The Sims 4 Turns 12 Today: An Opinionated Look At The Past And The Future

As we celebrate The Sims 4's 12th anniversary, we look into the repeating pattern of what's coming next.

Happy birthday to The Sims 4 Base Game, which released first in United States back on September 2nd, 2014. With the retail version being $60, Deluxe and Limited Editions with 70$ and above prices, this launch felt anything but complete.

The Fate of The Sims 4

Players were quickly dissapointed with colourless maps and constant loading screens, bugs, glitches and lacking features that were later added on during the last 12 years. The Sims Team internally called this their "Apology Tour", adding features like Ghosts, Pools, Terrain Manipulation, Toddlers and even essential cheats like MoveObjects - which wasn't there at launch!

One of the funniest moments that I remember about how lacking it all was is the fact that Maxis had to develop a 10$ Stuff Pack (Cool Kitchen) to justify development budgets of a free Dishwasher Update for the Base Game. For 11 months Sims were locked to washing their dishes in the sink or players just had to drag all their dishes in the trash until the future of old technology came around.

The Sims 4 picked up the slack of improving the Base Game slowly by adding paid DLC to its catalogue. As leaked in The Sims 4 and The Sims 3 Sales figures, each Sims 4 Expansion sold almost as an entirely standalone IP. Big game publishers only dream of selling their Base Game with the same figures as The Sims 4 City Living Expansion Pack, which sold almost 15 million copies.

The first few Expansion Packs really did improve upon systems and add things that were essential for a Life Simulation experience. However, all the DLCs and content combined couldn't make up for a rushed Base Game foundation that was built upon a scrapped Multiplayer experience.

Many players believed that The Sims 4 pivoted from a Multiplayer Game to a Singleplayer game due to another Maxis game SimCity (2013) majorly failing just 2 months before TS4's announcement. In case you don't know what happened then - Maxis and EA released a multiplayer-focused SimCity game in March 2013 which failed on day 1 due to server errors. This city builder also had major limitations to map sizes and developers had to slow down the in-game time for all players for months due to slow developing of new game servers that would support the player demand.

Game developer Michael Long who worked on The Sims 4 from its very pre-production start in 2008 claims that information of Sims 4 switching to Singleplayer because of SimCity is false. The Sims 4 switched from multiplayer to singleplayer "because it was bad". The developer further claimed "I love so many people at Maxis like family, but some of the people they brought in literally ruined the franchise.".

The Sims 4 turned out to fix many of its mistakes caused by the multiplayer project that lead to nowhere. But many of them were deeply ingrained into the game's infrastructure so much so that the only solution was to instill fear and tell players that the franchise will be cancelled if it doesn't sell well.

12 years after the launch of The Sims 4 it's safe to say that the game has been a huge success - even if we ignore all the shortcomings mentioned above. The game has sold as much as (or even more) than GTA V if we combine all the DLC releases. But that doesn't mean that all that sales money has gone to a good cause of supporting smart game development decisions for this franchise. Instead it went to other EA IPs and projects, with The Sims Team still relying on releasing paid Sims 4 DLC to justify free Update additions 12 years after its original release.

Which leads to the next question - what's next for this franchise and is Maxis strong enough to carry out another Sims base game?

What's Next

The news of The Sims Project X started looming late last year when it was first rumored as The Sims 4 Remaster. Talks of Open Neighborhoods, improved Graphics, Animations and new essential Gameplay Systems driven from previous Expansion Pack releases started circling around. Until that point it felt like EA and Maxis were confident in making The Sims 4 its infinite series entry with The Sims Project Rene co-existing.

The Sims Project Rene was announced as a new standalone Sims entry in 2022, which would bring cross-platform and multiplayer features. With an entirely different graphics, object physics, open neighborhoods and playing together with other players. Talks of The Sims Project Rene development dwindled down in future game previews, blog posts and Behind The Sims livestreams. We'd only know some bits through private Playtest Sessions that revealed game features like "Online Dress to Impress" and more secret information obtained through datamining. Such as each age having a different height / skeleton, music mini-games and more.

It wouldn't be until January 2026 this year that Maxis and EA reaffirmed the ongoing development of The Sims Project Rene in their official 2026 Roadmap blog. Confirming the shift of focus to "Mobile-First Life-Sim".

The other thing? The next evolution of The Sims Franchise, which is now rumored to be The Sims Project X. A single player entry to The Sims Franchise that's built upon the foundation of The Sims 4, which will later get expanded on.

The Sims 4 currently has 4 months left of delivering Quality of Life updates that they promised since late last year. After that it's uncertain how the team will continue delivering game updates and DLC releases, which at this point are just Maker Packs and different variations of Kits.

Coincidentally, it feels like The Sims Project X is suffering the same rumored fate of The Sims 4 development. A multiplayer-first project that was later realized to have potential as a standalone single-player experience. Only this time EA and Maxis are also dealing with the controversies of the EA Buyout, for which they'll truly need to impress the new owners with the new product before it gets the possible financial support chop. And because of which your favorite pop artist might choose not to make a Simlish cover of your favorite song.

Grant Rodiek was apparently right - if a new game doesn't sell well on release then there won't be another iteration or successor to it. Which is what seemingly happened to "a few MySims projects" as well. EA App leaked MySims Beacon Bay and MySims Action Bundle back in January 2025, but due to apparent low performance and sales of the MySims Cozy Bundle, as well as the EA buyout, the new MySims projects got the final chop.

As I write here about what could (and couldn't) become later of this franchise on a post devoted to The Sims 4's 12th year, I'm doing it with such a major headache. I know that next year is supposed to be 2027, but all the franchise mishandling that's been happening over the last few years is making it feel like it'll be 2014 all over again. With big promises of a new Sims single-player foundation and big ultimatums for players who choose not to support it.

Happy birthday The Sims 4 - here's to another 12 years of going around the circle! Or going back around the circle, depending how you look at it.