it anymore anyway). I think you can still play on it but they don't actually focus on anything to make sure the game continues to run on it so eventually it probably will stop working for people the way that newer systems can no longer play Sims 1 or 2 without you being lucky or having to jump through hoops to get it to work.

It's seems a bit much to expect a company to spend time and effort and money on making sure their game runs on system that the company that MADE the actual system hasn't supported it in a good long time. Everyone wants the game to grow and improve and this is just part of being able to do that.

"lisamwitt;c-17267718" wrote:
I didn't know not updating your OS on a Mac was a thing. I've always done it when it pops up and says there's an update, just like my phone and watch. Does your machine have to be older than a certain point to stop getting updates? I'm genuinely curious because I've never not updated my Mac.
When I had a Windows partition, I left that at Windows 7 for the longest time so I could play Sims 2, and Windows updates cost money anyway. But, Mac updates are free.

It's possible but Macs are pretty persistent about annoying you with the requests to update. Also, if you don't there are internal features that stop working. (like iTunes on the Lion OS)
Macs eventually become unable to support new OS versions though. In this case, Macs from 2009 were all able to update to at least the next one after Lion (Mountain Lion) and only those older than that are stuck on Lion. Most of those older machines barely, if at all, meet the basic requirements to play TS4 to begin with.

"Cinebar;c-17267737" wrote:

"lisamwitt;c-17267729" wrote:

"Cinebar;c-17267722" wrote:

"Cynna;c-17267353" wrote:

"Sk8rblaze;c-17267316" wrote:


From how EA explained it, the game would receive a patch and then become the legacy edition.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Anyone who is no longer able to update their game will automatically own the "Legacy" edition. It's a nice name for those who will be left behind if for some reason they can't upgrade.

Is this the first iteration of The Sims series that is dropping the OSes of MACs and PCs? Like dropping the MAC version noted in this topic and dropping Windows 32bit etc. I don't ever recall any of the other games actually dropping an OS in mid stream of production. Of course there were upates and announcements to be able to play newer packs sometimes, the player would need to have a better machine hardware, such as shaders, processors and or video cards to take advantage of a newer packs shading and or processor requirements, but I think this game is the first game I can recall that goes around dropping the OS of a MAC or a PC after the consumer has bought into the idea they can play the game since their OS was listed in 2014 etc. as being supported. Odd set of business ethics.

ETA: As TS4 continues, I wonder if at some point they say hey kids!, we are dropping XP, Windows 8, Windows 7, etc. after the fact those were the operating systems they claimed would play the series. (not just 32 bit) But if at some point they get cut out, too.

My guess is that's because no other Sims games released content past 4-5 years.
5 years is a long time in the tech world. I've never even owned a computer longer than 5-6 years, because technology is constantly improving.
If they made Sims 5, they'd be starting with newer tech, but, they've decided to continue with 4 instead. Which necessitates changing stuff mid-stream if they want to keep up.

Sure, but say you never played TS4, and decided to buy it now, the requirements are still the same though they are no longer going to support some of those OS types. Maybe there should be a big fat warning, such as If you download this game, be aware you won't be able to add all the packs you may want, nor continue past the early part of 2019. :o But leaving the requirements the same without a notice that not all packs will be available to you, or that at some point be aware your OS may be dropped would certanly sour the consumer from buying wouldn't it? So, the requirements stay the same, and worry about the longevity of a game/ new pack for later and ignore the assumption they would be able to continue for as many years as TS4 lives.

Players who have Lion already had their game rendered unusable in April precisely because of the 32bit issue: Maxis patched it so that a message about 64bit incompatibility wouldn't falsely display for every other Mac user (Lion is the only OS that this affects as machines running older OS don't meet the game's requirements) and had to roll back. At the time, Lion users were notified that this fix will happen eventually again since the upcoming OS Catalina would render TS4 unplayable for everyone who updated to it if that one file stayed 32bit. They HAD warnings, this is not coming out of the blue.
Machines that run Lion and also fit TS4's requirements are also capable of updating to a newer OS (for free, unlike Windows). Maxis had a choice here: continue supporting Lion users (after they already warned them that there's an issue with 32bit vs 64bit) which would cause warning messages for everyone else (7 other OS versions) OR patch the issue and not kill the game for anyone who updates to Catalina.

TS3 is going to be useless for every Mac user who updates to Catalina until the 64bit version is released next year. That's kind of a bigger deal than a fix being dispatched that anyone on Mac knew was coming since at least April.

"Cinebar;c-17267722" wrote:


Is this the first iteration of The Sims series that is dropping the OSes of MACs and PCs? Like dropping the MAC version noted in this topic and dropping Windows 32bit etc. I don't ever recall any of the other games actually dropping an OS in mid stream of production. Of course there were upates and announcements to be able to play newer packs sometimes, the player would need to have a better machine hardware, such as shaders, processors and or video cards to take advantage of a newer packs shading and or processor requirements, but I think this game is the first game I can recall that goes around dropping the OS of a MAC or a PC after the consumer has bought into the idea they can play the game since their OS was listed in 2014 etc. as being supported. Odd set of business ethics.

ETA: As TS4 continues, I wonder if at some point they say hey kids!, we are dropping XP, Windows 8, Windows 7, etc. after the fact those were the operating systems they claimed would play the series. (not just 32 bit) But if at some point they get cut out, too.

Not to my knowledge, no.

It's EA's fault. The game should have started on the 64-bit foundation to start with. When TS4 launched 32-bit computers were all but put out to pasture. They wanted the larger pool of customers that they would get by using a 32-bit .exe. Now that they've got them, "It's been real. See ya!"

Unfortunately, not everyone is able to upgrade. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been playing on a dinosaur in the first place. But them's the breaks, I guess.

I do not know with those using the OS X Lion face an another dilemma, if they cannot DL any updates going forward they are stuck with any bugs that existed and were not addressed prior to the Oct update as they must make an choice to eithier buy an new Mac, PC or laptop.

"darrenfroggy;c-17267835" wrote:

"lisamwitt;c-17267718" wrote:
I didn't know not updating your OS on a Mac was a thing. I've always done it when it pops up and says there's an update, just like my phone and watch. Does your machine have to be older than a certain point to stop getting updates? I'm genuinely curious because I've never not updated my Mac.
When I had a Windows partition, I left that at Windows 7 for the longest time so I could play Sims 2, and Windows updates cost money anyway. But, Mac updates are free.

It's possible but Macs are pretty persistent about annoying you with the requests to update. Also, if you don't there are internal features that stop working. (like iTunes on the Lion OS)
Macs eventually become unable to support new OS versions though. In this case, Macs from 2009 were all able to update to at least the next one after Lion (Mountain Lion) and only those older than that are stuck on Lion. Most of those older machines barely, if at all, meet the basic requirements to play TS4 to begin with.

"Cinebar;c-17267737" wrote:

"lisamwitt;c-17267729" wrote:

"Cinebar;c-17267722" wrote:

"Cynna;c-17267353" wrote:

"Sk8rblaze;c-17267316" wrote:


From how EA explained it, the game would receive a patch and then become the legacy edition.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Anyone who is no longer able to update their game will automatically own the "Legacy" edition. It's a nice name for those who will be left behind if for some reason they can't upgrade.

Is this the first iteration of The Sims series that is dropping the OSes of MACs and PCs? Like dropping the MAC version noted in this topic and dropping Windows 32bit etc. I don't ever recall any of the other games actually dropping an OS in mid stream of production. Of course there were upates and announcements to be able to play newer packs sometimes, the player would need to have a better machine hardware, such as shaders, processors and or video cards to take advantage of a newer packs shading and or processor requirements, but I think this game is the first game I can recall that goes around dropping the OS of a MAC or a PC after the consumer has bought into the idea they can play the game since their OS was listed in 2014 etc. as being supported. Odd set of business ethics.

ETA: As TS4 continues, I wonder if at some point they say hey kids!, we are dropping XP, Windows 8, Windows 7, etc. after the fact those were the operating systems they claimed would play the series. (not just 32 bit) But if at some point they get cut out, too.

My guess is that's because no other Sims games released content past 4-5 years.
5 years is a long time in the tech world. I've never even owned a computer longer than 5-6 years, because technology is constantly improving.
If they made Sims 5, they'd be starting with newer tech, but, they've decided to continue with 4 instead. Which necessitates changing stuff mid-stream if they want to keep up.

Sure, but say you never played TS4, and decided to buy it now, the requirements are still the same though they are no longer going to support some of those OS types. Maybe there should be a big fat warning, such as If you download this game, be aware you won't be able to add all the packs you may want, nor continue past the early part of 2019. :o But leaving the requirements the same without a notice that not all packs will be available to you, or that at some point be aware your OS may be dropped would certanly sour the consumer from buying wouldn't it? So, the requirements stay the same, and worry about the longevity of a game/ new pack for later and ignore the assumption they would be able to continue for as many years as TS4 lives.

Players who have Lion already had their game rendered unusable in April precisely because of the 32bit issue: Maxis patched it so that a message about 64bit incompatibility wouldn't falsely display for every other Mac user (Lion is the only OS that this affects as machines running older OS don't meet the game's requirements) and had to roll back. At the time, Lion users were notified that this fix will happen eventually again since the upcoming OS Catalina would render TS4 unplayable for everyone who updated to it if that one file stayed 32bit. They HAD warnings, this is not coming out of the blue.
Machines that run Lion and also fit TS4's requirements are also capable of updating to a newer OS (for free, unlike Windows). Maxis had a choice here: continue supporting Lion users (after they already warned them that there's an issue with 32bit vs 64bit) which would cause warning messages for everyone else (7 other OS versions) OR patch the issue and not kill the game for anyone who updates to Catalina.

TS3 is going to be useless for every Mac user who updates to Catalina until the 64bit version is released next year. That's kind of a bigger deal than a fix being dispatched that anyone on Mac knew was coming since at least April.

\

Wait, what? Are you saying that there's going to be a 64bit version of the Sims 3? Or is it going to be a kluge of sorts for the mac? Google isn't being too helpful on this.


Edit: Okay, found it. Mac kluge apparently. I was thinking that the team finally would get me off patch 1.67 ;)

"Cynna;c-17267887" wrote:

It's EA's fault. The game should have started on the 64-bit foundation to start with. When TS4 launched 32-bit computers were all but put out to pasture. They wanted the larger pool of customers that they would get by using a 32-bit .exe. Now that they've got them, "It's been real. See ya!"

The game has always been 64-bit for Mac. It was only one file that was 32-bit, or at least gave a false error message that it was 32-bit, and that file was not integral to running the actual game.

"Goldmoldar;c-17268242" wrote:
I do not know with those using the OS X Lion face an another dilemma, if they cannot DL any updates going forward they are stuck with any bugs that existed and were not addressed prior to the Oct update as they must make an choice to eithier buy an new Mac, PC or laptop.

Why do they have to buy a new Mac? Why can't they just update their OS? Machines that are not capable of upgrading past Lion are from 2008 and earlier so let's get real, that hardware is simply not powerful enough to properly run the game anymore and does not meet minimum requirements.

I think some are missing my point. Yes, notice enough they may not be supporting the older MAC versions were given. However, too short of a time window of a notice not to update to this new patch. It's sort of like you are told one day a company will not support your machine, but don't ever say when that day is going to come. Then, out of the blue say It's here, sorry, goodbye, see ya!. My point is about the actual news this patch will end the game if anyone installs it. Too short of a notice just to say it two days ahead of time and how many people (if any) miss that notice. A few weeks notice (since they knew the patch would break game the MAC user game forever) should have been issued in my opinion.

And with all that said, I wonder when XP users get the axe or Windows 7 users but those are listed as being able to play the game and still listed as an acceptable requirement to play the games (buy more). One day get up and see a notice, if you install the patch your game is broken forever? Seems sort of strange, if that should happen since we know MS is giving developers of games the tools to keep supporting at least Windows 7 for games.

"BluebellFlora;c-17268757" wrote:

"Cynna;c-17267887" wrote:

It's EA's fault. The game should have started on the 64-bit foundation to start with. When TS4 launched 32-bit computers were all but put out to pasture. They wanted the larger pool of customers that they would get by using a 32-bit .exe. Now that they've got them, "It's been real. See ya!"

The game has always been 64-bit for Mac. It was only one file that was 32-bit, or at least gave a false error message that it was 32-bit, and that file was not integral to running the actual game.

The Windows version was originally 32-bit. Mac users aren't the only ones being affected. Players with a 32-bit Windows-based system will be affected by upcoming changes as well.

"BluebellFlora;c-17268757" wrote:

"Cynna;c-17267887" wrote:

It's EA's fault. The game should have started on the 64-bit foundation to start with. When TS4 launched 32-bit computers were all but put out to pasture. They wanted the larger pool of customers that they would get by using a 32-bit .exe. Now that they've got them, "It's been real. See ya!"

The game has always been 64-bit for Mac. It was only one file that was 32-bit, or at least gave a false error message that it was 32-bit, and that file was not integral to running the actual game.

"Goldmoldar;c-17268242" wrote:
I do not know with those using the OS X Lion face an another dilemma, if they cannot DL any updates going forward they are stuck with any bugs that existed and were not addressed prior to the Oct update as they must make an choice to eithier buy an new Mac, PC or laptop.

Why do they have to buy a new Mac? Why can't they just update their OS? Machines that are not capable of upgrading past Lion are from 2008 and earlier so let's get real, that hardware is simply not powerful enough to properly run the game anymore and does not meet minimum requirements.

Their argument for 32 bit was about PCs. It was 32 bit because of how many of these old computers were running 32 bit Windows. Then they added the 64 bit client. Now they're dropping the 32 bit one. My own feeling was they should have made a game for modern machines, not 10 year old gaming pcs (at the time), but no one asked me :)