Lies, Damn Lies, and 9 long years of pointless, blurry, beige DLC
The Sims 4 could possibly be the worst, most predatory child-centric video game of the entire EA family - and it is rapidly approaching 10 years old!
EA are preying on children, and I can prove it mathematically (not really)
[Photo credit: Consumerist]
A bit hyperbolic on my part yes but it got your attention, eh? Well, get ready, because the hyperbole isn’t that far from the truth. In this article, I want to explain what EA did to the beloved Sims franchise - yes, that one, - by positioning it as the most predatory and profit-focused vehicle in the EA garage, and it might be your kids preyed on and your money spent in the process.
Foreword and Conflicts of Interest: I am NOT a ‘gamer’. I’m not a ‘Simmer’, I am a computer owner who has a copy of The Sims 4. I’m not some “VIDEO GAMES JOURNALISM EXPERT”, or formerly with IGN or GameSpy. I’m also not a Youtuber. I have no laurels upon which to rest, I hold no stock or financial interest in any video game company, publisher, developer or publications; and I really don’t care for the GAMER CULTURE culture that’s been cultivated in the world of Web 2.0 - I think it’s grotesque, frankly, but I do enjoy architecture and setting people on fire sometimes, so The Sims is always there for me.
This isn’t an advertisement, or letter of support for any title or titles. Just my own take on why EA is crashing a perfectly good cruise ship into rough rocks. I’m not sponsored by or affiliated with any entity mentioned below and am, in the interest of my own free time, merely commenting on public figures and publicly available information. Your mileage may vary. Offer not valid in Montana, this week only.
As always, comments below, or find us on Substack Notes. We’re also on Telegram (t.me/counterspin_substack).
On with the clown show!
The Sims 4 is rapidly approaching End of Life (or it's 10th anniversary, whichever makes EA more money)
The Sims 4. Possibly the most controversial in the franchise’s main entry list, released to critical confusion in 2014. Do you remember 2014? Obama was President and slowly going gray, Joe Biden was giving speeches to the “Cabinet of Ministers Club” in Ukraine. Things were, on the surface, going mostly okay. It’s been quite a decade since, eh? Time makes fools of us all.
Oh, right. The Sims 4. Fuck. Sorry. Releasing in 2014 to confusion. Why confusion? Because it was threadbare. It had released incomplete. The Sims 4, even for it’s time, was a paltry thing. It seems to have been designed with a specific Dell Inspiron laptop from 2007 in mind. It’s almost as if the EA team is forced to run any and all updates to the game through this laptop, just to make sure it can run on the lowest of low specifications. On top of this, the concept was to release a basic bare-bones game, and then shovel DLC at you until the end of time.
This is beginning to age exceptionally poorly, and oh boy is it aging fast as well- it’s even showing in their latest DLC releases. Let me show you.
First, let’s welcome “Home Chef Hustle Stuff Pack”, otherwise known as ‘kitchen appliances’, into the game. You get a pizza oven, a stand mixer, and what appears to be a waffle iron, plus some other décor, for a TBD price (likely $9.99, per other kits, out Sept. 28).
[The Sims 4 official YouTube, “Home Chef Hustle Stuff Pack”, Price TBD, coming in a few weeks time / Credit: EA/Maxis/YouTube, via screenshot]
Dough does not look like that. Dough doesn’t have flat sides, was this rendered on a PS2 that was overheating? What happened to the flour? It looks like yarn. And why is every texture so compressed? Congratulations I guess on finally adding a stand-mixer to a game that is ostensibly about the Americana housewife dream life of home décor and cooking. It only took you 9 years. Hat tip to you.
[The Sims 4 official YouTube, “Home Chef Hustle Stuff Pack”, Price TBD, coming in a few weeks time / Credit: EA/Maxis/YouTube, via screenshot]
And what the hell is that? Holy macaroni. I can sort of make out the pizza, but what is that on the left? Can anyone make any sense of that? If the goal is to have appealing food, maybe don’t render the food at 48x48px. My goodness.
Which takes me to the big market research I did to prove that EA is fucking stupid, and leaving money on the table while being cheap to their players. Walk with me. Talk with me. And please, if you’re offended by the strong language, get ready, because it only gets stronger.
Steam Survey says…
Judging by the most recent (August 2023 shown below, current breakdown here) Steam Hardware & Software survey, most people are using a computer with at least 6 CPU cores, maybe 8 or more, though some (about a third of all Steam users) use a computer with 4 or fewer.
[Each ‘logical’ cpu core is represented as a “physical” CPU in this chart]
The market majority is clearly above 4 CPU cores. This implies the broadest user base has computational capabilities basically unheard of in 2014, well beyond the dreams of a 2007 era Dell Inspiron. Why EA/Maxis continue to cater to a demographic that continues to shrink due to technological obsolescence is beyond me, while leaving untold money and performance on the table that could be spent by potential customers.
Back to the survey. In 2014, perhaps, powerful graphics cards and beefy internal GPUs with access to high speed memory were less common. Today, most people seem to have NASA levels of computational power in their video gaming computers, and they aren’t exactly spending a lot to get it.
Anything on the above list could run The Sims 4 within Windows 10 at the highest graphical fidelity, with all little fancy sliders up to maximum, and use roughly a third of it’s potential - or less, if you have one of those big fancy 4090s. It’s not a very demanding game. By catering to a denominator lower than the lowest common denominator, EA is perpetually setting itself up for failure in a market - that is quite a big market.
I know people think The Sims and such games are mostly a children’s digital dollhouse, though as it happens according to Benzinga, Simulation-type games as a market command about $18bn a year (2022), trending to $30bn by 2028. This is not a small market, with growth near doubling in the next 5 years. Impressive, by anyone’s metrics.
Neighborhood backstory
EA revenue, 2022: $6.9bn
Andrew Wilson, CEO - Net worth: at least $164m, 2022 salary $19.9m
Total player base of The Sims 4 (all platforms): At least 70m globally (per 2022 Earnings Call)
Title classification: ESRB T, PEGI 12, Australian Classification Moderate (Sex/Violence)
Units sold: Free-to-Play, sold at least 50m units before this change
Why do I mention this? And why did I bring Mr. Wilson’s net worth into this? Simply put, he’s one of the highest paid executives in the industry and his business, Electronic Arts, commands a revenue of nearly SEVEN BILLION dollars per year. Now I’m sorry to Mr. Wilson’s sensitivities as a so-called working man, but I am keenly aware that his ill-gained wealth is coming from somewhere. Follow along with me for a moment.
Last year, I wrote a ‘stack titled “Lies, Damn lies, and 8 Years of EA bait-and-switch tactics on The Sims players”. In the time since, I’ve dedicated myself to the task of due diligence prior to writing more on such a beloved and well-frequented franchise. I didn’t want the hate. I didn’t want accused of just being FUD. I didn’t want trolls. I just didn’t bother. I did however lurk in the shadows, watching, reading, cross-shopping.
Now? I think I ought to. Not because I’m stronger, or because things have changed sufficiently for the better, but because I feel that having experienced this first hand and closely over the past year, I can speak to it from more than a mere outsider looking in. Not much has changed, but there have been some updates.
So I did. I wasted a whole year of my life experiencing The Sims 4. I won’t go into detail of how or why and no, I won’t be showing any receipts, but suffice to say the game is still just as fundamentally broken, and still extremely predatory. Basic experiences remain locked behind the paywall, like weather, high school, cats/dogs/horses, movies at home, hot tubs, vacations, nightclubs, sleep-overs and more - the base game does get consistent bi-weekly updates like bugfixes or texture/color changes to default items, while matching/complimenting items are hidden behind Expansion Packs.
Since the previous writing on this title, EA/Maxis have introduced a host of new DLC into the game, bringing the total to beyond 70 different sub-titles (called Expansion Packs, Game Packs, Stuff Packs, and Kits).
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK ME.
So what was that new content released in the past year? Let’s take a look. In no specific order:
EP: Growing Together ($39.99, family gameplay)
EP: Horse Ranch ($39.99, Horse Ranching and mini-goats/sheep)
Grenehouse Haven Kit ($4.99, outdoor gardening accessories)
Book Nook Kit ($4.99, Office furniture, book/reading-centric decor)
Poolside Splash Kit ($4.99, Sim clothing for poolside/swimwear)
Modern Luxe Kit ($4.99, "a Chav's dream bedroom set" - SatchOnSims)
Basement Treasures Kit ($4.99, Decor items, some reworked from previous entries in the series)
First Fits Kit ($4.99, "Boring beige pixel clothing for boring beige pixel children" - TheSimYin)
Simtimates Collection ($4.99, Sim Underwear - not a joke)
Grunge Revival Kit ($4.99, Sim scene kid/trendy/alt/rocker fashion clothing)
Bathroom Clutter ($4.99, shit you'd find in your bathroom cabinets and on the sink)
Everyday Clutter ($4.99, shit you'd find on your coffee table and under your desk)
Pastel Pop ($4.99, "Avant Basic" style home furniture)
Desert Luxe Kit ($4.99, or FREE for people who had purchased the game prior to Free-to-Play announcement; modern Adobe/clay furniture and outdoor accessories)
From just those items I’ve mentioned, that’s $140 of additional content for a game that launched 9 years ago - just from late 2022 to now. Now, I know somewhere out there, someone is rage typing a comment about sales and saving money with bundles, you don’t need it the base game is free, yadda yadda. It doesn’t matter. It’s overpriced crap that’s being doled out drib by drab and oh god is it drab. Some of it is so fucking boring that it belongs in a museum dedicated to the idea of boredom.
I won’t get into it here, but I would like at this time to mention the mod community, which is more or less single-handedly saving this game from irrelevance and keeping it alive long past any meaningful sell-by date. As is the case with other beloved franchises or their creators, like Bethesda or Rockstar, Maxis has always had a devout and very symbiotic mod community. From the days of yore with Sim City 2000, to now, modders are taking the ideas Maxis created and running with them.
I was thinking of adding a section here to compare EA/Maxis work, and how awful it is compared to the mod community. I might make that into its own article someday later. For now, I’ll explain using a different method.
When you buy these “Expansion Packs” or “Game Packs”, you usually get a new world space added into the game, some parody of a real place - for eg, Portland Oregon is parodied in the game as “Evergreen Harbor”, sans any ultra-liberal street riots or people living in cars. These worlds contain default lots, or places to live. Some of them are really, really bad, bereft of items and feeling empty. And that’s not from a gameplay mechanic, it’s just poor workmanship. It feels hastily constructed. It feels like they didn’t give a damn. These lots are meant to show off the new items and textures. They cannot be barren.
So, EA took that as a hint and started partnering with/using modders/in-game ‘builders’ to build these so-called ‘default lots’, while also taking advice about core functionality and code, and allowing them to pick items for upcoming DLC packs. This drastically improved the outcome and has been a welcome change, per overall community feedback. This alone did not fix all of the problems of course, and in fact speaks to a different one: Shifting the work to the community.
Forged in Curses
In 2022, EA/Maxis announced a partnership with online mod repository CurseForge, in order to allow The Sims 4 players the ability to publish/download in-game creations and mod creations in one place. This was an unexpected development from a company that had taken the traditional approach of “modders are to be left alone legally, but ignored outright publicly”, and already offers an in-game gallery for in-game creations. Giving modders a space to advertise their work is always a welcome thing in any community, and to have official blessing is unexpected but overall a good move.
However, things are not as rosy as they seem, with regard to intellectual property and ad revenue. CurseForge offers an ad revenue sharing ‘rewards program’ based on opaque metrics determined by CF, though seemingly related to page views, downloads, and click-through metrics. These create “points”, which are given to participating users in order to exchange for Amazon Gift Cards or PayPal payments, with 100 points equaling $5USD Paypal.
That’s quite impressive, for a game that is, in effect free to play, and requires only a few minutes to get going in, given that it is little more than Python calls and AutoDesk models.
So why mention it? In a world of Roblox, I figured this was worth applauding. It’s refreshing to see it be so relatively up front. It benefits both the player and the company. The game gets a continued lifespan thanks to fresh content added by the community, while EA get to occasionally churn out a pack or two here or there, and make untold profits by selling the pre-requisite packs needed to make the mods work. Win/win.
Sort of. Modders aren’t allowed to sell these works outright, and have tight restrictions both on paywalls and the content of the mod stipulated in the game EULA. This whole experience can be quite hit or miss, and really only works if you have an audience in parallel on, say, YouTube. In that case, it can be extremely beneficial. On the other hand..
Project Rene
[Lyndsay Pearson, VP Franchise Creative @ EA / Photo Credit: EA/Screenshot]
So what comes next? It’s clear the wheels are falling off the car and more duct tape isn’t fixing it. As I eluded to in the previous article, the next “main” entry in the franchise is still to come. Last year, the speculation was Project Rene was to be the titular 5th entry, however this appears to be an entirely new project to itself - a massive multi-online based around the concept of living in a shared community, something akin to Habbo Hotel without the chatrooms and with better graphics.
Below I’m including some screenshots they’ve shared of this ‘Project Rene’, which is expected to debut in small-scale testing next year and have some official reveal in 2025. These are early build photos, just conceptual, not final product-tier stuff. It’s interesting to understand how threadbare The Sims 4 is in comparison, and how much this Project Rene shares with previous titles, such as The Sims 3, proving The Sims 4 was a step backwards in the title’s legacy.
[Photo(s) Credit: EA/Maxis, Project Rene demonstration (2022, not final work or product - subject to change)]
So it’s.. The Sims 3 with better graphics, better lighting, and potential multiplayer out of the box. That’s a compelling argument. That sounds like what the player base had been asking for, for some time. Since The Sims 3, I’m told.
[The Sims 3, released in 2009 - Photo Credit: SimMattically on X/Twitter]
During a recent “Sims Summit” event on September 12th, 2023, VP Franchise Creative Lyndsay Pearson stated that the upcoming game would be “free to download”, a term that baffled many. What on earth is “free to download”? Most things are free to download but useless without a license, or way to log in. Many require subscriptions - we were told there would not be a subscription, but it could continue to have DLC ‘experiences’ available, though the game would be a “full, rich experience” from the start, with things like weather (gasp) included in the free basic game.
What that actually looks like remains to be seen. I hope it can be better than what was shown with The Sims 4.
Intellectual property hoarding and corporate cheapness of thought
EA/Maxis is sitting on decades of beloved IP it could be using as inspiration or fodder but refuses to call on it, even though it is clearly out of new ideas. This isn’t me just being critical, that’s the common thought across the community. They claim to plan to support The Sims 4 alongside Project Rene, which implies The Sims 4 living well into 2025, though this could be another situation where the platform is effectively ‘dead’ with no new content, akin to The Sims 3 - still for sale, but hardly relevant, and aging quickly.
Frankly, 10 years or more (11 in 2025) would be far too long for a product lifecycle. Even Detroit Motor City realized this long ago and introduced the world to the mid-cycle refresh, where a car has a mild set of updates in order to keep it competitive, without needing a full overhaul. Perhaps EA had hoped these DLC packs could be those “mid-cycle refreshes”, but in reality the game needed far more than DLC.
If I might: Keeping a "product-as-a-service" going forever is not possible; people crave new ideas, new framings, new plot devices, new lore, new characters, new places, and new frameworks like lighting, rendering, mesh, volumetric fog. They want new shit.
Bethesda, for example, couldn't keep the old Fallout 3 engine alive past 2008 - this showed through Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 with each needing major updates just to compete, and this continues to show in Starfield even after a thorough overhaul and rebranding - which in turn is harming their sales / market capitalization and brand reputation beyond what a nylon bag or cheap plastic liquor shell could ever do. TES6 will be their make or break moment, likely due also in 2025-26.
Why do I mention Bethesda again? The Sims 4 fell into the same trap. Why fix the engine if it isn’t broken? Why change the lighting engine if it’s working fine? Why change the default menu if it just works?
[The ‘Todd Howard Song’, by The Chalkeaters - via YouTube]
Well, to keep up with the times, mostly - The Sims 4 has long outlived its welcome. Waiting even longer does damage to the brand overall, as the community becomes more and more dissatisfied with the outlay and moves on to other companies as I eluded to in the previous article. Life by You (Paradox Interactive) continues to be teased, though it is also in pre-alpha development and unlikely to appear any time soon. In the here and now, Disney Dreamlight Valley (Gameloft), Habbo Hotel (Sulake), Animal Crossing (Nintendo) plus other niche simulators beyond fill the role, losing EA potential revenue.
And that’s still not the worst part. Keep reading.
Untold harm to kids / Stan culture is pervasive in the industry
“I thought -- when I wanted Sims merch, I was like ‘can I have a T-shirt and can you put the posters back up for sale?’ So the idea of there being new cool stuff is kind of intriguing, I'll buy it. … I'll buy anything they sell me, I'm serious. I've been saying this for ages, but there's a lot of like, die hard Sims fans that really want quality merchandise from this game that we all love and there just isn't any. They had a weird like, print to order merch store a few years ago, but it's not been around for a long time, so I'm intrigued by this.”
-EA “Game Changer” and prominent YouTuber LilSimsie, upon learning EA/Maxis will be selling merchandise soon (full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9kSKxbKAF4)
The Sims 4 especially has an extremely toxic community - noted by prominent YouTubers and games media critics alike, and seemingly coming from an obsessive 12-17 year old crowd who has no critical thought and will only consume merchandise and DLCs like whales with schools of fish, because they aren't paying - it's being paid for by Mommy and Daddy. This isn’t to insult them, rather to point to an obvious source of dupe-ry, in which children are notorious for being naïve and easy to part from their money.
EA has already been taken to task in courts and political circles around the world for unethical and flat out predatory behaviors towards children in other titles - FIFA and Star Wars: Battlefront II come to mind immediately, though it has been speculated that EA has used similar tactics in other titles as well. Thus, it should come as no surprise that EA is continuing to Vulture Monopolize under Andrew Wilson, one of the most well-paid CEOs in the industry and who has been accused by some of being an automaton in human skin. EA destroying the reputation of a beloved franchise for a quick buck would also come as no surprise, given their proclivity to doing so (EA Montreal/Bioware) with games creation studios.
Project Rene could be an indication that EA intends to burn the candle at both ends, pulling revenue from The Sims 4 and creating half-baked content for it, while also offering half-baked content for Project Rene. A lose-lose for both platforms. In times past, the generational shift of a game franchise was important. It was much more clearly defined than the blurry mess on display right now. When The Sims (Maxis, C.2000) ended and content updates stopped, a new game was on offer: The Sims 2. This trend continued with the Sims 2 to 3 transition, and 3 to 4. With each generational shift, content stopped being offered for the old title and the focus was given to the new title.
Now? I’m not so sure. I think the problem lies within digital distribution itself. Studios smelled easy money and knew they could keep pumping out things based on old crap much longer, potentially forever. The old adage says so: if studios can still profit from tweaks to old shit they will, and they will do so for as cheaply as possible. Grand Theft Auto (Take Two/Rockstar) is a victim of this same sort of success, where GTA: Online (GTA V, C.2013) continues to shovel unwelcome and poorly received tweaks, cars, and missions plus very little additional content, while remaining one of the best money-making entries in the franchise, through post-sale revenue (what it calls ‘Shark Cards’, or microtransaction in-game currency).
Alongside it, “The Definitive Edition” (GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas collection - Grove Street Games/Rockstar, C.2022) took the place of the original title entries, a vastly inferior product to what it intended to define. Missing music, with poor visual fidelity and being based on a mobile port, this entry is not known to be well loved by the community. It was, in essence, a quick cash grab - not a project of love.
"You can't give stuff away for free in perpetuity; there's no business model in that"
The greed of corporate executives is sucking us back into another Gaming bubble, and it is sure to be a much more painful burst when it happens. It is inevitable, all bubbles burst, and this is yet one more iteration on the fad which has already had a market crash in 1983 - running it into the ground for a quick buck is almost a given at this point, given the windfall success of gaming in the past 15 years. All major studios are guilty of this to some degree (some more than others) and some indies too - this includes things like crunch culture, where a product should be delayed but isn't, merely to meet investor satisfaction and quarterly sales goals.
Starfield is a prime example of crunch - it has some hallmark Bethesda quirks that should and could have been caught with a simple QA round, but I assume that was mostly skipped due to time constraints. Had they adjusted their delivery schedule to meet this, users and investors would have been disappointed. However, they launched in a bug-ridden state, to which the “gamer community” gave them yet another pass, and they were affirmed in the knowledge that nobody cares if TES6 or Fallout 5 launch in a broken, useless state. They’ll still buy it and sing its praises. It will still launch to critical acclaim, by nature of being associated with the “SIXTEEN TIMES THE DETAIL” guy.
All of this points to a very bleak period of video gaming, between mindless consumerism, predatory corporations and a media asleep at the wheel, if one cares about such things. I for one look forward to calling attention to all of the predatory behavior I catch along my own “gaming ’seshes”, as you kids might say.
Speaking of which, I have to go build yet another mid-century split-level ranch in The Sims 4. Tootleloo.
When I read DLC I thought this was somehow going to involve the Democratic Leadership Council
I would like to add this fantastic video which does a great job explaining the Grand Theft Auto side of things. If I find such a video for Bethesda, I will share it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoazEAh0DPg