SimGuru Silence on Twitter: When Will They Respond?

I dont think they will. I think EA should make a statement.

To be fair, I don't think the Gurus are the ones that has to make a statement - this has to come from EA, as it's their decisions that most likely has made this mess happen. After that the Gurus can start communicate but it's not fair to expect anything from the gurus before EA addresses it.

I'm hoping that they talk about it soon. I feel bad for them because they're getting bullied so much, so I think it would be best to say something this week. It might stop all that negativity towards them if they say something. Then again, they really shouldn't have to say something in order to get it to stop. People just need to be friendly about this instead of bullying the Gurus. I also really want to know if they are going to fix the bugs for the pack, and I think a lot of people would feel better about it if they got to see some dates for bug fixes at some point soon.

They won’t address this. It’s not the first time they refused to acknowledge their mistakes and won’t be the last. I am not advocating for the Guru’s to be sent threats or accept rudeness. As far I’m aware being a public Guru I.e having a Twitter Sim Guru account is a choice they made and many don’t have them.

When Cyberpunk released in a mess there was an outcry, but CyberPunk acknowledged the elephant in the room and promised to fix it. That’s respecting your customers. (The fact it released in a bad way is a different topic for a different day) they owned their mistakes. EA are too arrogant to do that, but I suspect the pack is selling well. A former CM once said EA know they are guaranteed fans money; be it on release or further down the line on a sale. They know fans will buy it for a cas item or a small insignificant feature even if it’s not the selling point. Case in point look at vampires.

I’m sorry but there is no excuse for the devs to ignore this. None. They have loyal fans who yes many bought a pack they knew to be broken, but many may not have known. A simple statement from the official sims twitter is needed. People have a right to be frustrated and they need to accept that frustration and apologise. (Again I’m not advocating for threats)

I personally don’t think the devs should have individual accounts unless they are prepared to deal with player frustration, my husband is a game dev (not EA) and he doesn’t comment on work on social media. Which is very useful if there’s player back lash. He isn’t caught in the middle

With the devs having accounts and talking about their jobs and content etc, it encourages fans to feel like we are a family and to connect with the gurus like they are celebrities. But they aren’t our friends or family, EA is not our friend they a multi billion business who just want access to your wallet.

It’s also worth remembering that the former Executive Producer said they had a lot of freedom to decide pack themes and what went in packs, a fact verified by a dev when Journey to Batuu released who said they chose the the idea and gushed about how much fun they had making it. There is a big difference between giving constructive feedback and hate. They do not deserve threats but they must have enough respect for their paying customers to acknowledge they messed up and own it and as a company it’s disappointing but not surprising once again EA are ignoring backlash they knew was inevitable and people are justifying the silence.
The Sims Community needs to have higher standards.

EA is the one who needs to apologize. The devs were given unrealistic deadlines by EA and the pack flopped because of that. I doubt they will apologize though.

I agree with @MidnightAura that while no one should be sending threats or insults to the devs, having a public presence on Twitter will naturally bring out people who will act badly. I'm sure it happens to anyone who has a public presence on social media. While not excusable, that's just human nature online!

I have every hope they will address the situation soon. I can see what they were intending with the wedding pack but it was rushed.

I think the main problem is that it’s the first game pack after months of kits. (So you would expect it to be better.)

They should have gone with a more simple idea to use whilst they worked on this complex event planning. The micromanage feature isn’t fun.

They've probably been working on fixing things that will be in the March Patch.

"temporalgod;c-18071032" wrote:

"Babykittyjade;c-18070917" wrote:
I think they are tired of the personal attacks/insults/cries for them to loose their job all the time. It's important for them to protect their mental health. I know last year a guru got called out for blocking simmers and everyone . Poor guy was literally protecting his mental health and trying to keep his sanity from player harassment. Then he got berated for blocking because apparently he's suppose to sit back quietly and take the attacks like a slave for simmers.

In my own personal opinion I kind of hope they don't respond. I wouldn't as a dev.
My mom always told me it's not "what" you say it's "how" you say it. If people have a problem there's no reason we can't all sit down and discuss like civilized adults. But that's not what I saw/see happening on social media.
I also question the tons of players I saw on Twitter very aware of potential bugs reviewed by game changers and tons of warnings. Yet they still brought the pack and then proceeded to curse out gurus.
I don't think people understand they are not obligated to do or say anything. They could be like
A lot of other gaming companies not engage at all no matter what your problem is.

I also take into consideration they are working from home. There is nobody in my life that I know who has not been affected by the ongoing pandemic, jobs especially, as if work is not stressful enough on it's own.
And even if things did not come out exactly as they had hoped with the pack I acknowledge the fact that they tried. And I can appreciate the intention and what they put into it.
Sorry if this is not the answer people want to hear but I don't agree with how the whole thing has been handled by players and I feel the way I feel. Plus with all that said they probably need permission from managers or whoever to say exactly what higher ups want. Things they say can affect the whole company they can't just say anything. It's up to whoever is in charge to decide how they want to proceed, if and what they want to respond.

And the funny/sad part is, regardless of what they say or how they respond they will be met with animosity either way. Gurus have issued apologies in the past only to be called fake and condescending. They can't win no matter what they do. So if they never respond I'd be okay with it.

Blocking isn't going to help their mental health, all it does is add more fuel to the fire, blocking just makes you look cowardly and weak, all it tells me is that the other person won the argument, If the Gurus need to protect their mental health all they have to do is take breaks from social media, when I post something controversial on Twitter, I'm not going to delete it or block the people I may have angered, I'm either going to take those insults like a man or Ignore them entirely since their opinions don't matter to me, just go on Twitter once or twice a day, don't spend an entire day on that cesspool of a social media platform, once you're done looking at your notifications just turn it off for rest of the day.

But everyone is different. That's what YOU would do and That's perfectly fine but everyone deals with problems or stress in different ways. No two minds are alike. I don't think doing anything that you need to do to help yourself is cowardly regardless of how you get it done. And nobody knows what internal or life problems people are dealing with.

"Pamtastic72;c-18071054" wrote:

"Simmingal;c-18071042" wrote:
Tbh I think the problem is that what community needs right now isn't addressing the controversy
twitter mess and confusion

what we need is just simple announcement "we know game is buggy laggy glitchy mess and we will sort it out asap thanks for your patience hoping to have fix to by get back to you then"

none of the emotional roller coaster lets just have solid announcement and people working on the real problem that is broken game not players broken hearts

once the game is fixed the controversy is also naturally fixed

It's not as simple as saying it's a buggy glitchy laggy mess. I don't have a lot of the issues that other simmers report, there are differences between playing on console, laptop and pc. They can only fix bugs that they can recreate on their system in an entirely unmodded game, and actually right now they aren't even on their official system, they're on their home computers which may play the game differently than the computers in the studio. I know for a fact that a some of people complaining about lag, glitches and bugs are not being honest about their mod status or their system specs. I don't believe for one second that the gurus don't care about the player base or the game. Their livelihoods and ability to provide for their families depends on the game running smoothly and customers being satisfied. I also think that considering they have been pretty open with us regarding timelines for pack development people should consider the fact that MWS is bugged yes, but it's also likely the first pack they have tried to start to finish isolated from one another working from home.

Edit to add: controversy is one thing, but some gurus have had to endure insults, bullying, and actual threats and I am so so so tired of that being justified by players on behalf of som bugs, glitches, and lag.

I'm playing an unmodded vanilla game on absolute standard Intel-Nvidia equipment and my weddings are still disasters.

Sorry, but both the quality of this pack and the whole communication around it are terrible. The community's bad behavior on twitter is no excuse for this. We need transparency and a plan for the future.

While I think that the Sim Guru's, or anyone else really, should never be subject to harassment, personal attacks and threats on social media, I'm not surprised that this has happened or that it seems particularly potent this time. The frustration, anger and resentment in the community has been growing for a long time, over issues of -

quality control (e.g. broken games features on pack release, misshapen meshes)
minimal new gameplay
poor tuning (e.g. obsessive sim actions)
the team not listening/giving people what they really want
to name a few


Think about it, several of the recent (non kit) packs have been released with notable issues - minimal gameplay, poor tuning and in some cases features not working at all. In DHD you couldn't complete certain build aspects of the jobs without cheating, the NAP's in Eco living are over the top, even dust the bust, still isn't working very well.

In addition, the team has taken a long time between this pack and the last, but there have been few bug fixes. I know the issue of working at home presents problems, but everyone else is also experiencing those issues.

In addition to these generic issues, this time, I think people feel particularly angered because EA was aware that the wedding pack was broken they even issued a patch on release, but it fixed very few of the problems and since then, there's been no positive customer relations. i.e.

Acknowledging the problems
Apologising
Making a plan to deal with the issues in a timely fashion
Acting on that plan

Constructive criticism, in my opinion, is a positive action. Its's not something to be feared or reviled. It's how we learn what is acceptable in the world and how to improve when we fall short. Think about it, which lessons in life, taught you the most, was it the pats on the head or the mistakes that you made?


I don't know what the team will do, so I haven't voted, but I think they should attend to customer care, if they want to regain good will.