The Sims is a series defined by the vast amounts of creative freedom afforded to players who can, if they so choose, create a near-flawless digital facsimile of themselves they can then immediately drown in a pool surrounded by tiger skin rugs. One thing you can’t do though is mistreat a digital guinea pig, not without risking unleashing a game-ending plague that is.
To explain, we’re specifically talking about a minor update to the original release of the first Sims game which, as you’ve probably guessed from the title and intro, allowed players to give their simulated self a squeaky digital pal. A pet guinea pig that players could hold and squeeze and play with to their hearts content. Or should we say, had to.
You see, unbeknownst to players though this fuzzy lil’ guy was loaded with a virus that would lay dormant within the guinea pig as long as players continued to treat it well. And by treat it well we mean constantly interact with the cage it was kept it to stop it from unleashing a digital pandemic that would kill everyone within a 40 mile radius.
If players didn’t properly care for their new synthetic rodent, a hidden trigger would proc that would activate The Payload and the next time any Sim tried to pet the pig, it would bite the them and infect them with a highly virulent and contagious computerised virus. Said virus would outright kill any Sim who didn’t get treatment immediately.
The problem is, they never actually told anybody about this in the update that allowed players to add the guinea pig to their game and the symptoms of the virus were really fucking unclear. As was the way to cure it, resting for several in-game days. Which itself caused issues because some characters literally couldn’t do this, for example child Sims, who would be shipped off to military school if they missed too many days of school in a row. Because there was no option in-game to call in sick with the fucking plague!
The end result was thousands upon thousands of players permanently losing their in-game avatars because the virus was so virulent that even in-game exploits to revive characters wouldn’t work. Like calling in an assist from the Grim Reaper, which ordinarily can save any character from the precipice of death, just, didn’t work and any Sim that died of guinea swine flu, upon being revived, would immediately drop dead again. Because fuck you, look after your guinea pig, asshole.
Not only this but remember, the guinea plague could spread, so players could lose not just their household, but potentially every character roaming around that save file if the NPCS didn’t stay the fuck away.
As you might expect, players were baffled and spammed forums asking for answers, which reportedly greatly amused the developers who did eventually release an update that was essentially a digital vaccine for every Sim. Effectively changing the virus from a virtual death sentence into a mild annoyance. There was also a painting added to the game sporting a poem that alluded to the fact guinea pigs would fuck you up if you ignored them.
To this day it’s not really clear why they decided to do this besides it just being really funny, with a producer on the series noting that the development team seemingly added a “world-altering plague” on a whim. They also noted how still, decades later, players partially shit themselves every time they release a similar bit of content for newer Sims games.
According to that aforementioned producer, each time they do this they’re asked by players if this means the plague is back to which they always send the same response.
Maybe.
