It's been almost a year since The Sims 3 was released, I am a huge fan of the Sims and all of Maxis's games. I pre-ordered it and have been enjoying it ever since.
However, a few months ago I noticed my computer "acting up" and preforming rather slowly. I hadn't done any changes to it other than install The Sims 3. So I did some basic clean up, poked around made sure their wasn't anything that shouldn't be their. I found a very nasty surprise, the .NET Frame work had somehow been sneaked into my system.
First thing I did was click the "remove" button, several thoughts went through my mind as my computer was detoxifying itself. "How long has this been their?", "Well that explains all the recent trouble", "How in the world did that get their?". I continued to have thoughts and felt very betrayed when I discovered that The Sims 3 had installed this with no warning whatsoever.
How did I discover this? Well, first off it was a pure hunch. Since EA had built the ill-fated SimCity Creator on .NET, I thought maybe they had done the same with The Sims 3, but I quickly came to my senses that it simply was not possible. The Sims 3 is a great game, high quality, runs fast, is very stable, runs on Mac OS X, and is nothing like the trash that Sim City Creator is.
So, to confirm I double click on The Sims 3 desktop icon, and what do I get, an error. Huh?
I refused to believe the the Sims 3 was build on .NET, just is not possible, it runs on a Mac, it runs on consoles, a .NET game simply wouldn't allow for that sort of thing. I go into the Program Files directory go into the Sims 3 folder and attempt to double click directly on the "TS3.exe" file.
It loads!
Turns out that EA created a tiny little .NET based "Sims3launcher.exe" as an entry point to load the real game. Completely useless and a complete waste of system resources. I continue to wonder who's the idiot who thought it would be a great idea to build this with .NET. Unnecessarily adding more than a GB of libraries and run times, and several extra system processes to eat up RAM on users computers for a pathetic little applet such as this one. Something that could have been built without .NET.
Anyone who has purchased the Sims 3, should remove the .NET Framework to restore you computer to a functional state, and complain to Electronic Arts.
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