SimHaven exists because we care about The Sims Online and want to keep it alive.
There are people playing today who never had the chance to experience TSO when EA’s official servers were still online. Some were too young. Some never knew it existed. Others remember it and simply want to step back into that world again.
That is what preservation means to us.
But preserving an old online game is not the same thing as treating everything around it as free material. The Sims Online being discontinued does not mean Electronic Arts stopped owning The Sims. It does not mean expansion-pack content is free to rip. It does not mean old mods are suddenly public property. And it definitely does not mean attaching real money to in-game rewards is harmless just because the game is old.
If anything, the longer a revival project exists, the more important it becomes to understand where the lines are.
One document we believe every FreeSO server owner, developer, and player should read is Rhys’ FreeSO Server Operation Guidelines.
These were not written to make private servers less fun. They were written by the person who spent years building and operating FreeSO, and they explain why FreeSO made some very deliberate choices around copyright, donations, custom content, and server operation.
One part should immediately get everyone’s attention:
“I was contacted by EA to make certain changes to the way we operate, and to ensure that we don’t infringe on The Sims IP in ways not covered by software copyright.”
That is not theoretical. EA had already been paying attention.
Rhys follows that with the warning we think matters most today:
“Your actions might impact people’s future ability to host a TSO server.”
That should be taken seriously by anyone who cares about the future of The Sims Online.
FreeSO was careful for a reason
FreeSO was not built by taking the original TSO client, repackaging it, and distributing it as a new game. The FreeSO client was independently written and designed to read the original The Sims Online assets installed separately by the player.
Rhys explains that distinction plainly:
“We don’t own these assets, we are not redistributing them, we are pointing users to the game files as provided by EA themselves, and then our client reads them from your PC.”
That approach was more complicated than simply bundling everything together, but it was intentional.
FreeSO even developed systems such as PIFF patches so that changes could be applied to existing objects without redistributing complete modified versions of EA’s files. That tells you a lot about how seriously the project took this issue.
SimHaven intends to respect that same line.
That does not mean we cannot create new content. We can, and we will.
If we want a new object, we can make one. If we want new artwork, new gameplay, new systems, or new events, we can build them ourselves. Original custom content is part of how a revival project can grow.
The problem is not adding new things.
The problem is taking copyrighted material from other games and redistributing it through a TSO revival.
There is a huge difference between creating a new magic-themed object from scratch and taking an object from The Sims: Makin’ Magic, converting it to work in TSO, and distributing it to everyone who downloads your client.
Rhys specifically warned about that too:
“At this point, you’ve transitioned to distributing (hopefully modified) objects from The Sims Complete Collection, a paid software product that was never intended to be downloaded for free.”
And then, even more directly:
“This is no longer fair use, and you’re up against a potential lawsuit from EA.”
That is why SimHaven is not interested in stripping Makin’ Magic, Superstar, Vacation, or any other expansion apart just to make our catalog bigger.
Would some of that content be cool to have? Of course.
But “that would be cool” is not a good enough reason to give EA another reason to look at the project.
If we want more content, we will create more content.
Mod creators deserve the same respect
This is not just about EA and Maxis.
The original Sims community created an enormous amount of custom content over the years. Furniture, textures, objects, skins, mods, tools, artwork, and more.
That work still belongs to the people who made it.
A custom object being twenty years old does not automatically make it ours to redistribute.
Rhys addresses this too:
“You should ask the creator for permission to do this.”
That is exactly what we will do.
If SimHaven wants to use someone else’s work, we will ask for permission first. If they say yes, we will credit them and respect whatever conditions they place on their work. If they say no, we will not use it.
If a creator specifically says their content cannot be redistributed, we will respect that. It does not matter how old the content is, how difficult the creator is to reach, or how badly we might want to use it.
Their work is still theirs.
There is a difference between preservation and taking.
We intend to stay on the right side of that difference.
Money makes everything riskier
The FreeSO guidelines are probably at their most blunt when they talk about donations and real-money rewards.
Rhys wrote:
“DO NOT accept cash donations”
And more specifically:
“Especially do not gate features, objects or provide rewards for real money.”
That warning exists for a reason.
A FreeSO server is already recreating access to an online game that EA no longer operates. Once real money starts buying items, currencies, special features, perks, or advantages, the project starts to look very different.
Rhys puts it plainly:
“Providing rewards for donations can very quickly equate to selling parts of TSO.”
That is not a direction SimHaven will take.
We will not sell special furniture. We will not create a supporter currency that unlocks in-game benefits. We will not put gameplay behind Patreon. We will not give players an advantage because they paid us money.
We would rather have fewer features and pay for the server ourselves than turn The Sims Online into a storefront built around somebody else’s intellectual property.
Supporting reckless projects can put all of us at risk
This is the part we really want people to think about.
When a revival project knowingly ignores these warnings, redistributes copyrighted material, uses mods without permission, or connects real money to in-game benefits, that is not necessarily just their problem.
It can become everybody’s problem.
Rhys warned about that directly:
“Your actions might impact people’s future ability to host a TSO server.”
Different TSO projects may have different owners, developers, Discord servers, and communities, but from the outside they are all connected to the same abandoned EA game.
If one project gets loud enough, reckless enough, or profitable enough to attract serious attention, there is no guarantee EA looks only at that one server.
And this matters even more now because EA’s current Content Policy explicitly says it does not allow game revivals, fan games, or community-run servers.
As the operator of SimHaven, we are not going to pretend that language does not apply to us.
It does.
Following Rhys’ guidelines does not give SimHaven a magic shield. EA owns The Sims Online, and if EA decides it no longer wants projects like ours operating, that is something we all have to take seriously.
Which is exactly why we do not understand the logic behind making the situation worse.
If we are already operating in a space EA’s current policy says it does not support, why would anyone deliberately pile extra risk on top by ripping expansion-pack assets, ignoring custom-content creators, or attaching money to in-game rewards?
That is not preserving the game.
That is gambling with it.
A project might gain more players by having more content. It might look more exciting because it has recognizable objects from other Sims games. It might grow faster because supporters can buy perks, currencies, or exclusive items.
But numbers are not preservation.
Popularity is not preservation.
And a bigger Discord does not mean a project is healthier if the way it got there increases the chance that everybody gets shut down.
That is the part players need to understand too.
Nobody at SimHaven is going to tell people where they are allowed to play. People can choose whatever server they want.
But supporting a project is not completely separate from what that project does.
If a community is openly ignoring the warnings that came from the person who built FreeSO, taking copyrighted material from other games, using creators’ work without permission, or tying real money to gameplay, then supporting that community gives it more players, more visibility, more money, and more reason to keep doing it.
At some point, that affects the rest of us.
If one project eventually becomes the reason EA decides the TSO revival scene is no longer worth tolerating, there is no guarantee EA sorts every server into neat categories and says, “This one behaved better, so we’ll leave it alone.”
They may simply decide all of us are a problem.
And if that happens, everyone loses.
That is the alarm we are trying to sound.
Preservation matters more than winning
SimHaven does not need to be the biggest TSO server.
We do not care whether another project has more objects, more features, more players, or a larger Discord.
We would rather have a smaller project that is still here years from now than win a popularity contest today and help bring the whole revival scene down tomorrow.
Our goal is not to build some giant The Sims: Everything Edition by taking whatever assets we can find.
Our goal is to preserve The Sims Online.
We can still grow. We can still create new objects. We can still make new artwork, build new systems, and add new gameplay.
But those additions will be ours, or they will be used with permission.
That is the difference.
We want somebody who never played TSO to be able to log in and understand why some of us still care about this strange old MMO more than twenty years later. We want former players to come back and recognize the game they remember. We want people to build lots, run businesses, make friends, and experience something that officially disappeared a long time ago.
If doing that responsibly means saying no to an EA asset we could technically import, then we will say no.
If it means creating our own version instead, even better.
If it means asking a mod creator for permission and respecting their answer, we will do that.
If it means refusing to monetize gameplay even when someone else does, that’s fine too.
We respect EA and Maxis because this is their game. We respect Rhys and the FreeSO contributors because without their work, none of these modern TSO communities would exist. We respect custom-content creators because their work belongs to them.
And we respect the people who still care about The Sims Online enough that we do not want careless decisions today to take it away from them again tomorrow.
That is what preservation means to SimHaven.
Keep the game alive. Don’t give anyone a reason to kill it.
— Wyatt
SimHaven