Implosion in Simworld!
Boy, oh boy. May I present to you one of the most epic wanks ever to befall the Sims 2 community - the revolution involving Insimenator.net. Thanks to simscribe (Devilfish) and simmiesworld for the writeups. I've just made a few minor tweaks.

Be warned that this is a wank of epic proportions. It's hard to tell what happened when and who said what. I've given most attention to the facts that can be supported by screenshots. Hundreds of people were involved in this wank, everyone has their own opinions on it and events may or may not have occurred in the order described.

Insimenator.net is a very large, completely free Sims 2 fan site featuring contests, stories, and, most importantly, downloadable custom content like clothing, hair, and houses. For many years, it was owned by a couple named Eric and Kathy. Eric and Kathy had many loyal friends in the community. In the months leading up to the buyout, Eric and Kathy were increasingly absent from the site, only appearing every few months to beg for donations in a panic, stating that they didn't have enough money to cover the servers and if they didn't get [random amount here, normally around $600] in a week, the site would have to close. They would also keep the updated Insimenator hack hostage until they received said donations. Because they had been in the community for so long and had many friends, they would always manage to get enough to keep their servers running.

Then, much to everyone's shock, Kathy and Eric sold the site and left without so much a “goodbye and thanks for all the fish.” They had sold the site to the highest bidder, a "businessman" named Walt Thiessen.

Details of the financial transactions are not clear. Here is the info they posted on the auction site where Insim was eventually sold:

(Insim information according to http://www.dealasite.com)

This means one of three things:

1. Kathy and Eric inflated the numbers, presumably in an effort to sell the site for much more than it was worth;

2. Kathy and Eric did not inflate the numbers and were making a profit of Insim donation drives and advertising on the site, while claiming to be in constant financial problems and begging the community for donations to keep the site running; or

3. they inflated the numbers but were making a small profit regardless.

While we're not sure which of those three is correct, most people seem to conclude that Kathy and Eric were using the donation money for personal profit. Walt is aiming to do likewise.

Anyway, they didn't make clear to Mr. Businessman Walt what was ACTUALLY up for sale. All content on the site was made and submitted by the users, who feel that either they own the creations or EA does (probably the latter), but that Insimenator definitely does not. Without the custom content, Insim is just a forum worth roughly $10. Nothing is certain, but there's strong suspicions that Walt paid well over $2,500 for it (since he later rejected a $2,500 offer for the site - more on that in a bit), or possibly even something close to $10,000.

Enter Walt, the new owner. Notice how he proudly announces that he's not even a gamer!

Walt joined Insim at least two weeks prior to buying it, but he did not bother to contact any of the staff and moderators on the site. Instead, he chose to announce his presence in a grand public speech where he lays out his plans for the site: There are problems and he's going to throw money at the problems until they go away. Money he plans to get from the users of the site, whom he evidently also expects to pay him for his services.

In the Sims community, free creators and many downloaders generally believe that custom content creation should be a labor of love and not money. Completely voluntary donation drives for server costs are accepted (like the Wicked Nouk Family, which releases special creations for everyone, not just donators, as a celebration/thank you prize every month that they can pay their server costs), but charging money for downloads, having subscriber-only areas of a site, or otherwise trying to profit from one's creations is generally not taken well. (Charging money for custom content is technically illegal anyway, but EA doesn't do anything about it.) Someone trying to profit from other people's creations, like Walt, is even worse. Even though he doesn't technically want to make Insim a paysite, he does want the Insim members to line his pockets with subscription payments - not for the downloads themselves, but for ad-free browsing. According to an email he sent to the Insim staff, he is considering making Insim Adult a paysite, since it is not currently profitable. (Walt later retracts this once he sees everyone going apeshit over the possibility.)

The entire community goes “Waitwut?” Shit hits the fan.

Walt is offered advice by both the mods and users. He largely ignores it, instead opting to put up polls everywhere while everyone panics, asks questions and generally pisses their pants. (You can't see the poll results in the screenshot, but over 75% voted for "No subscription fees plz".)

Synapticsim, one of the creators, posts a nice summary of events and reveals some financial data.

Delphy, the owner of ModtheSims2, an even more successful Sims 2 site, chimes in multiple times and offers to buy the site from Walt for $2,500, seeing the epic shitstorm on the horizon. But again, Walt doesn't take all this very seriously.

Walt is asked numerous questions by moderators and users, but refuses to discuss anything with the community members. Instead of replying to concerns in the original thread, he makes a new one giving us all a brief history of the Great Depression, and also telling us that his elderly mother has also invested in the site, so it must be great, amirite?

Let it be noted that no personal attacks on Eric and Kathy had been made at this point. People were still kermitflailing, wanting to know what happened and if the financial data provided was correct. Walt's little Great Depression speech didn't satisfy the increasingly pissed-off forum members and his insistence that “The future of this site is bright!” didn't exactly clarify much.

And this point, Walt gets a little irritated. Unfortunately, we don't have any screenshots of this, but when asked about the chart showing that Kathy and Eric were supposedly making a PROFIT from Insim, Walt refused to talk finance with the peasants. The exchange was thus:

carlymichelle: walt can you understand why so many of us are concerned and upset though we had NO warning whatsoever and IMO that isnt right what we need now is honesty
Walt: Sure, I understand. What I don't understand is why some people think I can fix the way they left. I can't. No one can. Get over it.

People are not happy about that.

It's now Thanksgiving weekend in the United States, and since Mr. Businessman apparently keeps OFFICE HOURS, he logs off and goes to enjoy his turkey, and leaves the site to implode, not to come back for a couple of days while the community was confused and angry. If there was any more chance to save the ship, it was well and truly gone then.

Meanwhile, back at the Paysites Must Be Destroyed forum, something called Warplan Beige is conceived. J. M. Pescado, Pirate King and head of the Sims 2 website More Awesome Than You, sets to work making a mirror of Insim and Insim Adult (the 18+ section of Insim). In the Sims community, Pescado is acknowledged to be ruthless and harsh, but he's got a lot of technical savvy, and he takes the fight to paysites, for which a lot of people respect him. He was also featured in this wank.

Pescado's plan is to make a mirror of the Insim and Insim Adult sites, and let all the users who don't want to be under Walt's management move to his site instead. Since nobody likes Walt, and Pescado is an ass but he's our ass, most of the active creators will probably go ahead and migrate. He'll have an admin position to work out technical kinks, but appoint another admin to do the day-to-day running of the site. He acknowledges that there will be voluntary donation drives, but they will be infrequent and announced in advance In the meantime, he asks everyone else to stay off the site so he can get the data efficiently.

By this time, the community has gone from hurt and confused to LIVID. Sim Oasis is founded as a haven for former Insimenator members and staff. Many creators begin deleting their creations from Insimenator, wanting to leave Walt nothing but an empty husk of a site when he returns from his holiday. The servers melt at various points during this process. The page is up and down more times than a tart's knickers. Much wank ensues over everything, up to and including who's allowed to disrupt Warplan Beige by going on Insim while Pescado's servers work their magic.

In the end, Walt decides he wants out. He's had enough of it, really, and makes the community a generous offer, wherein he goes on about creating a board of directors, and actually proposes that the community buy him out so that he breaks even. People piss themselves laughing, since they know that Insim is definitely not worth that much money, and they have no desire to give this dude any of their cash. At this point, Walt has already declined an offer from Delphy to buy the site for approximately $2,500.

Pescado finishes his cloning of both sites and a complete backup of Insim and Insim Adult is now in his possession. By this point, the people following this epic wank (hundreds of them, all angry, some of them with admin access) are aching to tear the site down rather than participate in the new Insim.

Pescado gives the order to pillage and burn (as pirates do), and makes a new Insim front page, styling himself as a revolutionary (which many of the Simmers accept). Then he makes Walt a counteroffer he can't refuse, basically telling Walt to sell the site for $500 and GTFO, never to be seen again.

In the melee, one of the moderators changed Kathy and Eric's new sigs and avatars.

All this is accompanied by copious use of lolcats and fail macros.

And there was much rejoicing.

At this point, Walt is back in the game and it's his turn to go WTF. His server melts again. But not before several moderators quit, most in truly lol-worthy fashion.

With a press of the FAIL button, Walt messes up the forum, makes private forums public, reveals IPs and email addresses, demotes all the administrators and supermods to ordinary moderators (so the only people who can understand the admin panel can't help him even if they are inclined to, which they aren't), and generally kermitflails through the forums.

At the moment of this writing, a test mirror for Insim Adult is up and running. Pescado plans to give full control of the mirrored Insim to the old moderators. Delphy has offered his help with the forum software and Walt is still kermitflailing - or so we think. There has been new speculation that Walt has already made a copy of the site and is just biding his time until his new server goes online, thereby luring a whole bunch of uninformed people to his new site, to make donations. None of this speculation is supported by evidence, however, and Simmers are occasionally prone to tinfoil hat theories about their least favorite site owners.

For the complete and unabridged lulz, go to any of these sites:
Paysites Must Be Destroyed (the thread is over 200 pages and counting)
Garden of Shadows (50 pages and counting)
Sim-Oasis (30 pages and counting)
The Garden of Shadows also has some miniwank (that's the start; the comments are spread out) when BlooM, a well-known Insim creator, gives Walt the benefit of the doubt and says he doesn't want his creations up at a Pescado-owned Insim. People argue over whether Pescado or anyone else should respect his wishes.

The situation is still subject to change, since Pescado's Insim mirror is not up yet, and Insimenator.net is still down (Walt seems to be pretty incompetent). Somewhere, people make T-shirts and posters for their sims with red "no" signs over Walt's face and Kathy's boobtacular avatar, for which she was well-known. They're over on the original Insim, which is currently down.

Oh, and finally, a helpful mousie has uploaded a bunch of Insim threads here. There's Paden's (a former admin's) hilarious flounce, some Q&A, and SynapticSim's explanation of the whole thing on his profile page.

Have fun!