Sims 2 Hacks Spread Like Viruses

jowens writes "SecurityFocus reports that players sharing house designs through Electronic Arts' Sims 2 Exchange are finding their game behaving oddly: espresso machines mysteriously satisfy all the Sims needs, Sims are suddenly comfortable with open relationships, and the social worker no longer cares how they treat their children. It turns out hacks were spreading invisibly with Sims 2 lots, infecting thousands of downloadable homes, and catching Electronic Arts by surprise. The hackers, who never intended their hacks to be viruses, have even written their own AV scanner to find and control the outbreak."

Some of those hacks sound kind of cool!

[ZipR (584654)]

Maybe now I'll check the game out.

Re:Some of those hacks sound kind of cool!

[Soul-Burn666 (574119)]

Reasons for playing the sims are here (sims1) [somethingawful.com] and here (sims2) [somethingawful.com].

Re:Some of those hacks sound kind of cool!

[GweiLeong (846704)]

I played it for awhile, and frankly now I'm tempted to start it up again... Most popular at the moment seem to be the teen woohoo mod (no pregnancy) [modthesims2.com] and teen woohoo mod (pregnancy possible) [modthesims2.com]. Someone made a mod where you can invite anyone (regardless of age/gender) to move in with you. They should have called it the Michael Jackson mod. ;)

Re:Some of those hacks sound kind of cool!

[VivianC (206472)]

...espresso machines mysteriously satisfy all the Sims needs, Sims are suddenly comfortable with open relationships, and the social worker no longer cares how they treat their children.

Oh my God! They are all becoming Democrats! Can't somebody stop the madness?

I wonder.

[Blapto (839626)]

Where can I buy me one of these magic espresso machines?

Re:I wonder.

[grahamsz (150076)]

I thing you need the 'special' columbian beans for that.

Re:I wonder.

[Mr. No Skills (591753)]

All espresso machines have magic in them. :)

Re:I wonder.

[allism (457899)]

It sounds like your wife is a lucky lucky woman...

either that or you really screwed up sometime earlier in the year and you were trying to make up for it...

Sims 2 is the least of my problems...

[Skyshadow (508)]

Great! All we need now is a patch for the real-life analog of this. You know what I'm talking about here, that one where you go over to a friend's house for dinner and afterwords have this conversation:

Wife: Wow, I love what they did with their place.
Me: What?
Wife: Didn't you notice they redid their kitchen?!?
Me: I noticed the beer was in a different place...
Wife: (ignoring me) I loved their new countertop, and the wine cooler, and...
Me: This is bad, isn't it?
Wife: We need to do something like that.
Me: Yup, it's bad all right.
Wife: I'm sure we can put something together for under $25k...
Me: PWn3d.
wife: Goddamn right.

Re:Sims 2 is the least of my problems...

[abb3w (696381)]

Wife: I'm sure we can put something together for under $25k...
Me: PWn3d.

What, you thought the upkeep on females became cheaper after marriage?

Re:Sims 2 is the least of my problems...

[dillon_rinker (17944)]

It all ends with your soul.

Ah, there's the trouble with your relationships. It all STARTS with your soul. See, you're right about the cumulative upkeep; what you've missed is that infinity=infinity+1. So if you give your soul as often as you can (it grows back, you know), your significant other is indescribably happy and you don't have to shell out $$$ on the Hallmark Holidays.

(Sorry, didn't mean to get all serious and sappy there - it's just that what you said clicked so nicely that I felt compelled to

Re:Sims 2 is the least of my problems...

[Skim123 (3322)]

This is why you need to make sure, regardless of your age, your friends are poor college students. Then what is she going to say? "I really like what they did with those cinderblocks?", and, "That couch they found on the side of the road sure does add a nice touch to their place."

Re:Sims 2 is the least of my problems...

[Tony Hoyle (11698)]

Only 50% of the slashdotters with id 1000 are still married.

Surely there's only one slashdotter with id 1000...

Is he half married?

Re:Sims 2 is the least of my problems...

[YU Nicks NE Way (129084)]

Is he half married?

Isn't that awfully sexist of you? I mean, how do you know /.-er 1000 is a...oh...wait. This is slashdot we're talking about, isn't it.

Never mind.

Re:Sims 2 is the least of my problems...

[ForestGrump (644805)]

married and divorced.

Re:Sims 2 is the least of my problems...

[FurryFeet (562847)]

Maybe he's Schroedinger's wife?

Hacks?

[trp642 (551059)]

I'd call them upgrades! If only reality were just as hackable...

It may fulfill all the sims needs...

[Heftklammerdosierer! (846009)]

But can the coffee maker shoot Bobs?

Relax.

[grub (11606)]

Don't worry, a fix is coming. EA has a few employees working overtime this weekend.

Re:Relax.

[Ubergrendle (531719)]

Great, stressed out, virtually canatonic coders patching an online game. You'll see people dining out of Stanley Cups, Gordon Freeman lounging on the couch too lazy to change the channel, and Paul Tagliabue running around taping up Sim's breasts in case of wardrobe malfunctions.

but..

[sirgallihad (846850)]

if they where never designed as virii, then how come they are behaving like them?

Re:but..

[SiliconJesus (1407)]

The actual virus like behaviour is due to the way EA's site works.

Basically - you create the house using your copy of the game, with whatever tiles you have installed and loaded. Once you're happy with the results, you upload them to the server inside the game. The game then compares the objects to those in the standard game, as well as those in the game database (every object is given a unique ID and checksum from what I've seen so far), and variants are uploaded as well as part of the upload. The more unique objects your house has, the bigger it is.

Re:but..

[Rei (128717)]

I'd be interested in seing a time bomb. An object which does nothing for a month, and then sets everything it can on fire. Just like with a real virus, if you want it to spread far and wide, you need an incubation period.

Re:but..

[pclminion (145572)]

To get technical about it, it's not really an incubation period because during incubation an organism isn't doing anything except growing and maturing. It isn't reproducing.

This is more like the "lag period" after pitching yeast to make beer. There is a period of time (anywhere from 6 to 48 hours) where the yeast is not yet fermenting anything, but working as hard as possible to reproduce and grow its numbers. Then, once the resources start to get crowded, it switches into a new life mode and begins its "

Re:but..

[iabervon (1971)]

Essentially, everything behaves like viruses in the game, but people didn't realize this in advance. It makes sense that when you import a house, the things in it come along, but people didn't realize that a number of game mechanics were treated as things in houses. People also didn't realize that, if you modified "the espresso machine", the change would apply not just to one item, but to all items like that one, so importing the house with the weird espresso machine imports and applies the weirdness to your espresso machines, which you then pass on when you export your house.

Someone set up us the Sims

[PornMaster (749461)]

All your Sims are belong to us!

Re:+4 Funny?

[rackhamh (217889)]

some of you need to get out more.

Dude... it's an article about the Sims...

Re:+4 Funny?

[m50d (797211)]

Says the guy posting on slashdot complaining about the moderation

So, a game which simulates live

[Trigun (685027)]

catches a virus? Oh the irony.

A virus gets a life, and life gets a virus.

Re:So, a game which simulates live

[Rei (128717)]

Now, we just need to make it so sims can get jobs as spammers, and we're all set... ;)

A brave new world.

[Dr Caleb (121505)]

Life imitates art imitating life.

My head hurts.

It's The Sims!

[devphaeton (695736)]

How do we know the Sims themselves haven't created these hacks? I mean, all of us here fantasize about being able to program the physics around us for a happier existence, right? right?

Re:It's The Sims!

[Thuktun (221615)]

Sounds like a cool hack. Give the sims the ability to mess with the internals of objects around them, then see what happens over time.

so what?

[mrn121 (673604)]

And how is this not EXACTLY like real life?

Re:so what?

[utlemming (654269)]

Yeah, can you imagine the problems that would happen with self-aware Sims? You would have your own cult of Sims worshipping you. Everytime you would open the Sims, they would praise you and beg for your benevolence or beg that your menevolence would be adverted. That could be a fun, yet cruel game. It could be called Sim God. If only AI tech was that advanced. I would buy a game where I could tinker with the lives of a self-aware AI....muhahaha

Re:so what?

[Ironsides (739422)]

It's called "Black and White"

Re:so what?

[DarthWiggle (537589)]

Similarly, Populous, a much better game. (old school)

Old news for those in the 'scene'

[Richard Frost (18848)]

User based sites that create mods, such as http://www.modthesims2.com, have been warning about this for months now.

magic toaster

[Fr05t (69968)]

I want the magic toaster what eats lady sim shirts and skirts!

New Sims add-on?

[weeboo0104 (644849)]

Sims are suddenly comfortable with open relationships, and the social worker no longer cares how they treat their children.

Does this mean that EA will be releasing a Jerry Springer add-on for the Sims?

yes but,

[by Anonymous Coward]

Another hack allows teenagers in the Sims 2 to get pregnant.

do.... do we see em do it?!?

Re:yes but,

[sTalking_Goat (670565)]

Another hack allows teenagers in the Sims 2 to get pregnant.

Dammit I told them that that Abstinence hack was a waste of time...

wow

[Jailbrekr (73837)]

virtual world plagued by virtual virus. Should we be virtually worried? Will the virtual police come and arrest the virtual hackers as they spread their virtual malware? Will it become a virtual catastrophe, or a comedy of virtual proportions?

Sleep Depravation = Bugs

[Safety Cap (253500)]

From the article:

Someone at Electronic Arts was really shortsighted not to have thought of hacked objects spreading this way.

Let's see, if you work your developers to death on the Bataan Coding Deathmarch 18/7 (with 2 hours off on Sunday for "good behaviour"), then how on earth are they supposed to write anything remotely resembling quality code, let alone manage risk?

Answer: you don't; instead you adopt the Slashdot style of code testing: Ship it!
503? Hacks spread like viruses? Oh, par for the course. [slashdot.org]

Re:Sleep Depravation = Bugs

[ironygranny (596328)]

I'm assuming your clients are running Windows: try creating a "Sims" group, adding the limited user accounts to it, and giving it at least "Write" access on the Sims directory under "Program Files" AND go into the registry under HKLM\Computer, find the Sims-related keys and grant the "Sims" group Full Control over them. That usually works for me with games (which tend to be less good about keeping user data in places where user data should be).

If you're feeling especially masochistic, you can download a u

What's strange about magic espresso?

[gerardlt (529702)]

...some characters are finding all their needs fulfilled by a single shot of magic espresso.

Isn't this normal?

My idea

[Mr. Cancelled (572486)]

I always thought it would be way fun to be able to insert a downloadable sim, who would act as somewhat of a virus, and murder other sims.

My GF's hooked on the Sims (and now Sim2), and even she thought it'd be kinda neat to download an innocent looking Sim, only to have them turn out to be a serial killer who begins killing off your other Sims at some point in time. Sort of a simulated "whodunnit" murder mystery.

Re:Sims 2 is a virus

[Tony Hoyle (11698)]

it can take you several hours to just make coffee and walk to the front door in the morning.

Hey, I didn't realise it was *that* realistic!

Re:Sims 2 is a virus

[necro2607 (771790)]

No kidding, I started getting pissed off that it took 2-5 hours to microwave a TV dinner...

Re:57 Years Old?

[necro2607 (771790)]

Um, what I'm more curious about is why the hell they arbitrarily chose this "57-year-old Sims 2 player from Pflugerville, Texas".

I mean, it doesn't get much more obscure than that. Does this woman happen to be a well-known member of a Sims 2 community site or something? Or did they just do a google search for "arbitrary Sims 2 player" and then interview one of the people randomly selected from the list of results?