The Sims 4 will continue into 2018!

"Erpe;c-15721457" wrote:
You are talking about physical designs such as sculpture, paintings etc. But here it is instead about design tools on a computer. Modern tools are much more advanced than the tools they used 10-15 yrs ago and they make much better graphics. So why use a 10-15 yrs old tool (program) to design the graphics for a new game? I don't believe that they would ever do that.

Another thing is what should have motivated Patrick Kelly to release all this if it really was something new he had worked on inside EA because he would have faced a lawsuit and wouldn't have had a chance to be hired again in any company. No company would ever hire a person that they couldn't trust.

But let us say that it really was "leaked" by Patrick Kelly himself as a joke which he then likely discussed with his friends in EA. They would have had a good laugh seeing people's reactions - and laughing and joking is actually what they always do because it is their way to deal with their job which is actually often quite monotonous and boring. (Just imagine that you were told to make some childish animations for babies if you didn't even like babies or if you were told to test a lot of technical things for bugs in a game that you never would play yourself.) This would probably be something that Patrick Kelly could do without risking sanctions from EA and which wouldn't prevent him from future jobs because it only was about using a few animations from an old abandoned console game which he had worked on earlier to get a good laugh. He also removed everything shortly after. So I guess that even EA wouldn't care. So maybe this is the most likely explanation? :) ;)

It's an interesting theory, but it seems like a stretch to say that because you can come up with reasons why the known story might be suspicious that there's some other, much more ludicrous story lying underneath it. Sometimes the most likely explanation is the most mundane one. Maybe this Patrick Kelly was working under a pseudonym, maybe he has the kind of connections in the industry that letting loose a little inside info wasn't career destroying at all (game design is a pretty small industry, comparative to some), maybe it was a PR dump under the guise of being a dev to correct the narrative without making it an official statement, maybe he was disgruntled and didn't care about being done with the game industry, maybe he realized his mistake and pulled what he'd said to save the rest of his professional career in general, maybe he was sued and suffered for it.

I mean, I really haven't followed the story in detail, but those are some explanations off the top of my head.

The idea that he works for EA and did it as a joke just seems off the wall to me. And I don't really understand your reasoning that they would do it because their jobs are monotonous and boring. People who make a career in the game industry don't exactly do it to bear monotony. The pay is too godawful, comparative to utilizing most of the same skillsets in other kinds of jobs. Every job can be boring and monotonous sometimes, don't get me wrong, but the game industry is one of the last ones where you'd expect to find people pulling an elaborate prank on the playerbase because the job is too boring. People go into the game industry because they're into making games, one way or another. It's not like it's an industry you just waltz into without caring about what you're doing.