Did Electronic Arts kill The Sims? Understand the future of the franchise

The Sims is, without a doubt, one of the most important franchises in the gaming world and in 2025, it will complete no less than 25 years of life. During this period, we have had four main games, dozens of expansions and countless spin-offs on PC, consoles and even mobile devices. Unfortunately, Electronic Arts no longer seems interested in continuing the business model that has worked for all this time.

Instead of delivering a true sequel to The Sims 4the company is focused on providing even more expansions for the current game and delivering a new free-to-play online multiplayer game, possibly with even more microtransactions. Obviously, many consider this to be the end of the beloved franchise as we know it, which is explained further below!

25 years of llamas

With the arrival of 25 years of The SimsElectronic Arts recently announced how the company will celebrate this special date. They confirmed that a film inspired by the franchise is in production, ensuring that support for The Sims 4 (which means more paid DLCs), announced that content creators and mods will be able to make official packs, commented that there will be new mobile experiences and even revealed that Project Rene will be a type of online multiplayer spin-off.

Everything indicates that we will be stuck with The Sims 4 for a long timeSource: Electronic Arts/Reproduction

As you can see, there is no sign of what was expected The Sims 5, a game that may not be designed at all. According to an interview with Kate Gorman (general manager of the franchise), her team is no longer focused on “replacing previous projects” with new games, which completely kills the idea of The Sims 5 for now. Instead, Kate said that they just want to add to the existing universe and that The Sims 4 will continue to be the foundational experience for players.

Fans’ disappointment was immediate, especially because The Sims 4 It’s been a huge source of constant frustration for 10 years. The hope is that The Sims 5 would arrive soon and solve many of the problems of its predecessor, in addition to offering certain elements from very old expansions directly in the base game, such as seasons, climate changes, active professions, domestic animals, etc.

Even though they are older, the first three games in the franchise had more details and innovations than The Sims 4Source: Electronic Arts/Reproduction

Of course, EA could still change its mind and release The Sims 5 no future, but even if they started development today, it would still be a few years before we see the final product. This means we can forget about any real evolution of the series, since the base The Sims 4 it won’t change and we will continue to receive expensive packages that deliver a limited and superficial experience. If you don’t know much about this game, I’ll explain it better in the next topic.

The eternal The Sims 4

In its first 14 years of life, The Sims franchise had a very constant evolution in terms of its visuals, gameplay elements and new features delivered in the main games and their respective expansions. It was with the arrival of The Sims 4, in 2014, that this scenario began to gradually change. At launch, the base game was a disaster and lacked many of the basic features of its predecessors, in addition to no longer featuring the open world or customization of The Sims 3.

Believe it or not, it took EA 9 years to put horses in The Sims 4Source: Electronic Arts/Reproduction

This setback became more evident with each expansion released, as the packages had fewer functions than those of previous games and were very superficial in terms of gameplay. A good example of this is that there are three different packs focused on animals that cannot deliver the same content as a single expansion of The Sims 3. We can also mention that there are two packs specifically about apartment life that, together, do not have everything that a measly expansion of The Sims 2 had to offer.

The same can be said about Sims’ interaction with objects or other Sims and even day-to-day activities and chores. If you’re curious, there are countless comparisons of these interactions and animations. The Sims 4 com The Sims 3 e The Sims 2 on YouTube, showing EA’s negligence with the most current game. To give you an idea, it took years for the game to even have normal babies or those with age progression, as before they were a mere interactive object that turned into 10-year-old children after a few days. Until then, just The Sims 1 had this archaic system, but it was launched in 2000, 14 years before The Sims 4.

Apparently, a large part of this problem occurs because The Sims 4 was originally intended as an online multiplayer game, an idea that was scrapped after the failure of SimCity (2013). Much of the game’s base was ready and was reused, generating a more limited game that still has many features of its original concept that don’t necessarily work well in a traditional, single-player experience.

That hasn’t stopped EA from releasing as many expansions, game packs, stuff packs, and kits as possible. The Sims 4. As of September 2024, there are no less than 79 DLCs available, while the previous three games combined have 45 DLCs in total. Taking into account the company’s recent announcement, this number will only grow in the coming years, but quality should continue at the level we already know.

Alternatives

I met The Sims in 2001 and since then this has been one of my favorite franchises. I’m guilty of giving money to EA on several of the game packages The Sims 4 because I always believed that the game could improve in the long term, which it actually did. The base game is currently free, has more content than any base version of its predecessors and has the best version of character creator and construction mode. Additionally, there are lots of quality of life changes, good mechanics, and interesting ideas in many of the packs offered.

But all of this doesn’t change the fact that these packages are actually more superficial and that the entire base of the game is more limited. Furthermore, nothing justifies the existence of so much paid DLC, even if the game has been available for 10 years. This is definitely not the game EA should support as the last great The Sims, even though it is extremely profitable and has a huge player base.

InZOI has a much more realistic focus than The Sims and ParalivesSource: Krafton/Reproduction

Starting from scratch with another game could be annoying for those who have already purchased many game packs. The Sims 4but it would be the best solution to escape its limitations. Knowing that there is little chance of this happening now, what I can do is comment on some alternatives to The Sims that you can try in the future: Paralives e InZOI.

Paralives is an independent game that has been in development for at least 5 years and promises to offer an open-world simulation game in which you can manage your characters and build your dream homes at will. The game began as a solo project by developer Alex Massé, but since then, he has managed to hire 10 people with money raised by 7,500 fans on Patreon monthly. Paralives will be released in early access on PC in 2025 and promises that it will never charge for updates and future expansions.

Already the InZOI is another life simulation game, but developed by Krafton, the same company responsible for PUBG: Battlegrounds. This game seems more focused on realism, both in terms of visuals and gameplay, which should please those who have always missed that in The Sims. According to Krafton, the game should be released at the end of 2024, but of course it can still be delayed if the company deems it necessary. Other than that, there isn’t much information on how the game will be monetized regarding its possible DLCs.

Personally, I think Paralives It’s a more interesting project with more personality than InZOIbut of course we will only know more about the real quality of each one after their due releases. Who knows if this type of competition is exactly the push EA needs to get out of its comfort zone with The Sims and start delivering better content and less abusive practices, right?!

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