Skip to main content

The Sims 4 reaches 20 million players ahead of series’ 20th anniversary

The Sims 4™ Island Living: Official Reveal Trailer

Just ahead of the franchise’s 20th anniversary, The Sims 4 crossed 20 million unique players worldwide. It’s a sizeable feat considering the age of the series and its latest release. The Sims 4 arrived in September of 2014.

Five years on, The Sims 4 continues to pump out add-ons in the form of expansion packs, game packs, and stuff packs, all of which offer new in-game items and abilities. Expansion packs have the most content, while stuff packs have the least. This steady stream of add-ons has kept the game alive over five years after its initial release.

Electronic Arts’ dedication to producing new material means keeping fans satisfied, and brings in money even after the main title’s severe price reduction. Packs cost $10, $20, or $40 for a stuff, game, or expansion pack, respectively. With nearly three dozen DLC offerings in total, it’s easy for customers to spend a great deal on a single title, even if they pick up the main game for nothing. The last major expansion pack, Discover University, came in November. A smaller stuff pack, Tiny Living, followed earlier this month.

The Sims 4 is available for free for PlayStation Plus members throughout February; not for the first time, either. EA’s online store, Origin, regularly offers sales on DLC, and occasionally makes the game free. The strategy seems effective as the audience continues to grow, even amid a surge of multiplayer online games.

The title, an elder compared to EA’s other offerings, staked its claim during the company’s latest earnings report Thursday. EA highlighted the game along with heavy-hitters, including FIFA, Madden, and Apex Legends, as reasons for its financial success.

Unfortunately for simmers hoping EA will launch a surprise fifth edition launch to coincide with the milestone, EA said it has no significant console or PC releases for its first quarter in 2020, which ends on March 31st. Of course, that doesn’t preclude it from announcing The Sims 5 later.

In the last two decades, The Sims spawned side games, two mobile games, and recovered from its messy launch of The Sims 4, which released without fan favorites like the toddler life stage, and pools. With an active community of streamers, builders, modders, and the like, The Sims series prepares to celebrate 20 years with few signs of stopping. 

Editors' Recommendations

Lisa Marie Segarra
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Lisa Marie Segarra is the Gaming Section at Digital Trends. She's previously covered tech and gaming at Fortune Magazine and…
The Sims 4 now lets players use custom pronouns
A crowd of Sims attends an in-game musical festival.

EA and developer Maxis have announced they added a new feature in The Sims 4 that finally allows players to customize pronouns for their Sims characters.

EA and Maxis wrote in their blog post on Tuesday that they have been working to add custom pronouns since last year, after receiving feedback from the Sims community. To make that feature a reality, they worked with two leading LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, GLAAD and the It Gets Better Project, to research and understand how pronouns are used among transgender and non-binary players. In doing so, they learned the contexts in which binary gender pronouns were used in the game and worked to develop a means of customizing pronouns to make the gameplay experience more inclusive for everyone.

Read more
Back 4 Blood’s first DLC sends players into Ridden caves
Cleaners sneak through a tunnel filled with Ridden in Back 4 Blood.

Back 4 Blood's main campaign ends with a massive boss fight underground, and the game's upcoming DLC is set to drag players back down into the Ridden-infested depths. First revealed in Back 4 Blood's road map, the Tunnels of Terror expansion now has a release date. Players will be able to fight their way through packs of Ridden underground with the aid of new Cleaners and weapons on April 12.

https://twitter.com/back4blood/status/1510995736699326469

Read more
The Sims is still a creative gold mine for content creators
A crowd of Sims attends an in-game musical festival.

The Sims has always been a popular game among players, no matter the iteration we’re talking about. With four main title games, the franchise’s enduring history is still going strong today. This can be seen in the consistent additions made through DLC -- such as the most recent My Wedding Stories game pack, which adds in all-new wedding-related content -- and a thriving international community that has been growing since its first title was released in 2000.

The Sims community can be found in a number of different places including on EA’s official Sims forums, social media, and even on different sites that center around sharing player-made custom content (CC) like The Sims Resource, a popular CC website that currently hosts over one million uploaded creations. But there is one space within The Sims community that has stood out for plenty of Sims players: Content creators on YouTube.

Read more