Delphy- I get that you are in trying to destroy paysites... (I'm sorry for coming off so harsh) I respect that aspect of the new rule change! It just seems really extreme to me! I love to use paysite content in my downloads and screenshots! It just makes stuff look better! but it also seems you are taking away from the community from showing some of the awesome pay stuff out there, (that can be got free elsewhere) Most of my downloads folder is pay, which unfortunately I did pay for until I found out it was illegal what they are doing, so of course started going to PMBD! I guess our ideas of destroying paysites differ! I guess I prefer the file share friendly method! Anyways, I'll continue to visit here, but like I said, doubt I'll be uploading much anymore if anything just because I love to use paysite items, esp. in my screenshots!! Don't get me wrong, there is still tons of great free content out there, and most of it is here on MTS2!!

Yessss

I am other 100% for this kind of rules because I am also for the free use of all the stuff with corresponding link and credit.

There is sufficient free content all around the world net to continue to make awesome uploads in any category.

To help me to complete my little contribution to the members help, if you find a site allowing its free build/deco stuff in uploaded lot, let a message on the thread in my sig

Hey! I think this is an awesome rule!

I just want to clarify something.
I've seen PMBD popping up in a lot of comments - I know what it is. Quick question. If you can get a particular pay mesh from PMBD (since not all of them are available) and recolor it, could you still upload that creation here with a link to the free pay-mesh on PMBD? The mesh itself would then technically be free, and of course the recolor free here.

(If I'm being redundant re: somebody else's post, sorry! I'm running on 4 hours of sleep. Quite possible I missed it x_X)
Thanks!

<3333 MTS2

No, you could not. We have never allowed the main link to a mesh to be any site other than one which the creator has given permission for the file to be hosted on. Basically, if the creator has said it can be there, you can link there. So if a pay creator has given a free site permission to host their stuff - go for it - but otherwise; no.

Ah, thank you. I haven't actually made anything yet (still practicing stuff) so I wasn't aware of that.

Thanks a bunch!

Still think this is awesome! Totally hated finding something I liked only to find out that it was based on a pay item I couldn't get (since I'm cheap and refuse to pay for stuff that I shouldn't have to pay for)

Keep it up!! <3

Thank you so much. I always thought this would be a good policy. MTS2 has and always will be my favorite and number one community for The Sims 2, and thanks for making it even better!

Now, please don't misunderstand what I'm about to say. I hate paysites, I do want to destroy them, I do actually believe they are evil and also illegal. I support not advertising paysites in uploads, or anywhere else. (See my signature!)

However: I see many people replying to this thread saying that they are glad they no longer have to see a hair recolor, download it, *then* realize that the mesh is donation-only. I see this problem as very easy to avoid. Uploads requiring donation meshes have a nice little tag at the top, which *should* let downloaders know that they might have to pay to get the mesh. In my opinion, it is the fault of the downloader to not see the tag. I don't see why banning uploads requiring pay meshes should help at all with this particular issue.

Also, I have pay content in my game (especially hair, my personal favorite) and I like to see recolors of pay hair meshes up for download. If these recolors are no longer allowed, will I be stuck with the textures of the original mesh creator? I have no ability to recolor these meshes myself, and I doubt that the talented hair recolor-ers will take the time to upload to insimenator.net or another site. And we all know that donation (or free) meshes do not always come with good textures, just as the best hair textures are often made by creators with little or no meshing talent.

One more, then I'll leave: I have considered uploading full sims to MTS2 in the near future. I prefer to package the sims with maxis hair and clothing to not force downloaders to go download separate hair and clothes meshes just to download my sim. In screenshots of the sim, I would use custom hair and clothing. Am I correct in assuming that I could use only free content in the screenshots? If I used pay content, it would only be because I like the style and the item fits well with my sim's character, *not* to advertise a paysite, and *not* to look superior to other MTS2 members because I can have pay-only content and they can't.

I accept the fact that this rule will not be changed, and even if it is, it will not be because of me. I just have a few questions that I would like to have answered. Thanks for reading.

We already have, in fact, a system of tagging uploads which require a pay mesh; however convenience for downloaders wasn't the reason behind this decision (just a happy side effect! ). MTS2 is a free site, and we have made it perfectly clear on several occasions that we neither agree with nor support the concept of paysites. Why, then, should we provide what is basically advertising space for something which we fundamentally disagree with?
In fact I recently saw a few staff members responding to a question about whether we would consider introducing a sign-up fee to help support the servers, and what came out of that was, and I quote (possibly paraphrased, my memory isn't that good), "The staff would rather shut down the site altogether than make it a paysite": a paysite being any website which you must pay to use content from. A free texture on MTS2 is all very well, but if you have to pay for the mesh to allow you to use the texture, what exactly is the point of the texture being free?
Paysites have tags for pay items too, theirs say "Donation gift", up till now ours have said "Requires a pay mesh!"... what's the difference?
You can find recolours of pay meshes elsewhere, but, yes, if you choose only to download from this free site, then you will find nothing to promote nor give purpose to, paying for content.

Your intentions may be perfect; but the effect of using a pay mesh on a model is the same. I started downloading madly from XMSims because of a hair I spotted on a sim, the credit link on that sim and the screenshots were an advert for XMSims, and it worked - they gained a downloader. As much as you may only wish to use the most appropriate item, whatever that item is, by using it you will be advertising it, and, as said, we're not going to allow MTS2 to be advertising space for paysites.
Thankyou for a very polite post!

So there's no decent free content out there? Is this what I'm supposed to gather from this? I guess I should go yank Nouk's and seomi's trophies since it's free and therefore can't be any good.. right? 1700+ plus downloads hair, almost 11,000 clothing items, 800 sets of eyes.. wow, we should just close this site down since there can't be anything good here. After all, if I'm to believe what I'm reading "if it isn't pay, it isn't pretty"

Seems like everyone is mourning the loss of peddling their agenda instead of the change in the rules.

Not me CC as someone else said im also disabled and i cant afford paysites so this is awesome not linking to them and i also have PMBD :D

"Everyone"? Go back and read the thread. There are two people against it and one who says he's for it but has serious misgivings. The rest of us are very positive about it. Personally, I'm happy that MTS2 will no longer be an advertising source for crappy pay hair with neck gaps and no animations. I just went and added proper credits to all my downloads (of which I had already used exclusively Maxis and free content, so it was pretty easy). I also deleted my oldest download, which consisted of a recolor of hair that was originally on MTS2 but had been deleted and moved to TSR. (No one will miss it, as it was a long, stiff style from 2005.) This is a good move for MTS2.

Thanks for the answer, whiterider and cynicalchick. That's all I needed! I don't consider free items as automatically low-quality. I'm sorry that my post sounded that way.

My fault for posting when hot, tired and grumpy after a long day of work .. I only meant those that wish to put up an argument. I'm thrilled that the acceptance level is so high, Major changes to the site can be a stressful time because you never know what to expect.

THANK YOU for this new policy. It eliminates an especially annoying process that went something like this (for me):

Say I want my sims to have some new hair:

-Go to MTS2, click for hair
-Find cool hair, click the hair
-Read the hair, see it has an alternate link
-Decide that, yeah, the hair is cool, just this once I will click the alternate link
-Can't find the hair or I have to pay for the hair
-Go back to MTS2 and start all over again

One week, I think EVERY hair I clicked on was a pay hair, and there was no indication of that until I realized "Oh, I guess this entire site is a pay site".

So, this eliminates the annoyance factor. It stops advertising for the pay sites (Which I think might just get more traffic from all the free recolors that people want meshes for!), and it says "hey, free is the way to be".

But mostly, I had actually stopped looking on MTS2 for a while because it seemed like so much was pay related, and it was pointless to even bother looking around. So I'm happy about this. Way to stick to your guns and not be afraid to announce a policy like this (Some sites I've seen say that it's a must to have pay mentioned in the thread, but still allow the free recolors of pay meshes to exist).

This is such a good idea, thanks staff. I dont use pay content at all, so it's great that i wont find something really nice, and then find that i cant have it! x

This is the right way to fight against those illegal sites. For me it is illegal to want money for the Sims stuff!! We paid all enough to EA for the Game and i am surprised (but not really) that they do nothing against that sites. Thank you so much!!

Before I made any comments, I figured I had best read all the ones that came before. I hate commenting unawear of what I am commenting on.
To begin with, while I do download from partial pay sites (including TSR) I have never downloaded anything that was pay. Or rather I have never downloaded anything that was pay at the time. Several items I downloaded off of Sims2Sisters became pay when the site shut down and moved to TSR, so I have items from that which are now pay.
I will admit that I have found some of these partial paysites from meshes needed from here (only for the free items on said sites). I have found just as many or more from google searches and almost all the sites I found from here were first found in google searches. I have done many google sites for hair.
When looking for items I am to the point where I mostly just look at new uploads on this site. My main goal is hair and toddler stuff. My sister makes some of our clothes and I upload others.
I personally don't really care if the stuff in a picture is pay or not, just so long as the main item, the download, doesn't require any pay stuff, but saying that I also don't care if everything in the picture is free simply because I ignore anything not in the download. I will admit that sometimes I want something in the picture, put usually it's the facial structure of the model.
The point of this being that I like the changes, since it will mean that anything I find will be free whether from here, from a fully free site, or from a partial one. I don't really care much about the TSR issue since I don't really find much stuff here from there anyway. There is some very awesome stuff here and in other places that have free stuff. I rarely find pay items to be even worth the consideration of paying for them and as of yet have not found any worth actually paying for. Besides that there being the whole issue of legality.
I will continue to enjoy all the amazing items on this site and who knows, maybe one of these days I'll upload some of my sister's recolors, provided I can figure out where each mesh came from.

Jessica

I think you are labouring under a misconception. We are actually not out to "destroy paysites" as you think. We have no wish to be labelled as such. In fact what we are doing is simply saying "do not use pay content in your game becuase there is plenty of free content out there", and to help with this ethos we have introduced these rules.

As I mentioned, some creators who do use a lot of pay content will be affected - but honestly, all you are doing is advertising that paysite when you use thier content on your sims, and also making sure that the vast majority of people can never get the sim in-game looking like your screenshots, becuase they don't have a credit card or paypal. To deliberately say to people "Here is this great sim but you have to pay for this item... and this one..." is really misleading and not at all fair to the downloaders. Is this what you would want?

As for the "pay content that can be gotten for free elsewhere" - sorry but that isn't going to work either. Either use content that was free in the first place, or not at all. In addition, pay content does not neccesarily "make things look better" - there are countless examples of hair that stabs Sims through the chest when they look around, that has huge gaps and reveals thier neck... all pay stuff. Is this the kind of thing you want on your Sim?

This rule change might seem extreme to you - but honestly, only those people who use a lot of pay content on thier Sims, or those that recolour only pay content are really going to be affected, and is it all that hard to find free content to replace it? I don't think so.

This is a wonderful change! Because I've seen people complain about pay sites and content, but still go on using it. If you are against it then don't use it! Otherwise what's the point of complaining ?!

I , personally don't own a single pay item and I love the way my sims and objects look, thanks to you guys here, at MTS ... So... keep up the good work!

PS. I live in a country where 20 $ is about 10% of one's monthly salary... So you tell me if I can afford pay content in my game, when i can barely afford the game itself!

Since I have never used any pay content it isn't a great change for me. There is loads of excellent free content out there!

I am extremely disappointed... I mean, if we want paysite contents, we already know where to find them... But this site was the only place where I was able to find decent colour for some pay hair. I am sad (not saying all pay hair are good. I just say SOME pair hair are good, but with bad colours)

Vaalyah, your problem will be solved if you don't use pay meshes

The rationale seems be a 'moral' high ground, and I'm not so sure that's a road, considering the wider implications, this particular site should head down. Understandably, downloading content from a free site that needs a pay mesh is not workable, but the other rules, especially concerning pictures, seem extreme. Respectfully, Windgirl.

I'm going to assume that you would be refering to me, and in which case sorry, I didn't realise!

People will still make recolours of pay hairs, they just won't post them on MTS. Having so many free recolours of pay items sort of makes MTS look a bit like TSR, just that the meshes are hosted on other sites.