Fired up the game for the first time and was dismayed to see all the Store advertising cluttering up the Buy Mode. Is there a way to remove or disable this "feature"?

Thanks for any response.

Are you playing while getting connected to the internet? Well, since I never connect my game anymore, I've never encountered it again (connecting it to the net makes the game lag to me :/ ) But I heard if you change enableingamestore in Options.ini into enableingamestore = 0, you can disable it... I guess. But I'm not really sure because I've never got the Store Mode on in the first place, and I forgot where I heard that from.

In the Options menu under General Setting, toggle Enable Shop Mode to off.

Oh, there was an option? Must've been a long time since I opened the game options!

Just click disable at the game option.

But the "sparkling sign" in shop mode is useful for me for "CAS or OBJECTS CC loading".
While the shop mode is still sparkling it means the CC loading is not finished. So I take time making coffee or telephone.
If the shop mode stops sparkling it's a sign that loading CC is finished. That's when I start choosing CAS or objects decor.

If you haven't already, you may want to look into disabling the thumbnail pics that get downloaded everytime you play as well, since it can bog down the game. http://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2011/1...f-pictures.html

Thank you so much! This was exactly the info I needed. I have now disabled the in-game store option *and* deleted all the pictures and set the folder to "read only."

Y'all are the best!!

Thanks! I wasn't really looking for this, but it's awesome info all the same.

Back to add -- discovered that disabling the Shop Mode option in game and removing the thumbnails and Featured Items folder as instructed in the link ButchSims provided only disabled the Internet connection and blanked the feature images from the catalog (the boxes still appeared, but blank). However, editing the Options.ini file as suggested by nikel23 did the trick.

Make a copy of your original file as a precaution, then open the Options.ini file with Notepad or Wordpad. Scroll through to find these entries:

enableingamestore = 1 -- change this to 0
ingamestoreopened = 1 -- change this to 0

I also changed requireloginbeforeload = 1 to 0, which turned off the box

Hope this helps anyone else who doesn't want Store adverts in their game catalogue.