As part of the Sims Freeplay YOU dot YOU update, EA Games released the Palm Promenade neighbourhood as part of Sims Springs. However gamers are discovering the hard way that EA Games have made a change to the rules of play. In the first neighbourhood, Sandy Suburbs, gamers could earn the house templates for lots as a prize by completing the daily tasks, and paying for extensions with in-game currency if they ran late with task completion on any day.

However in the Palm Promenade neighbourhood, gamers all over world are dedicating time and resources to the quest, and paying in-game currency for time extensions if late, only to discover that the house template is no longer part of the completion prize. Miss one day’s deadline, even by a minute, and you’ve lost the house template after dedicating an enormous amount of time and in-game resources.

This is a money-grabbing exercise by EA Games designed to influence gamers to buy in-game currency packs (using real world money) to secure the prize. This is the most recent money-grabbing move in a long line of such moves by EA Games which demonstrates that the company has lost focus on it’s gaming community and now sees us only as a money-making machine not a group of loyal lovers of the game.

However rather than encouraging players to buy currency packs, this rule change is seeing loyal players throw in the towel and refuse to finish the neighbourhood at the very least and at worse, quit the game altogether. This can only hurt EA Games, by making another dent in their reputation and encouraging gamers to spend their gaming time and resources elsewhere.

EA Games owes it to its loyal community to change the Palm Promenade rules of play to match that of the Sandy Suburbs rules and include the house templates as part of the completion prize. EA games should also, in fairness, award the templates retrospectively to all players who have already completed. Please stand up with your fellow gamers and sign this petition to show EA Games that we deserve better!