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Is The Sims 4 Free to Play?

The Sims 4 was first released way back in 2014, and since then, it has been the number one life simulation game on the market. It’s the latest game in the award-winning, best-selling franchise that started way back in the year 2000, and in 2022, it underwent a massive change. Is The Sims 4 free to play right now? Let’s find out…

Why Are There No New Sims Games?

The Sims 4 has remained the de facto standard for Sims fans the world over for almost a decade. It has seen countless updates and expansion packs released to blow it up, but it hasn’t seen a sequel spawn. There’s a project in the works, but almost nothing is known about it – despite fans constantly sitting on the edges of their seats, eagerly awaiting any news at all.

Last year, it was announced by Electronic Arts that The Sims 4 would become free-to-play. It all began on October 18th, 2022, when The Sims 4’s base game had its price tag removed on every platform, for every player. It was a monumental decision that saw player numbers skyrocket all around the world, and there was even a sharp uptick in the number of sales of The Sims 4 expansion packs.

Basically, The Sims 4 makes its money through expansion packs, and there were very few sales of the base game taking place before EA made the decision to make The Sims 4 free to play. It was available on EA Play, which meant that players on Xbox and PC platforms could own it through a subscription service anyway, which further reduced organic sales.

By making the game free to play, EA has introduced millions more players to The Sims 4, and even if 1% of those new users purchase an expansion pack, 10,000 more sales will be recorded that wouldn’t have originally existed – and that’s kind of what happened.

That’s why, at the moment, there are no new Sims games. There’s a lot of money to still be made with The Sims 4, and with the player count soaring, it just doesn’t make commercial sense for EA to release a new game – yet. It’s expected that The Sims 4 will stay hanging around for a few more years yet to come.

So, is The Sims 4 free to play? Yes – it absolutely is.

New details also suggest that The Sims 5 will also be free-to-play, but it might contain a ton of microtransactions.

The Sims 4 is available for free on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Mac, and PC platforms.

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