The old reliable source is back again with new insider information about The Sims Franchise.
A new insider report about the plans within The Sims Studio with The Sims 4 Marketplace and Project X have surfaced online. From the same reliable source that brought you first talks about Sims 4 Marketplace, no more Packs after Royalty & Legacy and Project X information.
Today, this ATRL insider has come online again to give some additional context about Sims 4 Marketplace morale within the Maxis development studio. Revealing that Maxis employees themselves are hoping this storefront fails so that EA gives up. It’s been revealed in a previous insider post that EA is doing the biggest framework shakeup within the Maxis studio since 2000, and the developers themselves are not satisfied with the current monetization plans and EA’s control.
The insider also revealed current talks about The Sims Project X, which now talk that the game will have one big world. And separate Neighborhoods that will be monetized. According to the insider, the plan is to have the World Map unlockable through purchasable Neighborhoods. Very much reminiscing of the fate that Skate. franchise is currently having with EA’s mistreatment of the Intellectual Property. Monetizing separate islands and areas of skating in an open world behind a paywall.
Here’s everything they’ve stated about The Sims 4 Marketplace and Project X below:
General The Sims 4 Marketplace Morale within Sims Studio
Sims Insider: I had to pretend I wasn’t 100% sure this was coming and that it was from different sources or what have you, but sadly this has been talked a lot about amongst employees for several months and morale is very low at the moment at EA. They’re basically treating Maxis employees like their own creators instead of a development studio. Very sad to see.
EA have been working on this for months and specifically told people they needed to design it in a way that almost always left virtual currency in your bank.
Maxis employees are hoping this storefront fails so that EA gives up on this idea. They plan on exploring the idea of scalable pricing for content you’d see. So a pack with more gameplay items or animations would potentially cost more than another pack that has less.
One World and Paid Expansions of Project X Neighborhoods
They’re also exploring the idea of having one world for Project X over seperate releases, and having you start with a smaller chunk that you have to pay for to expand as time goes on. So you might start with two Neighbourhoods and then have to pay to unlock new Neighbourhoods as they come out. Rather than delivering one world at a time with different packs.
They’ve absolutely found every idea they can to squeeze money out of the Sims and save money on development by basically remaking the same game again with some shiny perks but cutting off a lot of the back catalogue that eats into QA time.
Project X Questions and Answers
Question: So from what I get, they’re planning to roll this Marketplace out across the whole franchise eventually, right? Like for other Sims stuff too? Including Project X?
Also, do you happen to know anything about where X is at right now? Are they still aiming for a late 2026 release or is that up in the air?
Sims Insider: I don’t know about when X is launching. I think that is up in the air at this stage.
The last I heard was they were looking to visual styles and anti-piracy measures. I’m assuming the Marketplace will stop people from being able to pirate things outside assets and I believe the game will have an always online requirement, pirated copies won’t work. But to be confirmed.
Question: It’s funny you said they’re basically remaking the same game because the recently announced Quality of Life roadmap is also said to be a cost-cutting investment; fixing the current product will allow them to bring more of it for Project X. Do you happen to know anything else about this?
Sims Insider: I know that Project X is a cost cutting project to keep a mainline Sims game as part of its live service model, and this is the easiest way to continue that live service model. They’re just shifting the product to a new product and in process, cutting a huge chunk of their QA work for older content.
They are basically going to be recycling everything they can from The Sims 4 and doing the bare minimum to make it attractive enough to be considered a new game to invest in. Certain things like increasing visual fidelity, or changing how the game works (eg. open neighbourhoods vs closed neighbourhoods) will have very little change in cost to EA for the most part as an ongoing cost for dlc development. This is definitely not a Sims 5, it’s more of a Sims 4 refresh being sold separately and not being compatible with majority of previous content, as I assume EA will recycle Sims 4 DLC content as well.
I would imagine a lot of the things EA will be focusing on is bugs or tuning things that will be used for Project X and will score some brownie points if they can retrospectively improve the Sims 4.
What are your thoughts on current insider information about Maxis wanting The Sims 4 Marketplace to fail and Project X neighborhood monetization plans? Join the discussion below!
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EA are giving us more entertainment with this drama than their actual game atp
this is so sad, sending strengh to the dev team ♥
I think there will be a lot of layoffs, especially among the teams that worked on the game packs. While the majority of kits are created by independent developers, EA won’t keep everyone on, only a small team for future maxi-kits, which require minimal staff. Those working on Project X will stay, while the others will have to find other jobs. You can imagine the atmosphere internally; everyone must be wondering what will become of them. The gaming world is ruthless.
Jovan keeps insisting that “seperate” is the correct spelling.
i luv it <2 – fixed the spelling on my end but left the spelling mistake in the quotes as written by the original author
stop giving me them money. let this fail. listen to the people at maxis who don’t want this
I actually don’t have a problem with buying new neighborhoods… depending on how it’s done. I have always wished, and seen comments about, being able to have packs that just contain new worlds. Not sure this would be much different.
That being said… It’s EA…. so I expect it to be trash, and I’ve never played Skate so I have no idea how that game handles it.
Everything EA is doing, and will do, I look thru the lens of the buyout and how much debt it being acquired to make it happen. That has to be paid back somehow…
For those who were still hoping to transfer their downloadable content to Project X, forget it: it seems that it is not compatible and that you have to pay for everything again, even recycled Sims 4 content.
Oh hell no!! We’ll not be paying for that BS!! Tf not really surprised that ea wants to be greedy and try to milk us for more of our hard earn money and some of us are living off of SSI or disability or retirement
at this point i welcome ea shifting focus to a new game so the existing game can be stable and modders can focus on their own fixes and content. this reminds me of the endgame state of the sims 3, when they tried to push the sims 3 store a lot harder than usual.
Oh hell no we’ll not be paying for that!! Tf why is ea trying to milk us for our money when some of us are on SSI or disability or on retirement and trying to take our hard earn money tf?! Greedy AF
“let’s go to hell”
Let’s check Paralives!
They are all just going to kill “The Sims” itself. The marketplace, the game, and the community will all be gone – it will be very clean. A clean they cannot even imagine unless they imagine except in an unemployment line.
This is what happens when investment firms buy game company (or any type to be honest). They try to milk it for every last penny they can then they will dump it. I saw this coming as soon as the rumours of EA going up for sale leaked! They don’t care about the fans, or the staff… just the money they can get out of their purchase.
Most EA games will go this way and then they will shut them down/sell them off until they are all gone and EA closes down.
It’s so sad. If only Maxis could buy themselves free and go independent again. 🙁
They can, amplitude studio did this some months back. The question is can Maxis raise the capital to do so? I very much doubt it.
Always online is a big nope for me.
I hope this “new” game fails and they go back to Sims 4.
All we need for that is people to stay on TS4, which would be the clever decision as it would take decades for the new version to even have as much content (dlcs, mods, trays…etc)
It’s staying with Sims 4 and/Or moving on with a new life sim game franchises like Virtual Societies, Paralives or InZoi.
Simmers spiraling because the executive saif they won’t be a Sims 5 was so silly. Like what is there to add now? Sims 3 could have been the last installment but not everybody could play it so Sims 4 was made to gain back the simmer they lost. Sims 4 can run literally everywhere. The supposed spaghetti code and limitations and them not allegedly not being able to fix the game was all a lie. They can but refused to do so and instead released multiple multiple dlc
I keep telling everyone who ask for a new base game of the sims 4 that the Sims 4 as we know it will be the last. Imagine paying to unlock a new neighborhood
No matter how you look at it, recycling has already happened… how many things and animations were transferred from The Sims 2 to The Sims 3.
I’m laughing so hard now. Do not worry EA, if not now then in the future there will always be someone who will pirate and crack all your games no matter how much the CEO’s try to prevent it There are always stubborn and petty enough people to do that and nothing will stop them. It’s only a matter of time.
Will current EA Wallet funds be transferred into moola?
no, because the EA wallet is a different thing to moola. You should be able to buy moola with EA wallet funds, though.
RIP sims as we know it… I’ll continue playing sims 2 forever then. Why bother making a game at all for the sole purpose of squeezing every penny out of players instead of making a sims 5 that actually has heart, soul, and technological advancements in creating a new way of playing the sims like 1-3 did?? (4 was definitely a low effort version of doing that). I’ve never personally pirated the games before, but I certainly won’t be paying for anything else they put out based on this.
I love this narrative of Maxis good, EA bad, like the devs at Maxis haven’t lied since the inception of the Sims4, like they are not the most mediocre devs around. Poor SimGuruGraham, SimGuruNinja, and others that have been shaping the game since the beginning, and now the reality is that most of them are going to be fired and downsized, and they are not going to find another job. I mean, who would want such incompetent developers? Unfortunately, the worst of them will continue to work and extract everything possible from players. That’s why Graham Nardone is in charge of the new marketplace.
I am going to stick with Sims 4 rather than move onto Project X.