The next Sims game currently goes under the name Project Rene rather than The Sims 5, but that aside, we know a growing amount about EA Maxis’ next social simulation. During today’s latest Behind The Sims community update, they shared more, including the news that the next entry in the series would be free-to-play and without energy mechanics or a subscription.
Free To Play means gameplay value has been deliberately sabotaged to create paywalls.
Instead of paying once and enjoying, you get nickled and dimed which sucks all the joy out of a game.
Nah, Sims just makes 90% of it’s money off the DLC. Making the base game free means nothing for their earnings and they know it.
Reminder that the base game is always massively barebones and if you were only going to play that, you’d be better off playing an older sims game.
Like saving 60-100$ is nothing when the DLC usually totals in the 500s-1000s just to get a baseline experience. Pretty sure they rarely went on sale also.
Real cost will be in the thousands
I think this could be a good thing, like Crusader Kings 2 going free to play.
Also… there are certain tools out there that download the DLC and keep it updated for you… those probably aren’t going away. My wife hasn’t paid for Sims 4 DLC in a very long time.
I am not affected by this since I prefer more … challenging games.
But this just reflects an overall strategy of EA towards a game as a service strategy.now at least players can test before they put good money into the sinkhole. But my guess is that this will only scare those away who refused this from the beginning.
I am not happy about it, though there were rumors for a while now. Like, yes, I have spent an absurd amount on TS3/TS4 dlcs all in all, EA will probably get me for TS5 in whatever form that takes… but F2P always means worse monetization. I see it being like TS3 with a la carte buy mode stuff through premium currency, which is such a step back from expansion packs (as much as that got shrunk over time over game packs, stuff packs, and kits).
