I have Sims 3 Pets, but it does not show up in the game

[paulbarbee]

I own The Sims 3 pets expansion pack. It does show up in Origin as owned. It does not show up under Expansions & Stuff. I contacted EA chat support. They did not check the key, they did not ask me to try anything else. Once they saw that I did not buy it directly through Origin they told me to contact my seller. Does anyone on here have an idea what's going on?

[puzzlezaddict]

@paulbarbee  Where did you buy the pack?  If it came from an unauthorized seller (for example, Ebay or g2a), it's possible that the codes were originally stolen or otherwise fraudulently obtained.  Over the past year, EA has been systematically deactivating codes for which it was never paid, even in accounts that owned the corresponding packs for years.  So it's likely that your Pets code falls into this category.

The only way to get the EP back on your account is to buy it again.  If you're interested, Steam is having a sale right now.  You'd have to buy the base game again, but it would still be less than the full price.  Plus, you'd get1,000 more SimPoints for registering the second base game (or another copy of WA, for that matter).

[paulbarbee]

Yes, I bought it from g2a, but it does show up in Origin. If the key were deactivated shouldn't it not show up as owned? I can accept deactivated keys. That would be the seller's problem. It downloads from Origin fine. It just doesn't show up in the game.

Edit for grammar.

[puzzlezaddict]

@paulbarbee  I thought from what EA help told you, the pack had been deactivated, but if you can download it, that isn't the case.  (I think?  With Origin, anything's possible.  Also, deactivated packs do show up as owned; they're just blocked from the game itself.)  When a pack is installed but doesn't show up in the launcher, the usual thing to do is to restart the computer a couple of times.  Surprisingly, this often works.  After that, clearing Origin's cache is the next step.  You could also uninstall and reinstall Origin itself; this would not affect your installed games,

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Don-t-know-how-to-clear-origin-cache-View-this/td-p/54997...

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/origin/origin/manually-uninstalling-origin/

If that doesn't work, contact EA again and ask someone to look at your account.  Only they can see whether the pack has truly been deactivated or not.  Additionally, if you were  to buy a new copy of Pets, they'd have to remove the old one from your account.

[paulbarbee]

Thank you!

I tried clearing Origin's cache and that didn't get all my expansion packs back. So I uninstalled Sims 3 and all expansion packs, uninstalled Origin, rebooted the computer, deleted c:\ProgramData\Origin, rebooted the computer, reinstalled Origin, and now I'm letting it re-download The Sims 3 and all of its expansion packs that I own. Pets is in that list. I'll post back whether it works or not tomorrow.

[roberta591]

@paulbarbee  What you are paying for is a license to use the software (the activation code). There are third party that are obtaining and reselling codes and are not authorized to sell just the codes (license). If you buy a code from an unauthorized  third party vendor you will have to return to that vendor and get a refund or a valid working code. Ebay is like a flea market - you have to be careful what you buy. Many Ebay vendors are reputable but I have been burned a few times. Working with these vendor's support people can be a challenge. I have had some success with paypal or the bank card to recover from a bad purchase.

[paulbarbee]

Okay, so I completely uninstalled The Sims 3, all expansion packs, and anything related to Origin and reinstalled it all. It Downloads Pets, but still doesn't show up in game. I had earlier installed Origin on another computer and so I tried it. The same expansion packs are showing up in Origin, but not in the game. I'm guessing I bought bad codes, because I did go through . I won't be buying anything from them anymore.

I still find it really weird that the expansion packs didn't just disappear from Origin. Seriously, EA, that's a waste of your bandwidth and mine, downloading content I can't use.

[roberta591]

@paulbarbee  Copyright infringement is hard enough to enforce and when it goes international it gets very complicated. Licensing of software is not new and you have to be aware of the TOS (terms of service). This gives you the user certain rights and well of the issuer of the license. As copyright laws are hard to prosecute it seems that revoking the license is a more viable solution. I have seen a lot of anti piracy techniques and licensing seems to be the most effective for games like the Sims. This subject is an extremely complicated and would take a long time to discuss at length. If you purchased this license from an unauthorized vendor  you have the risk the license issuer can revoke an unauthorized license. To prevent duplicate licenses being issued EA has very tight control over what vendors can sell just codes. If the expansion pack is sold in a sealed pack with code and disc normally this would still be the vendor responsibility for the sale but the code should be valid if no one spoofed the code. Again there are many aspects and each case needs to be considered individually.