2024 was an eventful year for The Sims 4, if only because we got confirmation that The Sims 5 isn’t coming. Instead, we’ve been promised a perpetual, live-service-esque version of the game we’ve known and loved for a decade. This year, we also got a new death-themed expansion – which is ironic, because all this live service stuff is killing my love for the game.
I’ve been a Sims fan long enough to have seen the franchise at its worst. I am an apologist for all the strange console spinoffs, including The Urbz and The Sims 2 Castaway. I’ve been around long enough to know that, when The Sims 4 came out, it felt like a hollow version of its former self, with its most detailed customization features gutted, seemingly in the name of selling (somehow) even more expansions.
EA has never hidden its more money-hungry habits. Oddly enough, though, the worst thing about this new era of always-online updates has been the freebies.
In May 2024, The Sims 4 introduced the first of a new series of live ‘Events’. ‘Happy at Home’ rewarded you with free accessories, household objects, and even traits when you logged in consistently enough. Sounds neat, right?
Bolstered by this first run, The Sims 4 introduced a second event to our digital dollhouses. Reaper’s Rewards was far more interactive than its predecessor, as it asked you to complete a series of small tasks to unlock the titular Reaper’s Rewards.
Catch some fish, plant a few trees, and you’ll earn some trad goth jeans. Flirt with the Grim Reaper, and you’ll unlock a new tattoo. You get the picture.
For me, events like these are entirely antithetical to how and why I play The Sims. The end goal was always to create, not to obtain.
I am here to design the charming detached three-bed of my dreams and move in a Sim that looks exactly like me, only with access to infinite money. I am here to hand-rear the perfect cult leader from birth, then watch his community collapse several generations later when they turn to vampirism. I am here to maximize the productivity of an ambitious middle manager and see how quickly they can reach the top level of their business career if they have WooHoo every single day.
In the Sims, I am master of my own domain. I am the storyteller, the artist, and the interior designer. I have total power over life and death, happiness and despair. I am omnipotent.
So you can imagine my dismay when an outside force turned up and handed me a banal weekly checklist to perform.
When I played with dolls as a child, my mother didn’t lean over my shoulder and ask me to make those dolls do laundry. No one else had the right to micromanage my private narratives – which is exactly what these recent events are doing.
Alright, many of the suggested quests were menial. Stopping to ask a neighbor about Ambrosia or cooking something different for dinner wouldn’t disrupt the cinematic universe I painstakingly created. I could even choose to ignore the game’s requests.
Except, if I did that, the game never stopped reminding me. The checklist permanently lived in the top-left corner of the screen, in the same place where in-game events like Love Day and Lottery Day usually appear. These seasonal activities can be closed if you don’t want to take part, but this wasn’t a privilege that Reaper’s Rewards allowed. You could minimise the events box, but it never truly went away – and it would re-open itself any time you switched control to a different Sim.
The Event proved even more disruptive by introducing new glitches to the game. Many players who actually wanted to engage with Reaper’s Rewards reported that it was extremely buggy. You couldn’t complete the quests if your Sims existed on certain lots, for example – which was never clearly communicated as part of the event.
One Redditor shared an anecdote where customer support recommended that they start an entirely new save if they want to join in with Events like Reaper’s Rewards. That takes this new live event from irritating micromanaging to fully dictating the way we play.
As someone who chose not to engage with Reaper’s Rewards, I didn’t personally see its numerous UI issues. I did see an increase in minor bugs in the rest of my game, however. Sims stretching to unusual heights, floating babies, all sorts of minor oddities that shouldn’t be. Knowing the cause was likely to be a live event I never asked for – and couldn’t escape – left me feeling a little sour.
Reaper’s Rewards mercifully ended on November 19, a few weeks after the Life & Death expansion pack was released. At last, I could enjoy the Sims 4’s macabre new flavor at my own pace. I could dive deep into the well of Gothic interior design and explore new kooky career paths, such as undertaking or working as a literal Grim Reaper.
That peace lasted for two weeks. On December 3, a new Christmas-themed Event kicked off. A fresh update to the game introduced a new, unavoidable checklist of festive busywork. Glitches once again began to rear their ugly head.
I’m not so aggrieved with these new Events that I’ll stop playing the Sims 4 forever. I’ve spent 20 years of my life with the franchise, and it’ll take some seriously heinous changes to sever that bond. However, these Events feel like the first rumbles of a storm yet to come.
Login bonuses and reward-driven objectives reek of the FOMO-driven business model applied by microtransaction-heavy free-to-play games. This is a genre infamous for its predatory monetization tactics. The rewards might be free now, but they might just be the carrot that comes before the stick.
I remember the early 2000s, when each copy of The Sims came with a code that meant it could only be downloaded once, preventing fans from buying copies second-hand. I’m fully aware that the current iteration of The Sims expects you to pay over $1,000 if you want to access all available expansions. I have so much love for The Sims, but I have never loved the way it is monetized. I haven’t much faith that, in the long term, these Events will pan out in the player’s favor.
While the Life & Death expansion may have brought new life to The Sims 4’s business model, I’m concerned it could be the death of my love for the game. This Christmas, I’m asking Father Winter for the optimism I don’t currently feel. Please, make sure that this new approach won’t be the change that pushes me over the edge.