This is a section where we post announcements about new releases or other things related to G4TW. Feel free to check back here occasionally, and also pay attention to the date of each announcement when doing so. The latest update is always on the very top of this page here.
Saturday, June 17th 2023, @ 23:15 CEST
So, the things that have brought the G4TW platform (some degree of) fame, deserve more attention. I’m talking mainly about TS2, and especially TS3. An initial start has been made with The Sims 2 page, which will likely also serve as the template as to how future pages will look like. The section focuses primarily on The Sims 2: Ultimate Collection. We do have an older compilation of TS2, named “The Sims 2: The Complete Collection”. But that one has individual installers for the base game and every DLC. I remember, almost all the problems about that release had something to do with the installation process. The game does work, don’t get me wrong. And given that it was released during a time when the Forum was very active, the old version of TS2 does have more seeds than the newer one. However, we still recommend you grab The Ultimate Collection of The Sims 2.
I have also re-established contact with ~Ann~, after quite a long time, and from what I hear, all is good.
What’s going to give me more headache in the foreseeable future is, what to do with all these direct downloads, for game releases. Originally, the platform focused strictly on torrent releases only, and I’m inclined to go back to said ‘roots’. There was a brief period early on when the Forum was created by the old Admin, when it was considered to have some kind of VPS in a ‘friendly jurisdiction’ to host direct downloads on, but nothing came of it. There used to be the .org website, but last I checked, it seemed offline, so I don’t know what happened on that end (it’s probably going to resurface though, would be my guess). But all in all, G4TW was all about torrents and magnets for the most part.
Then, a year or two into the release cycle of TS4, people started lamenting that they torrented something from their home internet connection, and got warned by their ISP. VPNs do cost some money, and many people doubt the trustworthiness of these types of services.
At the end of the day, things and strategies that worked well enough during the Forum-era of G4TW have become obsolete. Direct download choices that would be reliable / useful for us, were always rare to begin with. Putting all the stuff on a single (paid) hosting service is just bound to ask for problems, in that a single strike would wipe everything. So yes … I’m at this point inclined to go for the easier solution. The direct downloads on G4TW were always messy to begin with. I remember when we did the “new format” for TS4, we kind of had to put every single component of the format onto different GoogleDrive accounts. We kind of anticipated hostile reactions, as was always the case when G4TW brought out something new. Accordingly, the initial method helped prevent takedowns of said downloads (compared to having everything ‘neatly’ in one single place). But it was extremely unfriendly for users.
Oh, and yes, so where exactly do we go in general with this whole website? Honestly, I don’t think I can give an answer to that yet. I’m just going with the flow. Other popular multiplayer games are being discussed behind the scenes. And once we get some traction going with this website, I plan on doing a miniblog for anything related to community management, moderation, gatekeeping (hopefully in a positive spin), and so forth. But until then, we’re going to have to walk a bit more. See you around there, hopefully anyways!
-The_gh0stm4n (forgot to sign again)
Tuesday, June 6th 2023, @ 20:45 CEST
OK, a couple of things. So there’s some inconsistent behavior with the advertising service Linkvertise. Now, in the event there’s still people (after an eternity of the site being inactive) stumbling upon these links and interested in grabbing them, take note of the following. If you use a VPN you might be prompted to click on a certain symbol. Which in itself shouldn’t be an issue. When you get to the following page, go to “free access with ads”. You may be prompted to download & install some stuff, which I don’t recommend you do. Instead, click on where it leads you to downloading that software, then close (!) that new tab immediately. Back on the previous page you should see something to the effect of “I did this step already”. Clicking on that will finally lead you to the downloads page. That is, if the link still works.
The Legacy Downloads / Indie Corner (merged to one single section now) are ads-free, but the .torrent links don’t seem to work. However, the magnet links are operational. The section of The Sims 3 store items that contains direct downloads … also seems operational.
It will take quite a bit to fix everything, to even get close to “where we left off”, many years ago. An explanation as to what exactly happened, as far as it is possible to share, will follow when the time comes. No worries.
I have un-dusted my old e-mail address that I have used back in the day for correspondence, when we still had the Forum. I intend to put this back into operation as well, soon (TM). On the off-chance there are still people from that Forum era, stumbling upon this section, well, what can I say? Things have been awkward and very difficult. I guess this goes for most people though. But, for what it’s worth, “welcome back!”. For me, there is a crazy amount of stuff to catch up with.
Now, I’ve totally forgotten how these TS4 updates work (that bit is probably what you were waiting for), but I’ll re-iterate you should not expect anything on that end. For the initial phase of re-starting this thing, I’ll just have to start somewhere, and go on from there. I heard, however, that “The Sims 4 community” has gotten jaded quite a bit though, due to the ongoing disappointment regarding the content? That may be an exaggeration, but does factor into the decision-making for the time being.
I think that’s all for now.
-The_gh0stm4n
———-
Sunday, June 4th 2023, @ 18:10 CEST
We are re-establishing control over the .site, more news will follow in the coming days. No personal information has been compromised.
As of now I do not know for sure what we are going to do with this. The last time this site has received an official update, (I vaguely remember), we still did something on The Sims 4. But that’s been ages ago. A lot of things happened since then, both positive and negative. I will write about this more.
One thing I can give away for now is, you probably shouldn’t expect updates on TS4.
– The_gh0stm4n (forgot to sign this message, initially :p )