It’s hard to believe now but The Sims 4 has been out since 2014. The title launched back when EA wasn’t exactly in the greatest shape in the eyes of the video game community. Regardless, the company and the title carried on, all the way to 2023. 13 expansion packs and 12 downloadable game packs later, The Sims has become one of the most supported titles in the market. EA reaffirmed this by announcing via press release that The Sims 4 has now been played by more than 70 million people worldwide, a record number for the franchise.
This mammoth achievement is largely attributed to the game going free-to-play back in October 2022. Since then, the game’s player base saw a huge spike with a 53% average each week. EA also mentioned that there was a 75% jump with brand new users in other regions, specifically parts of Europe and South America. EA also added that there has been more than 70 million gallery downloads in-game within the past week alone. Executive Producer Phillip Ring praised the insane growth of the title, as well as community that has continued to play the title over these past several years. “We know The Sims 4 continues to be a creative outlet for people, and our team strives to deliver new and innovative gameplay content that empowers our players to embrace the chaos that comes with self-discovery,” he said.
Just in the beginning of this year alone, EA made The Sims 4 front and center with an entire livestream dedicated to new content, and new expansion. Some of that new content came in the form of infants, which went live this past month on March 15. However, not all new content has been readily accepted by the fan base. Earlier this week, EA and developer Maxis made some last-minute changes to the roadmap with additional content for a price rather than just adding them to the base game.
This in an of itself has caused some controversy with some fans calling for EA to fix the title with some more quality-of-life updates rather than just add more premium content. Either way, more content and an expansion is on its way to The Sims 4, and let’s not forget about The Sims Project Rene, which is still well in development.