You have to let the damn thing start up when you play the game. Word is that you only have to be on-line the first time, but you do have to let the stupid downloader start up every single time.
Once the game starts, you can shut it down.
I was told that there's an updated version of it up on bittorrent as of Wednesday that no longer crashes.
I downloaded the HP fine, with no need for this nonsense. Needless to say, I won't be legally downloading anything else from Maxis. The game itself is enough of a resource hog without them requiring you to run other programs just to play. I have a good enough computer to handle it, but that's beside the point. I should be the one to decide what programs I run, not Maxis. It may or may not be Spyware, but it's definitely Malware!
The EP-that-doesn't-exist
should means that I can uninstall the damn downloader after I install it, right?
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