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Could Paralives be hit with a lawsuit?

OnverserOnverser Posts: 3,364 Member
edited May 2020 in Off Topic Chat
Ok so you've probably all seen the stuff about Paralives being pushed around the sims community, it seems like they're pushing it onto all sims youtubers for free promotion (multiple sims youtubers in the past week have made videos on it, after specifically being contact by the developers on it) and trying to force it around the sims community as much as possible. And that just isn't ok really, but what makes it worse is that the game is starting to look like a complete knock-off of the sims and they're making SO much money from it.

In the recent trailer they showed body sliders - an exact rip off of something the sims team worked hard to come up with for the sims 4, the UI is basically identical to the sims with the same pause-play-fast forward gameplay options, the "Parafolk" are then shown by pictures at the side of the screen which is basically an exact copy of the sims 3, then the hair colour options features the same system as the sims 3 hair options (being able to change the roots, base and tips). It doesn't take a genius to work out that this game is "inspired" by the sims but it seems at this point that they're making money off of the sims teams work.

If you take a look at their patreon, the amount of money they're making from exploiting the sims community is something else, their patreon currently makes $28,184 a month, thats £338,208 every year from content which is purely ripped off from the sims. Some could call it "competition" but it seems at this point that they're just ripping off the sims teams content, exploiting sims players and making a mint from it.

This game is being forced onto sims players through constant advertisement in pretty much every section of the sims community, they're blatantly using peoples issues with the sims 4 to make money and they're copying basically the entire premise of the sims, it's exploitation of the sims community plain and simple. For all we know this game might not even be legit. All we've seen is a few youtube videos which could quite easily be faked and they're making six figure sums from it.
I'm not sure on the legalities but it seems likely that this game could be hit with a massive lawsuit pretty soon and honestly I wouldn't blame EA if they did that

Comments

  • SimTrippySimTrippy Posts: 7,651 Member
    About your first point: that's because the sims players are just the most obvious target audience. Similarly to how Planet Zoo and, at least I think so, Animal crossing are pushed hard in the sims community - because it's just logical to assume that these games all appeal to very similar types of players.. :)
  • texxx78texxx78 Posts: 5,657 Member
    edited May 2020
    I don't know about the law suit but i don't think it's a real competition at this moment... i liked the build stuff that they showed (even being too detailed for me) but the parafolk... it doesn't look good imo. And when they made her go to the dresser to enter cas (yeah, rip off) she had no animation at all... It's kind of underwhelming... there's still a lot of work to do, but i, as a possible client, am not excited at all.
  • logionlogion Posts: 4,712 Member
    edited May 2020
    I don't think EA can sue them for anything unless the Paralives devs will use very similar assets to the point that they are copying licensed materials. I know some publishers like Bethesda have sued people for using similar names or assets. But I don't know if EA have done something like that.

    I don't think we will see any lawsuit if Paralives will not be released as well, a patreon or a kickstarter project is something that comes with a risk and I am pretty sure those sites are notifying everyone about that...

    A game that many people often joke about is Star Citizen, a multiplayer space trading and combat simulator that received US$2 million on their kickstarter in 2013 and has raised over US$250 million, and while they have created a lot, the game is not finished yet. It often serves as a reminder for people that you should always consider what you want to spend your money on.
  • icmnfrshicmnfrsh Posts: 18,789 Member
    If we're going by that logic, then the creators of Doom should sue every FPS made ever, and the creators of Harvest Moon should sue the creator of Stardew Valley.
    Don't manhandle the urchin. He's not for sale. FIND YOUR OWN! - Xenon the Antiquarian, Dragon Age II

    Race Against the Clock: Can your elder sim turn back the clock before their time runs out?
  • SimTrippySimTrippy Posts: 7,651 Member
    icmnfrsh wrote: »
    If we're going by that logic, then the creators of Doom should sue every FPS made ever, and the creators of Harvest Moon should sue the creator of Stardew Valley.

    And let's not forget Cities Skyline and every other city builder inspired by SimCity
  • OnverserOnverser Posts: 3,364 Member
    SimTrippy wrote: »
    About your first point: that's because the sims players are just the most obvious target audience. Similarly to how Planet Zoo and, at least I think so, Animal crossing are pushed hard in the sims community - because it's just logical to assume that these games all appeal to very similar types of players.. :)

    Well yeah, but this is a lot more than just that. The entire promotion for the game has been strategically done through the sims community, the first time I ever heard about paralives was from anonymous users on the forum posting about it and hailing it as "What the sims 5 should be" and pushing it as being exactly what the sims community want, the same kind of promotion has been going on through every sims social (instagram, youtube, twitter, etc). Pretty obvious that that was all strategic marketing to get it out there, then sims youtubers started posting about it and many of these youtubers have made it clear that they were contacted by the paralives devs and given early access in exchange for making videos on it. It's pretty clear that it's all a marketing strategy to promote their game through the sims
  • SimTrippySimTrippy Posts: 7,651 Member
    But does that really surprise you? It's very clearly designed to be a sims competitor in much the same way Cities Skyline was designed to be a SimCity competitor and Planet Coaster a RC Tycoon competitor. These games were also pushed to their fans by the same influencers / builders as the originals. It just makes sense.

    Do you really want EA to patent an entire genre and not let anyone else try their hand at it? Competition is good, it's healthy. No matter what your take on TS4 is, you should probably welcome it. It can only make TS better in the long run, especially if it succeeds.
  • SimTrippySimTrippy Posts: 7,651 Member
    edited May 2020
    Also it's perfectly reasonable and logical for them to contact TS4 game changers - these people aren't owned by EA, they are independent content creators who just happen to make a lot of sims content and are therefore influential enough to reach the audiences they intend to market to. That is the only reason EA gives them free packs, and it's why Paralives and Frontier contact them too - Frontier even invited them on a trip to a zoo. Paralives just sent them stuff that I believe was also accessible to Patreon supporters. And anonymous people telling you it's what TS5 should be probably has more to do with people's dissatisfaction with EA and TS4 than with Paralives. If TS4 was everything we wanted it to be and more, I doubt Paralives would even be a thing.
  • AlpineCuriosityAlpineCuriosity Posts: 2,521 Member
    @Onverser Just out of curiosity... ^^ What do you think would happen if The Sims 5-team decides to add moving hair-animation as well to their game - or a height slider...?! :#
  • dearie_blossomdearie_blossom Posts: 707 Member
    Eh. They‘re both life simulation games so of course they‘re going to have similarities just like FIFA, Football Manager and Pro Evolution soccer have similarities.
  • KelvinKelvin Posts: 6,899 Member
    You know why we need competition for the sims?

    Your signature is quite self-explanatory. :p

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    ._.
  • DeKayDeKay Posts: 81,472 Member
    They make that much money from Patreon for something that is not even released to the public yet!? That is insane! 😱
    My Top Song of the Day: Fancy Footwork by Chromeo
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  • JoAnne65JoAnne65 Posts: 22,959 Member
    “If you don’t like Sims 4, just go play something else!”

    - Ok, finally, here’s something else!

    “OK, sue them! Destroy it! Shatter those dreams, quickly!”
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  • Charlotta11Charlotta11 Posts: 399 Member
    I don't think so that they can or atleast i hope they cant. I'm happy that people can choose if/when paralives come out. Since we now only have the sims and we kinda only rely on ea and what they do. That's why i sometimes buy sims stuff that i'm not happy and think it is not worth the money.
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  • MidnightAuraMidnightAura Posts: 5,809 Member
    The Sims don’t own body sliders. Or colour wheels. Lots of games use those things.
    If you take a look at their patreon, the amount of money they're making from exploiting the sims community is something else, their patreon currently makes $28,184 a month, thats £338,208 every year from content which is purely ripped off from the sims. Some could call it "competition" but it seems at this point that they're just ripping off the sims teams content, exploiting sims players and making a mint from it.

    I think you need to look up the definition of exploitation. You use it a lot. The definition is: The act of using someone for your own advantage

    Paralives aren’t exploiting the Sims community. Patreon is a choice not a mandatory direct debit that someone is holding a gun to your head over. Game changers are free to cover any games they want, they are not contracted to just cover The Sims. And many of them have voluntarily been talking about this game for a long time. If it’s exploitation to reach out to an influencer to ask if they want early access to something (which by the way Patreon also got, I know because I am one and many game changers are too) then It’s exploitation for EA to fly select fans of the game every year to all expense paid trips where those fans get early access to the content, get free swag and have a right good jolly before they fly home and those fans will then tell their communities how awesome the game is whilst wearing their free hoody and rocking their free keyboards. Not to mention all the dlc they know they will get for free in exchange for reviews to their communities.

    Exploitation: The act of using someone for your own advantage seems to sum EA up nicely.
  • OnverserOnverser Posts: 3,364 Member
    edited May 2020

    I think you need to look up the definition of exploitation. You use it a lot. The definition is: The act of using someone for your own advantage

    Apparently you do as well. It fits with the point I'm making that "they're blatantly using peoples issues with the sims 4 to make money". That pretty obviously fits under using someone for their own advantage. Let's not resort to being patronising to anyone who voices a different opinion.

    And to all the other people criticising, my point is simply that a lot of features from Paralives are blatantly copied from The Sims series. Yes, other games exist that are similar but the Sims have pioneered this type of game and unless they're careful Paralives will end up becoming too similar to the Sims which could lead to them being hit by a lawsuit, we all know EA don't have a reputation for being the most generous and considerate company.
    Competition is great, but a complete copycat will just leave them being sued and the patreons giving them hundreds of thousands will end up losing their money on a game that won't be able to be released.
  • KelvinKelvin Posts: 6,899 Member
    At the end of the day, EA is the one running this site so if they don’t want to see any of these threads popping up or even exist on here they get to make the ultimate decision to shut them down. Ain’t no one stoppin them xD

    Without any direct intervention of mods in these discussions I see no reason for enthusiastic fans to stop discussing passionately about the game or future reveals. Well, at least in this off-topic section anyway :D
    chicken-run-ginger-i-just-decided-i-dont-care-idc-gif-20619284.gif
    ._.
  • ClarionOfJoyClarionOfJoy Posts: 1,945 Member
    Onverser wrote: »

    And to all the other people criticising, my point is simply that a lot of features from Paralives are blatantly copied from The Sims series. Yes, other games exist that are similar but the Sims have pioneered this type of game and unless they're careful Paralives will end up becoming too similar to the Sims which could lead to them being hit by a lawsuit, we all know EA don't have a reputation for being the most generous and considerate company.
    Competition is great, but a complete copycat will just leave them being sued and the patreons giving them hundreds of thousands will end up losing their money on a game that won't be able to be released.


    Paralives isn't blatantly copying The Sims - they're implementing EXACTLY what simmers asked for! Not this pretend EAxis-is-listening-but-then-give-simmers-what-the-devs-want.

    I don't think Paralives will be sued unless they are literally copying the written code from the devs. Before I got accepted into nursing school, my major was in Mathematics with a minor in Computer Science. We had assignments writing code to achieve certain goals. Everyone wrote their code in whatever way they saw fit, but we all reached those same goals. As long as it wasn't copied and is apparently our own work, it wasn't considered plagiarism. It's the same thing with games in the same genre. That's why the people who first developed Doom don't sue other game studios who followed and created their own first-person shooters, same thing with Grand Theft Auto 3 and the open world concept, etc.

    Also, if you've been following the development of Paralives, it already has better features than any of The Sims iterations: gridless lots, curved walls, dynamic movement and lighting of objects, parafolk height adjustment (I screamed with joy when I saw that!!!!). None of The Sims iterations have those things!


  • icmnfrshicmnfrsh Posts: 18,789 Member
    edited May 2020
    Onverser wrote: »

    And to all the other people criticising, my point is simply that a lot of features from Paralives are blatantly copied from The Sims series. Yes, other games exist that are similar but the Sims have pioneered this type of game and unless they're careful Paralives will end up becoming too similar to the Sims which could lead to them being hit by a lawsuit, we all know EA don't have a reputation for being the most generous and considerate company.
    Competition is great, but a complete copycat will just leave them being sued and the patreons giving them hundreds of thousands will end up losing their money on a game that won't be able to be released.


    Paralives isn't blatantly copying The Sims - they're implementing EXACTLY what simmers asked for! Not this pretend EAxis-is-listening-but-then-give-simmers-what-the-devs-want.

    I don't think Paralives will be sued unless they are literally copying the written code from the devs. Before I got accepted into nursing school, my major was in Mathematics with a minor in Computer Science. We had assignments writing code to achieve certain goals. Everyone wrote their code in whatever way they saw fit, but we all reached those same goals. As long as it wasn't copied and is apparently our own work, it wasn't considered plagiarism. It's the same thing with games in the same genre. That's why the people who first developed Doom don't sue other game studios who followed and created their own first-person shooters, same thing with Grand Theft Auto 3 and the open world concept, etc.

    Also, if you've been following the development of Paralives, it already has better features than any of The Sims iterations: gridless lots, curved walls, dynamic movement and lighting of objects, parafolk height adjustment (I screamed with joy when I saw that!!!!). None of The Sims iterations have those things!


    I am going to second this. I did work as a software developer, and I know that as long as you didn't reverse engineer any binaries and copy the code (and there isn't any evidence so far that they did), directly obtain the source code and copy it, use any libraries whose license forbids profiting off any software that uses them, or copy any entities owned by the other company (such as the plumbob, characters like Bella Goth, etc.), then it's kosher.

    Creating a game with a similar concept is not a "complete copycat". And what's more, it actually plans to implement features that have never been done in the Sims franchise, like curved walls and height sliders. There are more blatant ripoffs of other games out there that are still legal because they changed the details just enough for them to be different.

    To the OP: If you're going to make claims that a company could sue another company over intellectual theft, maybe you should read up on what this entails first instead of making your own assumptions based on lofty ideas of "copying".
    Don't manhandle the urchin. He's not for sale. FIND YOUR OWN! - Xenon the Antiquarian, Dragon Age II

    Race Against the Clock: Can your elder sim turn back the clock before their time runs out?
  • MidnightAuraMidnightAura Posts: 5,809 Member
    Onverser wrote: »

    I think you need to look up the definition of exploitation. You use it a lot. The definition is: The act of using someone for your own advantage

    Apparently you do as well. It fits with the point I'm making that "they're blatantly using peoples issues with the sims 4 to make money". That pretty obviously fits under using someone for their own advantage. Let's not resort to being patronising to anyone who voices a different opinion.

    And to all the other people criticising, my point is simply that a lot of features from Paralives are blatantly copied from The Sims series. Yes, other games exist that are similar but the Sims have pioneered this type of game and unless they're careful Paralives will end up becoming too similar to the Sims which could lead to them being hit by a lawsuit, we all know EA don't have a reputation for being the most generous and considerate company.
    Competition is great, but a complete copycat will just leave them being sued and the patreons giving them hundreds of thousands will end up losing their money on a game that won't be able to be released.

    I disagree, a company is looking at the market and seeing why customers are unhappy about a product, they can choose to make that product and meet those demands. Like how Cities Skylines gave us Sim City fans when EA didn’t and wouldn’t listen to fans of sim city. It’s up to EA to meet the demands of their customers, if they don’t or can’t then there is the risk the customer will go to a competitor. It’s business. EA should be looking at why Fans are unhappy and addressing it. And maybe they are, but it doesn’t feel that way. Paralives is gaining traction because it offers things the sims 4 can’t or won’t. It’s up to EA to rise to the challenge.
  • KaeChan2089KaeChan2089 Posts: 4,944 Member
    LOL nooooo, they aren't copying the sims exactly, why do I feel like EA and please who have stood by EA are shaking in their boots going "Maybe we can lawsuit them." xD
  • MyriadSimsMyriadSims Posts: 1,197 Member
    I dont think they can sue. Its a life simulation game. Chances ate, they may want to include weight sliders and whatnot for realism.
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