10 years of ‘The Sims 4,’ and it’s still broken

First released on September 2, 2014, EA’s The Sims 4 turned ten years old this week, but if you asked the Sims team about it, they’d have no idea what you’re talking about because they haven’t acknowledged it.

In years past, on milestone years for Sims anniversaries, EA’s Sims team prepared celebratory announcements and free new gameplay features for fans of the game to enjoy. Yet, this year, on the 10^th birthday of The Sims 4, not a peep.

It’s the longest-running variant of The Sims! If anything, it’s a benchmark for EA as a whole, not just the Sims team. But alas, who cares about life simulators, right?

Then, on September 3, the Sims 4 Twitter account tweeted a “Laundry List” without any recognition of the recent anniversary. Sims 4 Laundry Lists have become a frequent staple in the social media strategy for The Sims 4 after releasing excruciatingly buggy content for the past few years.

The Sims online community, filled with average simmers, mod/cc creators, twitch streamers, Sims YouTubers, etc., has been campaigning for The Sims 4 to be much more transparent about their programming and running of the game. This transparency landed them with more diversified skin tones in 2020, more Black hairstyles in 2022, an advanced sexuality and gender system in 2022, and more internationally inspired worlds with diverse players contributing or consulting on the content in the latest expansion packs.

Granted, this is a significant improvement from where The Sims 4 began in 2014, with three outfits, a vaguely New Orleans-style world, and a dream, but the game is still nowhere near the level of inclusion it could be in 2024. There are still plenty of gaps in the East Asian wardrobe, and there are not nearly enough headscarves and face coverings.

There is also the question of game features. When The Sims 4 was first released, there was no infant/toddler life stage; your sim went from baby to child in minutes. There were no pools in 2014, no ponds, no terrain manipulation, the world maps were in black and white … everything was like a skeleton of a game. There was no real fun in playing unless you opted into every expansion, game, or stuff pack.

Yet, nearly all of these packs were barebones and inevitably broken. Get To Work involves Retail spaces, a hospital and a police station. Yet, when playing outside the confines of careers related to these features, your sims have no interactions with these features. The real bummers have been packs that come wholly broken—like unusable, can’t-play-your-whole-game bad: Dine Out, My Wedding Stories, and Eco Lifestyle. Honourable mention to High School Years and For Rent expansion packs that work … but not to their full capacity.

That is to say that die-hard Sims fans are paying buckets of money into a game that only sometimes functions, and when said game reaches a major milestone, their way of celebrating is reminding you just how broken the game you love really is.

It almost feels … funny. It’s giving … ironic.