☢️ Here's the plot: I'm trying to mod and this !@#$ is getting in my way. 💀 If you can't Go Offline, you can't bypass the update prompt. 🔄 10/8/24 - App is updated and Offline Mode is working again!
THIS IS A RANT BUT IT'S ALSO A "BUG" ALERT! YOU'RE WELCOME TO IGNORE IT BUT YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T. I DO THIS FOR PERPETUITY AND FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL CATS, EVERYWHERE! 😹
I've been ranting a lot recently. I apologize. It's just been one thing after the next - six updates worth of deformed bodies, Happy At Home, Reaper (I haven't even started my Week 2 yet), more incoming content release updates to break the game... <heavy sigh>
I've spoken about EA's poorly made App and it's abysmal Offline Mode before - many, many times. Now some of us are experiencing this when we try to play in Offline Mode: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/Error-Code-204-Game-License-Expired-when-trying-to-play-offline/m-p/14134691
⚡ Oh look, here's another report: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/after-update-ea-app-for-pc-all-my-installed-games-wont-start-in/m-p/14132660#M56596
I have shoddy and unreliable internet. I don't have the time or patience for any more of this shit.
Some of you may not be aware of this, but The Sims 4 has some Always-Online problems likely stemming from EA's ill-advised and failed attempt to make SimCity (2013) Always-Online. It totes wasn't about piracy and it was totes Maxis' vision, right?! 😹😾💀
Whenever EA's servers are experiencing "technical difficulties", The Sims 4 goes to shit, literally.
Unusually long launch times? It could be your messy Mods folder but also, it's likely EA's servers.
My game is installed on a 2TB WD Black SN-850X SSD. If you're tech savvy, you'll know that's a damn good storage device. With NO INTRO installed - https://modthesims.info/d/532966/no-intro.html - my game launches in about 18 seconds when EA's servers aren't experiencing the difficulties of existing, but when they are, my launch time extends to almost 3 minutes.
Game performance randomly tanking to below 30 FPS? It could be that in-game thing with menus but also, it's likely EA's servers.
Going Offline in App and game solves this shit.
I cover a bunch of these things in my WiP Steam Guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3128600854
"Spore (2008) and EA's hand in solidifying piracy as a form of protest" is the name of the first section in my big attack on titan that began on March 6, 2024. It needs a formatting overhaul because of changes to Patreon but it still stings like a mother!@#$in' bee: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99833884
EA, darling, if I can't play your Single Player game legitimately simply because my net is shit and your servers are shit and your App is shit, what recourse are you leaving for me other than the one you're totes not obsessed with? Maybe what you actually need is another class-action lawsuit because the two in your past over Spore (2008) clearly weren't enough.
💀 I hadn't considered that with this broken, there goes delaying updates. If you can't Go Offline, you can't bypass the update prompt.
👹 10/7/24 - They've done it before!
Here's a whole thread from over a year ago, June 2023: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/RESOLVED-EA-app-Error-Code-EC-204/td-p/12695282
Here's a report from 3 months ago, July 2024: https://forums.ea.com/discussions/the-sims-4-technical-issues-pc-en/error-code-ec204-cant-play-offline-says-game-license-has-expired/4944345
And here's a report from 3 days ago, October 2024, where someone says they contacted EA Support and EA Support told them to post it in the Sims 4 Technical Issues forum: https://forums.ea.com/discussions/the-sims-4-technical-issues-pc-en/ec204-when-trying-to-play-offline/4979345
🦄 10/6/24 - Once upon a time I sailed the high seas and it was glorious!
Back in my youth, before I had my first job, I pirated videogames because I couldn't afford them.
Mass Effect 3 was the game that made me stop pirating and it's an EA game, which is ironic. A lot of the games I grew up with that I have fond memories of are EA games; The Sims 2, Call of Duty 1 & 2, Need For Speed Underground, Most Wanted & Carbon, then came Crysis 1 aka the gaming PC destroyer, and eventually Mass Effect 1 happened.
I didn't like ME1 that much. Not because of the story, but because of the mechanics. I promptly uninstalled and deleted ME1 after trying to play it for a bit and never revisited it. Along came Mass Effect 2 and I'm sitting there thinking, "I didn't like the first one, but 'it's free' and I have nothing to lose!" so I installed it and by the time I finished that first mission where me meet "Archangel" I was so enthralled by the storytelling that I promptly reinstalled ME1 because I had to know how this bond was formed between Garrus and Shepard. I soldiered through the mechanics and fell in love with the characters and the story and I replayed ME1 the required amount of times in order to unlock every achievement, every character bonus, and to max my Paragon and Renegade scores before heading back into ME2 with a fully loaded save and boy, oh boy, Mass Effect 2 is, mechanically speaking, the smoothest game of the trilogy.
Then came Mass Effect 3 and I was disappointed that my Shepard no longer looked like herself; in fact no one looked quite like themselves. ME3 didn't look good but the strong writing was still there and by this time I was so invested in this story and these characters that they could've released an interactive visual novel and I'd have played the !@#$ out of it - actually they did for folks who didn't play ME1 because each game of the trilogy has progression decisions that can change the course and affect the finale.
But they !@#$ed up, didn't they? Maybe you don't know Mass Effect or maybe you don't remember, but in 2012, EA chose to chop off Javik and release him as a pre-order bonus. Javik was meant to be one of the most important storytelling characters introduced in ME3 and they removed him from the game to incentivize pre-orders. I was still pirating at this point so it was no skin off my back but I understood how anti-consumer that was. Then there was the other thing; Mass Effect was always primarily a Single Player Role-Playing experience, but these mother!@#$ers are so obsessed with chasing every trend that they shoehorned in multiplayer and then they made it so that if you didn't play the multiplayer you wouldn't have enough "points" in the Single Player to complete the game the way you wanted to, IIRC. After backlash, and there was backlash, they removed that !@#$.
Fast forward to Symbiosis, which is obviously the only solution for me - I saved the Rachni without knowing if it would come back to bite me in the arse, I cured the genophage, freed the Geth and brokered peace with the Quarians, and I did everything I could to save the Batarians and I made that mother!@#$er eat his words because a Balanced Jane Shepard don't take no !@#$ from nopony, not even a grieving one! I am Chaotic Good, or at least I try to be. I digress.
ME3 had a lot of DLC, like ME2, but unlike ME2, ME3's DLC wasn't fully "unlocked".
Mass Effect 3's storytelling was so good that I purchased it because I wanted the full experience.
Mirror's Edge might have been the first game I purchased, but Mass Effect 3 was the reason I started purchasing games. We can argue that if ME3 had been fully "unlocked" I might not have, but I'd counter with the fact that since then I've spent thousands of dollars buying almost every game I ever pirated. In my 10+ years of buying games, I haven't even played all of them! I haven't even played through the DLC content for Mass Effect 3 but I made sure to buy each and every one of them.
I spent that money to "support the developers", y'know, that lie that publishers like Electronic Arts keep feeding us while giving themselves millions of dollars in bonuses, while crying that the games aren't selling enough, while abusing their employees in all kinds of ways and closing studios and firing those same developers when the bullshit they shoehorn into each and every game makes them "not sell enough".
I boycott Blizzard because once upon a time I pirated World of Warcraft, then I dragged myself and my friends who were all happy not paying for WoW into official WoW, then I found out that while I was giving them money, they were sexually abusing their female staff and harassed one so much that she eventually committed suicide. My WoW subscription funded that and it disgusts me.
I boycott Ubisoft and Assassin's Creed because for years they kept making excuses for why we couldn't have female assassins, only for it then to be revealed that the only reason we weren't getting female assassins was because the Creative Lead or whatever position he held, was a !@#$ing misogynistic !@#$% who didn't think female assassins would sell, even in games where there were multiple playable assassins. I'm still surprised Assassin's Creed: Liberation was made, but it wasn't very good, was it? The last Assassin's Creed trilogy starting with Origins were all written with a female protagonist in mind yet none of them made it into the MAIN promotional material, did they? I also boycott Ubisoft because... weren't they also abusing their employees?
I boycott CD Projekt Red because they're pathological liars who have shown they're willing to mislead all of us every time they open their mouths then gaslight us about it. Gone are the days when I recommended CDPR for The Witcher. The only thing that will make me give them money directly now is their DRM-Free games.
I boycott Gearbox Software because Randy is a !@#$ing pervert who isn't in jail only because he's filthy stinkin' rich off the many, many bonuses he gives himself.
I'll continue when I remember why I boycott damn near everyone.
I still buy games, I still want to buy games and intend to buy games whenever I can afford them. I'm going to buy the Halo Collection some day because I loved Halo 1 and I pirated it multiple times. I will buy the Horizon: Zero Dawn series because I love well-written strong female leads in well-made games, and I will, one day, buy God of War now that it's finally on PC. If EA were to re-release Need For Speed Undercover 1 & 2, Most Wanted and Carbon and Call of Duty 1 and 2 on the EA App I'd buy it! Not only because I loved those games and pirated the !@#$ out of them, but also because every Need For Speed since Carbon has been progressively more !@#$ with every new installment.
There's a misconception that all pirates pirate because we're all simply malicious and just don't want to buy games.
Of course we want to "support the developers", if no one supported the developers we'd have no games and if publishers keep hoarding the money and firing the developers we'll have no games.
Some pirates pirate because they simply can't afford it, and some people will say that if they can't afford it, they shouldn't have it, to which I argue that forms of entertainment are necessary to maintain a healthy mental state. Gaming can destroy lives, it can encourage negative behavior in people with negative tendencies who don't have proper support structures, but it also saves lives. It's a way to abscond from reality for a while or to vent your anger in a safe environment by grabbing a bat and bustin' some pixels. It might be a false equivalency but I don't think it's that much different from seeing someone begging for food and choosing not to help when you can, because you decide "I worked for everything I have, why can't they?" without even knowing the circumstances that put them in that position. This is the reason why I flipped out on that clown on Reddit; I'm dealing with my own !@#$ and I'm here trying to help other people while they're just being a !@#$ and using their circumstances as a defense. I digress.
Some pirates pirate in protest of the anti-consumer nonsense that these BILLION DOLLAR publishers are doing.
There are boycott purists who will argue that if you're boycotting, you shouldn't consume any media from said company. I'm not one of those. Spore became the most pirated EA game of it's time not because pirates wanted to pirate, but because legitimate consumers who purchased the game couldn't play it due to the outlandish DRM that was included in secret.
If EA doesn't fix this shit with their Offline Mode soon, I will provide links. Not links to pirate the game, but links for files so you can continue playing the game. The same files I now have to use so I can continue modfixing EAxis' incompetence because in 2024, Electronic Arts still can't do Offline Mode properly. What you do with it from that point on is your own business.
I "jokingly" asked my colleagues over on Reddit whether we're going to wait three months for EA to notice the problem. This is in reference to the three months it took them to acknowledge the Happy At Home lost rewards issue.
I'm not about waiting on a BILLION DOLLAR company to fix their shit. EA App should have been patched already. At the very least, they could make an announcement acknowledging the problem. - https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/Error-Code-204-Game-License-Expired-when-trying-to-play-offline/m-p/14141165/highlight/true#M56648
I'm not here to promote piracy, but I will defend it. I'm here to fix bugs and make snazzy mods, dammit!
