Sketchy Things? With Roblox? Shocker…
In a not-so-shocking turn of events, the Roblox fashion game IT GIRL has been found to contain “illegally” converted The Sims 4 CC assets. These assets have been added, converted, and are currently being sold for the Roblox exclusive “Robux” currency on the in-game player-to-player marketplace.
Unfortunately? This isn’t new; this swath of unapproved conversions by The Sims 4 custom content creators is just another instance of decades of poor behavior within the greater gaming community.
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This is Part of a Pattern of Bad Behavior
The Sims, as a franchise, has always had passionate players who have been willing to use their creativity to enrich the gameplay experiences of themselves and others. Be it stylish hairstyles or immersion-improving gameplay mods, I believe we’re all familiar with a good “shopping spree” of scrolling through our favorite custom content creators’ social media to peruse their latest and greatest creations.
Conversely, creators of The Sims also act as a sort of reservoir that modders from other game franchises siphon from to enhance their own character creators. The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim mods using ANTO’s many wonderful hairstyle mods come to mind. Nexus Mods, one of the premier mod-sharing platforms, is rife with The Sims hair conversions that may or may not have been used without permission.
This is something that has been happening since the early aughts with the original The Sims release. Long before Patreon and social media platforms, when random companies could just lift hundreds of assets of custom content and illegally sell them as their own creations in big box retailers. We love to hate on the 2000s being the wild west of technology.
IT GIRL
IT GIRL is a Roblox dress-up game similar to wildly viral Dress to Impress. The “dress up” aspect comes in clutch here, as that is the exact reason why The Sims 4 CC assets have been lifted.
The custom content used was created by Learxfl, SUNBERRY, and Madlen, respectively.
Here are some comparisons of the custom content extracted into Roblox for It Girl in comparison to their respective posts. While it’s one thing to take inspiration from a piece of custom content, it’s quite another to outright extract and publish it on another website. Doubly so as these assets are currently up for sale for Robux on the Roblox inter-player marketplace.
Robux is Roblox’s in-game currency model that can be purchased with real money. This adds a layer of distaste as The Sims 4‘s Terms of Service state that all forms of custom content made for it cannot be sold. Most are familiar with CC creators having a form of “Early Access” for their Patreon supporters, but as long as those assets come out after a time, free for all to use? It’s fine.
This, however, goes against The Sims 4’s TOS, and, while these assets seem to be purely custom, there could be converted custom content on the Roblox marketplace using EA textures/assets in a very much not EA game. While Roblox stood next to The Sims 4 as one of the 10 best-selling games in 2020, EA’s assets are proprietary. Roblox doesn’t have a right to them.
So, What Can You Do?
That’s the gray area, while the individual player can report the assets or alert creators to the misuse of their mods. Ultimately, it’s up to EA to pursue any exploitation of their assets or the content made for their games. This is because, legally, EA reserves the right to take action against any/all infringement of their intellectual property (i.e., The Sims 4) as defined in the TOS. So it would be in their hands to crack down on “CC theft”.
Which, as we can see, unfortunately may not be the case unless something extreme happens. I would personally recommend intra-community moderation. If you’re a Roblox player who sees something? Say something! Maybe EA won’t step in until it’s necessary, but as a community, we can try to put some heat on these creators use steal assets.
Of course, in saying this, I do not condone bullying or flaming of any sort! As a custom content creator myself, I know I would feel frustrated if someone extracted an asset I created without permission and sold it for money. Though please keep in mind that we’re only as strong as we are kind. Kindness is something that should be given in spades, and I believe if you point it out enough times, civilly and thoroughly, at minimum, these asset-rippers on IT GIRL will at least come to some sort of agreement with custom content creators for the usage of their models and textures.
So far, the IT GIRL development team seems well aware of this, as word from our source says that all mentions of The Sims 4 or Sims 4 CC are filtered by their Discord server. This reveals just how much they care about individual creators’ rights and how poorly this reflects on them.
Information Source
With credit to Reddit user u/shay_shay250 for bringing our attention to the news with their post. They said they wanted to get the word out about what’s been happening, and hopefully, this will bring more attention to it. The comparison images of the custom content vis-à-vis the IT GIRL assets are originally theirs.
How do you feel about modders outside of The Sims converting CC? Have you played a game with “illegally” converted CC? Let us know in the comments down below, and always know to come back to Sims Community for all the latest The Sims news!
