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Full list of The Sims 4 Enchanted by Nature cheats for editing Fairy Sims or mastering their Apothecary skills

Andrea Shearon — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 02:44:32 +0000

The Sims 4 painted the town green with its outdoorsy, fairy-themed expansion, but if you don't want to work your way up the faefolk rankings to get to the good stuff, you can use Enchanted by Nature cheats for an easy shortcut. Some fairy features don't have their own code, but here you'll find cheats for most Sims 4 careers, skills, and traits that were added with the expansion.

If you need extra guidance, check out our main list of The Sims 4 cheats for a refresher on the basics. And if you're looking for other expansion commands, we've got lists for Businesses & Hobbies cheats and Life & Death cheats.

Enchanted by Nature career cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Enchanted by Nature added one new career to The Sims 4 with the Naturopath. It's a handy career for curing ailments, and you can even take things a step further with branching career paths as a Lifestyle Coach or Apothe-curist.

Career	Cheat code
Naturopath	careers.add_career Naturopath careers.retire Naturopath careers.promote Naturopath careers.demote Naturopath

Career

Cheat code

Naturopath

careers.add_career Naturopath

careers.retire Naturopath

careers.promote Naturopath

careers.demote Naturopath

Enchanted by Nature skill cheats

The Sims 4 received two new skills with Enchanted by Nature: Apothecary and Natural Living. Sims skilled in Apothecary will learn how to make cures for ailments, while Natural Living sims learn how to thrive outdoors.

Use the testingcheats true command before setting a skill level via cheat code.

Skill	Max skill cheat
Apothecary	stats.set_skill_level Major_Apothecary 10
Natural Living	stats.set_skill_level Skill_NLS 10

Enchanted by Nature trait cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Sims get three standard traits in this expansion: Disruptive, Mystical, and Plant Lover. There are Enchanted by Nature cheats for all three, but you can always add them via Create-a-Sim by:

Using testingcheats true in the cheat console
Using cas.fulleditmode in the cheat console
Clicking your sim and selecting "Edit in CAS"
Find both in the "Social" traits section

You can also add or remove traits in the console with the codes below. Traits marked with the fairy emoji 🧚 are exclusive to the occult sim.

Personality traits

Trait	Cheat code
Disruptive	traits.equip_trait trait_Rogue traits.remove_trait trait_Rogue
Mystical	traits.equip_trait trait_Mystical traits.remove_trait trait_Mystical
Plant Lover	traits.equip_trait trait_Plantlover traits.remove_trait trait_Plantlover
🧚High Fae Lineage	traits.equip_trait HighFaeLineage traits.remove_trait HighFaeLineage

Reward traits

Trait	Cheat code
Nature’s Best Bud	traits.equip_trait NaturesBestBud traits.remove_trait NaturesBestBud
Well-Balanced Practitioner	traits.equip_trait trait_NaturalMeds_HealsWithPills traits.remove_trait trait_NaturalMeds_HealsWithPills
Into the Everdew	traits.equip_trait trait_FairyStories_Initiation_IntoThePixieland traits.remove_trait trait_FairyStories_Initiation_IntoThePixieland
🧚Happily Harmonious	traits.equip_trait LightPath_LightPixie traits.remove_trait LightPath_LightPixie
🧚Delightfully Discordant	traits.equip_trait DarkPath_DarkPixie traits.remove_trait DarkPath_DarkPixie
🧚Problem Fairy	traits.equip_trait trait_ProblemFairy traits.remove_trait trait_ProblemFairy

Enchanted by Nature death cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Enchanted by Nature adds two overdramatic deaths for fairy sims, Death by Emotional Starvation and Death by Emotional Overload, but there's only a cheat for one.

Fairy death cheats

Death	Cheat code
Death by Emotional Starvation	traits.equip_trait trait_ghost_EmotionalStarvation traits.remove_trait trait_ghost_EmotionalStarvation

Death

Cheat code

Death by Emotional Starvation

traits.equip_trait trait_ghost_EmotionalStarvation

traits.remove_trait trait_ghost_EmotionalStarvation

How fairy sims die from Emotional Overload

Fairies can detect and absorb other sims' emotions, but consuming Overload Moodlets can lead to Death by Emotional Overload. Here's how to get the process started:

Use Detect Emotion on other sims to find overload emotions (look for an exclamation❗)
Use Absorb Emotion until it triggers Enraged, Hysterical, or Mortified
Continue until triggering Death by Anger, Death by Laughter, or Death by Embarrassment

Sims have been able to die from extreme emotions for a while, but the fairy sim option is still a new way to experience all three possibilities. If you're trying to avoid death or bring someone back, refer to our main list of Sims 4 cheats.

Enchanted by Nature fairy cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

As Enchanted by Nature's occult sims hone their magical abilities, they'll also improve their fairy ranking. There are five ranks to work (or cheat) your way through, each with their own perks and special manipulation magic.

There's no cheat to directly equip the fairy rank to your sim, but you can use an XP shortcut to accomplish the same thing.

Fairy rank	Cheat code
Faint	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 0
Glowing	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 500
Glimmering	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 1500
Brilliant	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 3000
Radiant	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 4500

Is there a cheat for turning a sim into a fairy?

No, unlike other occult sims, there is no Enchanted by Nature cheat to turn a regular sim into a fairy sim. But that doesn't mean you can't edit them directly with the same Create-a-Sim cheat from before:

Enter testingcheats true in the cheat console
Enter cas.fulleditmode in the cheat console
Click your sim and select "Edit in CAS"
Set their occult status to "Fairy" in the top left corner of the Create-a-Sim menu

I'm not ashamed to admit that The Sims 2 got me into house music, especially since its devs hired the best DJs in the biz to score it

Mollie Taylor — Sun, 24 May 2026 17:00:00 +0000

Real life is terribad right now. What better way to cope than shedding this reality in favour of becoming worryingly invested in the lives of fake videogame people, watching them cock up a grilled cheese as I ignore the fact I haven't eaten anything for several hours?

Critical Hit

Welcome to Critical Hit (formerly known as Soundtrack Sunday), where I celebrate and lament all things videogame music, audio design, and the ways our favourite games make our ears tingle.

If you couldn't tell, I'm back on a life sim kick. I've been having a wicked time decorating houses in Paralives (we don't talk about the state of my own home), but the hand of nostalgia has also yoinked me by the scruff in the direction of The Sims 2.

Much the same as anyone who grew up in the early 2000s and had access to a family computer, it's the game that shaped my formative years. That extends to my music taste, too—I literally got into Paramore because the PlayStation 2 had a Simlish version of Pressure, and more recently The Last Dinner Party became a regular rotation in my Spotify playlists thanks to their appearance in The Sims 4: Life and Death trailer.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

The Sims and iconic music have always gone hand in hand. EA has somehow convinced a slew of well-respected and rather famous pop stars to nip into a recording studio and do a gobbledegook rendition of their biggest hits. But there is one iconic corner of The Sims discography that does not get even close to the love it deserves—the soundtrack for the Sims 2 expansion, Nightlife.

Nightlife (or as a former PC Gamer writer called it: Sims Slutting About) was the game's second expansion and it was a banger. A bunch of new romance options, aspirations, community lots, and vampires(!!) made Nightlife the coolest thing out there to tween Mollie. But it's also the expansion that sparked a love for house music, and that's all thanks to the fact that EA enlisted some of the best DJs and electronic artists of the 2000s to put a nightclub spin on its best tracks.

To the dancefloor

The Sims 2: Nightlife remixes may be one of my absolute favourite videogame soundtracks to ever exist. DJs like Junkie XL, Adam Freeland, General Midi, Hyper, and Timo Maas and electronic band Lemon Jelly put their unique spins on tracks that were already defining The Sims 2 in its base game and its first expansion, University.

The result is an incredible blend of the playfulness and whimsy that Mark Mothersbaugh's original score radiates, with all of the dance-worthy heavy bass, whomps, and synths that you'd hear in a real-life nightclub. It's the sort of sound I had never heard before, and one I've never come close to hearing in the 20 years since this soundtrack was conceived.

My absolute favourite remix outta the bunch has to be General Midi's rendition of Stop and Sim from the University expansion. Its original version is a light and quirky tune—lots of high plucked notes that make for a fresh and youthful track.

General Midi takes the song in the complete opposite direction with tons of low reverb and these deliciously dirty distorted synth sounds that remind me of a speaker being pushed to its absolute limit by heavy bass, the pulsating sound reverberating through the entire plastic casing.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Then there's the Lemon Jelly version of Sim Time Sim Place. Mothersbaugh's original score is another light, plucky track that really leans into the game's playful and bright vibe. Meanwhile Lemon Jelly's Nick Franglen makes it downright weird (endearing) by kicking off the remix with this glorpy alien-ass synths before slowly building the track to a choir booming out deep "bah bahbahbah bahbahbah bahbahbah" over and over again. It's something that isn't even present in the original track, but I absolutely love whatever the hell Franglen was cooking when he made this track.

While I'd call Motherbaugh's style a little weird (again, endearing), Franglen takes it to straight-up freakytown in the best possible way. It's weird in a different font, but one that is so downright fitting for The Sims 2 and the Nightlife expansion.

There are a dozen other remixes and I would suggest you go and give them all a listen. The soundtrack is available on Spotify, where I am sure it will make its way into my Wrapped this year for how often I've been listening to it.

While I've never quite found the same high from other tracks as I have from The Sims 2: Nightlife remixes, I recently saw this excellent TikTok from Will Geraint Drake who compared it to modern works like Charlie XCX's BRAT.

And you know what? I see it. For all of the iconic music The Sims has pumped out over the years, Nightlife's remixes are most definitely at the top for me. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if their influence has trickled down into other iconic works over the years.

The Sims 3 review (2009)

Graham Smith — Sun, 10 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000

The Sims 3 review - PC Gamer issue #202 (UK, July 2009)

An exact replica of hte PC Gamer office. (Image credit: EA)

My wedding was a disaster, beginning when one of the guests died during the party. We weren't close, but witnessing his ghost prompted a recurring wish to see more. Soon I was wandering the catacombs beneath the graveyard, getting emotionally scarred by zombie bears and emerging, smeared with dirt, in only my underpants.

To make matters worse, I misunderstood the purpose of a 'Wedding Party'. It's not meant to celebrate the engagement, but to be the wedding itself. My guests left unhappy when no marriage took place, and both my fiancée and I felt guilty for missing our big day.

Make no mistake. That 'I' is me—a smaller, virtual but no less hairy me. The Sims 3, like the previous games, is all about controlling people.

All growed up

Need to Know

What is it? The second sequel in the series of life simulators that have sold over 100 million copies.
Release date June 2, 2009
Expect to pay £35 / $50 in 2009
Developer The Sims Studio
Publisher EA
Play it on 2GHz Dual Core, 2GB RAM, 128MB 3D card
Link The Sims 3 official site

You begin by moulding their appearance (bearded, thinnish, roguishly handsome), selecting their five personality traits (Childish, Good, Friendly, Artistic, Computer Whizz) and dropping them into their own home in suburbia (two- bedroom, single floor, modest).

In the original game, what followed inevitably trapped you into being a kind of incorporeal maid, buying the furniture and making sure your little masters didn't wet themselves.

Those days are gone. Set their free will to full and your Sims are now capable of maintaining their own needs: Hunger, Social, Bladder, Hygiene, Energy, Fun. Stick the game on fast forward, wander off, and when you return your characters will have showered, used the toilet and gone off to work all by themselves. You can, if you want, completely ignore their needs and focus on the far more enjoyable job of fulfilling their wishes. That desire to see ghosts? That wasn't mine, that was Little Graham's.

Replacing the system of wants and fears from The Sims 2, wishes take two forms. Lifetime Wishes are chosen when you first create a Sim and limited by your selected personality traits—Graham's life goal is to become Master of the Arts by learning to paint and play guitar.

Craig and Graham wish the game had cats. (Image credit: EA)

Along the way, smaller wishes inspired by the events in a Sim's life present themselves. When your Sim wishes something, you can dismiss it or promise to make it happen.

There's no punishment for failure, but accomplishing wishes gathers Lifetime Happiness points that can be spent on special rewards. Like, for example, a fertility treatment that increases the chance of twins and triplets. A ghost seen, a wife married, a newly learned recipe and some guitar practice later, little Ada and Boudica are born.

Wishes not only give your play direction, but meaning. Events inspire wishes. The fulfilment of wishes in turn inspires more events.

Life moves forward in a compulsive loop of improving skills, gaining promotions and buying new stuff, all of it purposeful because your Sim wanted it, and had a reason for wanting it.

A life less ordinary

(Image credit: Future)

Broadly defined, there are three roles a Sims player can assume: The Narcissist, who creates their own lives in lovingly accurate or idealised detail; The Soap Writer, who crafts tales of illicit affairs and melodrama; and The Sociopath, who locks Sims in a room, removes the door and watches unfeelingly as they weep, collapse and eventually starve to death. I find I move from one role to the next as my interest and attachment fluctuates.

Modelling Sims on yourself and your loved ones changes the way you play. The callous whims that might otherwise dictate your decisions are now too uncomfortable to pursue.

I only want a quiet, comfortable life for Little Graham. The great flaw of The Sims, unchanged in The Sims 3, is that accomplishing this goal renders the game boring. Each day becomes rote: go to work, come home, help the kids, kiss my wife, go to bed and start over. I become trapped in a life of Ballardian comfort, and it's here that I hit my mid-life crisis as a player.

In lieu of erotic car crashes, I start hitting fast forward. I strive for more anecdotes, quicker, but the character being me encourages caution. Eventually, I wish for nothing more exciting than to cook a good meal.

He did this for four hours. Every. Day.EA

Evil Sims wish to steal candy from babies.EA

We know this from every other storytelling medium: the most interesting lives involve suffering. My next creations are still inspired by the real world, but I'm far more willing to lead them to pain and heartbreak. Meet Ross, Tim, Craig, Tom and Tony, five bachelors sharing a two-bedroom house, each shabbily designed in the insanely detailed Create-a-Sim tool. I put myself in there, too. I couldn't resist.

Small town life

Their house is in Sunset Valley, the only town to ship with the game. While The Sims 2 had destinations beyond your own house, visiting them meant a discouragingly long load. Now your hometown is exactly that, explorable on foot, bike or car. While you run your Sims, others are living, dying and breeding all around you. This once claustrophobic game now has a greater scope and a sense of exploration.

Each location serves a purpose. Tom's Lifetime Wish is to become a Creature-Robot Cross Breeder, so he gets a job at the science facility.

Tim wants to be an international secret agent, and starts by working at the police station. If you have the funds, you can become a partner or owner of these businesses. Tim also bought the local diner, Tim's House of Meat-Like Byproducts, and became a director of the local hospital. Tim's wages kept the entire household in spaghetti.

Tony scares people. And in the game. (Image credit: EA)

You can't see inside any of the work-related buildings. Your Sims' actions there are influenced via a drop-down menu. Tom's Workaholic trait causes him to default to 'Work Hard' status, but I make sure to set Ross, the resident Party Animal, to 'Meet Co-workers'.

Graham, meanwhile, is directed to use the fitness facilities at the military base. Time at a local French restaurant has rendered him chubby.

Sunset Valley has dozens of locations. (Image credit: EA)

Buildings you can see inside include community lots—a gym, an art gallery, the park—or neighbourhood houses. Ross visited one of the rich families in town, letting me try their cool, expensive toys. After being distracted by Tim, who had again set fire to the kitchen back home, I was surprised by a message telling me Ross had stolen a lamp from his new friends. Possessed by the Kleptomaniac trait, Ross could—with or without provocation from me—thieve randomly. Coincidentally, I'd later direct Ross to befriend all the other rich families in town, gradually collecting a nice living-room set in the process.

Traits let you clearly define the personalities of your characters, and create entirely different situations. Craig's Evil trait inspires him to pursue the criminal career path, but he struggles because he's also Inappropriate and Insane. Aside from being arrested after his first day of work, he's also stolen candy from a baby, insulted that baby to her mother, and eventually entered into a fistfight with the woman. Which he lost. These things wouldn't happen with Tim, whose Excitable, Childish and Over-Excitable traits mostly just cause him to really like playing computer games.

Sim-ilaraties

Fundamentally, The Sims 3 is still The Sims. Although a significant improvement, wishes are just a small change from The Sims 2's wants and fears. Traits are just a better version of the previous personality points.

(Image credit: Future)

The roamable town feels essential, but it's mostly a technological leap. There are new video editing tools, letting you create sets, soundtracks, edit and share custom content, but people were doing that before, too. You'll be doing exactly the kinds of things you did in previous games. It's just a lot slicker.

What EA have done is create a platform for a new generation of expansion packs and downloadable content. Depending on where they take it, this might be like 'needing' to buy all your old films again on Blu- ray, or it might allow for new, exciting additions as towns expand in scope and scale. If you already have expansion packs for Sims 2 that add seasons, pets and witches, the basic Sims 3 feels like a step back.

Sims celbrate each other's birthdays. (Image credit: EA)

Yet the core of The Sims 3 is more powerful than ever. Their world, all jaunty music and exaggerated animation, isn't just a platform for expansion packs, but for exploring your own feelings.

Tony was the first of us in the house to die. 93 days old, he was cleaning some dishes in the kitchen when it happened. We buried him in the front garden next to a gigantic meteorite Ross had found, and engraved upon his tombstone an epitaph: "He made our writing gooder. A lot." That night the entire house mourned. Even Craig. At the far corner of the house, Tony's bed stood out, empty. After playing for nearly 40 hours, I still haven't reached the role of The Sociopath.

Are you a real Sims series scholar? Put those decades of playing The Sims to the test with a quick round of trivia made for lifelong simmers

Andrea Shearon — Thu, 07 May 2026 00:11:51 +0000

Every so often, I am hit with the intense urge to bulldoze everything in my Sims 4 neighborhood and start over from scratch. I don't know why I do it, but I love wasting at least one week of my annual vacation razing the earth like some sort of unappeasable Sims 4 deity and rebuilding neighborhoods from the ground up, only to do it all over again the next year.

More quizzes!

(Image credit: Larian Studios, PC Gamer)

Want to keep testing your knowledge of gaming trivia? We've got loads more PC Gamer quizzes, on everything from healthbars to weird currencies to absurd patch notes.

It's a habit I've had since my earliest days with the series. Those days when I was hardly big enough to sit in front of the family computer, and had to quietly hush my sims for smoochin' too loud. I've been playing The Sims for a long time.

I'm under the impression this isn't a unique experience. I love listening to other simmers endlessly complain about the chore of starting fresh in The Sims, only to spend hundreds of hours meticulously crafting every home, business, and person, before they tear it all down and start again. But that's the beauty of the process, isn't it? How else would you have become the Simly scholar you are today?

That's what brings me to today's quiz: How well do you know The Sims series? Are you a life-simming veteran forged in the days of Neighborhood 1, or a more relaxed Sims 4 carpenter who builds a few things before logging off?

For your sake, I hope it's the latter; for your score's sake, I hope it's the former. Either way, give our quiz a go, and let us know how you did! And if you're craving more ways to test your knowledge of The Sims after this, try our quiz on every Sims expansion.

Full list of The Sims 4 Life & Death cheats for becoming a Reaper or maxing out your Ghost Mastery

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 20:09:15 +0000

The Sims 4's big ghost overhaul expansion turned the afterlife into an entire occult sim experience with new ghost abilities and a Soul's Journey quest to dog your sim past the grave. This full list of Life & Death cheats can help you max out your Thanatology skills, cheat to the top of the new active career as a Reaper, or quickly unlock those ultimate abilities for your ghost sims.

See our main list of Sims 4 cheats for a refresher on all the basics, or scroll down to get the trait codes you need for defying death.

Life & Death Career cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

There are two new career paths in the Live & Death Expansion: Undertaker and Reaper. If you want to become a scythe-wielding dealer of death, the Reaper career is the objective-based active career you're looking for.

Career	Cheat codes
Undertaker	careers.add_career mortician careers.remove_career mortician careers.promote mortician careers.demote mortician
Reaper	careers.add_career active_reaper careers.remove_career active_reaper careers.promote active_reaper careers.demote active_reaper

Career

Cheat codes

Undertaker

careers.add_career mortician

careers.remove_career mortician

careers.promote mortician

careers.demote mortician

Reaper

careers.add_career active_reaper

careers.remove_career active_reaper

careers.promote active_reaper

careers.demote active_reaper

Life & Death new death cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

There are a few new ways to die in Life & Death, technically, but mostly they're just new contexts for existing deaths like old age. You can find all the relevant base game death cheats in our Sims 4 cheats page. The one truly new death in the expansion is the Murder of Crows.

I have not managed to find any cheat code for the Murder of Crows death. Below I will tell you how to achieve the death quickest but I have not found a way to undo it, so proceed only if you're certain!

How to get murdered by crows

Place a "Grim Standard Ascendant Crow" from Buy Mode
Enable testingcheats true in the cheat console
Shift + Click the crow and select Cheat Relationship > Set Min Friendship
Normal click the crow and select Socialize > Provoke
Repeat the provoke action several times until the crow is "dangerously" angry

How to get unmurdered (in theory)

As mentioned above, there is not a known trait cheat to remove the death by crow status easily. Below is a way to un-ghost yourself with cheats otherwise but this method has not worked for me and when re-entering Live Mode my sim remains a crow'd ghost. Here's how to remove a cause of death:

Enable testingcheats true in the cheat console
Enable cas.fulleditmode in the cheat console
Shift + Click your sim and select "Modify in CAS"
Open the "cause of death" panel in the top left
Hover over the currently selected death and click the x to remove it
Click the ✔️ in the bottom right to save changes and exit Create-A-Sim

Life & Death skill cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

The Life & Death expansion comes with just one new skill track for Thanatology. Use the cheat testingcheats true before setting a skill level via cheat code.

Skill	Max skill cheat
Thanatology	stats.set_skill_level Minor_Thanatology 5

Life & Death trait cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

There are three new standard sim traits in this expansion: Chased By Death, Macabre, and Skeptical. You can easily add or remove these by:

Using testingcheats true in the cheat console
Using cas.fulleditmode in the cheat console
Clicking your sim and selecting "Modify in CAS"
Find all three in the "Lifestyle" traits section

You can also add or remove these traits in the cheat console with the codes below.

Personality traits

❗ Remember that Macabre and Skeptical are mutually exclusive traits. You'll have to remove one before you can add the other.

Trait	Cheat code
Chased By Death	traits.equip_trait trait_ChasedByDeath traits.remove_trait trait_ChasedByDeath
Macabre	traits.equip_trait trait_Macabre traits.remove_trait trait_Macabre
Skeptical	traits.equip_trait trait_Skeptical traits.remove_trait trait_Skeptical

Trait

Cheat code

Chased By Death

traits.equip_trait trait_ChasedByDeath

traits.remove_trait trait_ChasedByDeath

Macabre

traits.equip_trait trait_Macabre

traits.remove_trait trait_Macabre

Skeptical

traits.equip_trait trait_Skeptical

traits.remove_trait trait_Skeptical

Grief style traits

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Grief styles are part of the new system for this expansion that controls what type of mood your sim will usually experience while grieving a death. They're noted in the simology panel with all their other traits.

Grief style	Cheat code
Anger	traits.equip_trait trait_grief_anger traits.remove_trait trait_grief_anger
Blues	traits.equip_trait trait_grief_depression traits.remove_trait trait_grief_depression
Denial	traits.equip_trait trait_grief_denial traits.remove_trait trait_grief_denial
Holding It Together	traits.equip_trait trait_grief_hold traits.remove_trait trait_grief_hold

Reward traits

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Trait	Cheat code	Effects
Burning Soul	traits.equip_trait trait_MovingOn_BurningSoul_Reincarnated traits.remove_trait trait_MovingOn_BurningSoul_Reincarnated	Reward for completing the Soul's Journey that persists into your sim's next life, letting them pass down a personality trait
Ghost Whisperer	traits.equip_trait GhostWhisperer traits.remove_trait GhostWisperer	Reward trait for the Ghost Historian aspiration, which makes a sim excited when encountering ghosts and builds relationship with them faster
Grimborn	traits.equip_trait grimborn traits.remove_trait grimborn	Marks your sim as a child of the Grim Reaper with a scythe birthmark on their neck
Grim Descendant	traits.equip_trait GrimDescendant traits.remove_trait GrimDescendant	Child of a Grimborn sim, also with a scythe birthmark
Grim's Right Hand	traits.equip_trait trait_ReaperCareer_DeathReward traits.remove_trait trait_ReaperCareer_DeathReward	Reward for reaching rank 10 in the Reaper career, this sim handles grief more easily and can avoid death

Soul's Journey cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Add bucket list items

To easily add items to your sim's bucket list in the Soul's Journey section of their Aspirations panel:

Enable testingcheats true in the cheat console
Shift + Click your sim
Use the interaction path Pack Cheats > Expansion packs > EP17 - Life & Death > Add Unfinished Business Objective

From there, choose a bucket list category like "I want to create!" or "I wanna party!" which will open a menu to select a specific bucket list goal.

Earn Soul's Journey ranks

To easily complete ranks of your sim's Soul Journey, use the cheats below to jump to a particular rank. You can skip to the end of your Soul's Journey by using the highest rank cheat right off the bat.

❗You must become a ghost to progress to ranks "Newfound Purpose" and "The Big Picture" but you can use these cheats to skip ahead to the final rank after going see-through.

Soul Rank	Cheat code
The Road Ahead	stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_movingon_soulsjourney 5
Making Headway	stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_movingon_soulsjourney 10
Finding Purpose	stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_movingon_soulsjourney 15
No Regrets	stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_movingon_soulsjourney 20
Quite A Journey	stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_movingon_soulsjourney 25
Dreams Fulfilled	stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_movingon_soulsjourney 30
(Ghosts only) Newfound Purpose	stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_movingon_soulsjourney 35
(Ghosts only) The Big Picture	stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_movingon_soulsjourney 40

Ghost mastery cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

After becoming a ghost, your sim will have ghost experience points to unlock in their Simology panel like other occult sim types. To jump ghost ranks and unlock ghost powers, use these cheats below.

Ghost Mastery ranks

Ghost Rank	Cheat code
Ethereal Novice	stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_ghostpowers_ghostxp 300
Phantasmal Ascendant	stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_ghostpowers_ghostxp 700
Spectral Luminary	stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_ghostpowers_ghostxp 1600
Transcendent Wraith	stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_ghostpowers_ghostxp 3000

Ultimate Blessings

After leveling up to Transcendent Wraith rank, you can cheat your way to unlocking the good or evil Ultimate Ability as a ghost with one of the cheats below. Use the interaction category "Ghost Mastery" on another sim to either grant them longevity and need fulfillment or drain their life force and siphon their needs meters depending on your alignment.

Ultimate Ability	Cheat
Benevolent Blessing	stats.set_stat statistic_ghostpowers_good 100
Otherworldly Curse	stats.set_stat statistic_ghostpowers_evil 100

Full list of The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies cheats with skills, perks, and hidden reward traits

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 23:44:45 +0000

The Sims 4's small business-focused expansion added a couple new skills and several new panels and menus for managing your operation. With a full list of Businesses & Hobbies cheats, you can swap the alignment of your in-home hustle from lawful to shady, level up your painting and tattooing skills, or skip the work to grab some new aspiration reward traits.

See our main list of Sims 4 cheats for a refresher on all the basics, or scroll down to get the trait codes you need for unlocking those new abilities.

Pottery and Tattooing skill cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

The Businesses & Hobbies expansion comes with two new skill tracks. Use the cheat testingcheats true before setting a skill level via cheat code.

Skill	Max skill cheat
Pottery	stats.set_skill_level Major_Pottery 10
Tattooing	stats.set_skill_level Major_Tattooing 10

❗Remember that the artistic pottery reconstruction art Kintsugi is not a separate skill track. You unlock the "repair ceramic" interaction at Pottery skill level 7.

Businesses & Hobbies trait cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

There are two new standard sim traits in this expansion: Idealist and Shady. You can easily add or remove these by:

Using testingcheats true in the cheat console
Using cas.fulleditmode in the cheat console
Clicking your sim and selecting "Edit in CAS"
Find both in the "Social" traits section

You can also add or remove these traits in the cheat console with the codes below.

Standard traits

Trait	Cheat code
Idealist	traits.equip_trait trait_idealist traits.remove_trait trait_idealist
Shady	traits.equip_trait trait_shady traits.remove_trait trait_shady

Trait

Cheat code

Idealist

traits.equip_trait trait_idealist

traits.remove_trait trait_idealist

Shady

traits.equip_trait trait_shady

traits.remove_trait trait_shady

❗ Remember that Shady and Idealist are mutually exclusive traits. You'll have to remove one before you can add the other.

Reward traits

Trait	Cheat code	Effects
Beloved Brand	traits.equip_trait trait_BelovedBrand	Earn the reward trait for the Esteemed Entrepreneur aspiration to automatically have more positive reviews for your small business
Motivational Speaker	traits.equip_trait trait_MotivatingSpeaker	Earn the reward trait for the Master Mentor aspiration to give motivational speeches that improve other sims' skill gain and happiness

Hidden Traits

Trait	Cheat code	Effects
Shady NPC	traits.equip_trait trait_ShadyNPC	Take on the appearance of Trashley Reelpearson and gain the "execute heist" interaction
Raccoon Tattoo	trait.equip_trait trait_Hidden_ShadyNPC_TattooRecognized	Get a discount from shady vendor Trashley Reelpearson

Businesses & Hobbies small business cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Find the Small Business menu in the very bottom right of your interface in "Owned Businesses" where you can see your small business alignment and renown level. You can control both values with the cheats below and then open the "Small Business Perks" menu from the same panel to buy perks with your renown points.

Small Business rank cheats

The easiest way to increase your small business rank is with a Shift + Click cheat. Make sure that testingcheats true is enabled first, then Shift + Click on your sim. Use this interaction path:

Pack cheats > Expansion packs > EP18 > Increase small business renown

That interaction will move your small business rank up by one level at a time. If you want to set your small business to a specific renown level, use the cheat code values below.

Business Rank	Cheat code
Hopeful Hustle	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_SmallBusiness_Rank 200
Striving Startup	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_SmallBusiness_Rank 600
Neighborhood Gem	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_SmallBusiness_Rank 1700
Community Staple	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_SmallBusiness_Rank 3700
Local Legend	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_SmallBusiness_Rank 8300

Small business reputation cheats

The fastest way to directly set your small business alignment is with a Shift + Click cheat. Make sure that testingcheats true is enabled first, the Shift + Click your sim. Use this interaction path:

Pack cheats > Expansion packs > EP18 > Set small business alignment

You can choose any of the seven alignment values by selecting their name. You can also achieve the same thing with these cheat codes:

Business reputation	Cheat code
Nefarious	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_SmallBusiness_Reputation 0
Neutral	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_SmallBusiness_Reputation 200
Virtuous	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_SmallBusiness_Reputation 400

Skill Mastery perk cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

This expansion introduced skill mastery perks with powerful skill-boosting side effects which you can find at the top of the Skills panel. You can unlock these perks naturally, buy Mastery Perk potions from the Satisfaction Points rewards menu, or just cheat them. Your sim can only have four skill mastery points at once, so you can use the cheats below to add or remove them at will.

traits.equip_trait [trait code]
traits.remove_trait [trait code]

Perk	Cheat code	Trait effects
Aspirational Creator	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_AspirationalCreator	Earn Satisfaction Points for crafting excellent quality items
Aspirational Thinker	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_AspirationalThinker	Earn Satisfaction Points while doing mental skills
Active Aura	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_AuraActive	Unlocks "Activate active aura" on self to help others nearby gain active skills faster
Creative Aura	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_AuraCreative	Unlocks "Activate creative aura" on self to help others nearby gain creative skills faster
Mental Aura	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_AuraMental	Unlocks "Activate mental aura" on self to help others nearby gain mental skills faster
Final Touch	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_FinalTouch	Unlocks "Add final touch" on crafted objects to improve their quality
In the Zone	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_InTheZone	Enter a state of focus without Needs decay
Mental Exercise	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_MentalExercise	Stay muscular with high mental skills
Pigeonholed Active	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_PigeonholedActive	Gain active skills faster, but others slower
Pigeonholed Creative	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_PigeonholedCreative	Gain creative skills faster, but others slower
Pigeonholed Mental	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_PigeonholedMental	Gain mental skills faster, but others slower
Pigeonholed Social	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_PigeonholedSocial	Gain social skills faster, but others slower
Power Performer	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_PowerfulPerformer	Gain relationship with audiences while performing and make their negative emotions vanish
Second Wind	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_SecondWind	Become revitalized while exercising
Secret Spice	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_SecretSpice	Increase the quality of food with just a little extra spice
Skillful Sleep	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_SkillfulSleep	Unlocks "skillful sleep" on beds that summons a ghostly "projection" to practice skills while you slumber
Spacebender	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_Spacebender	Unlocks "spacebend here" on terrain so you can teleport
Stronger With Age	traits.equip_trait trait_MasteryPerk_StrongerWithAge	Lose energy very slowly and never become Dangerously Tired

'Sims don't plan anything' says former Sims 4 developer, though he always wanted to program them to: 'it's always shot down, rightfully so'

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 13:10:00 +0000

At their core, sims are hedonistic little squirrels constantly meeting their needs one moment at a time without any ability to think through a sequence of actions. That's by design, one Sims 4 developer says, but he always wanted sims to have a more thoughtful approach to their own lives when left to their own devices.

David "Rez" Graham is now the director of game programming at San Francisco's Academy of Art University and the developer on his own unannounced game, but served as lead AI programmer for the original release of The Sims 4 over a decade ago. In an interview with PC Gamer, Graham shared the challenges inherent in making more autonomous sims.

(Image credit: Maxis, Electronic Arts)

"Sims don't plan anything," Graham explained. The Sims approximates how humans make decisions, but at any moment, they're constantly reassessing what they should do one objective at a time. "They run AI on a cadence and say 'what is the next thing that I want based on my motives, traits, whatever?'"

A player can fill up a sim's action queue with a series of tasks in a sensible order, but a sim can't autonomously decide to go to bed early so they have time to exercise before work in the morning like a person would, for instance. They stay up playing video games until 2 am which, yeah, painfully realistic, but not quite intentionally so.

"I've always wanted to have some level of planning in The Sims," Graham said. The lead AI programmer on The Sims 3 attempted it, he said, after which Graham himself attempted it on The Sims 4.

"It's always shot down, rightfully so, because the problem with game AI is you have to telegraph it," Graham said. He described watching someone ride up an escalator in front of him just minutes before and, after reaching the third floor, immediately turning around and riding the escalator back down.

"If we were in a game, somebody would laugh about that and say that's a bug or that that guy's entire job is to go up and down the escalators forever to show the illusion of life in a city. In reality, that guy was probably just like 'oh, I'm not supposed to be on the third floor.'"

(Image credit: Maxis, Electronic Arts)

A player watching that happen, Graham said, would need to see the character have some kind of reaction like a dialogue bubble or a spoken line to say "Oops, I'm on the wrong floor!" for them to believe that something intentional had happened.

Finding a way to telegraph the "thought process" behind a sequential set of actions a sim might take does sound like a pretty monumental task. If a sim could plan for that early morning workout, how would you show a player that going to sleep before the sim was tired was done with intent, and was not a bug?

More than that though, too much autonomous planning by a sim, even if done perfectly, may remove the fun for players, Graham said. "A big part of The Sims is players telling stories. As soon as sims have too much autonomy, then what is the player doing except watching a fish tank?"

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Graham said that he considers himself a "storyteller" type player in The Sims, turning off aging and living out each life stage until he's ready to move on, so he can relate to not wanting to have the game wrest too much control away from him.

He believes there probably is a middle ground between fish tank-ifying the simulation and sims having no ability to plan ahead whatsoever, but he can see why the idea hasn't ever stuck.

"So many ideas that we had on The Sims got shut down," Graham said later on, talking about the balance needed to maintain scope and ship a game in a studio the size of Maxis compared with his current indie project. "Correctly shut down because they were crazy ideas!"

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'I took those files and deleted them': Former Sims 4 developer says he totally rewrote the sims' AI in the middle of development and 'that was a scary thing to do'

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:39:05 +0000

It's an accepted fact by Sims players that no matter how well you think you know the game, sims have a mind of their own. Sometimes you can wrestle them into behaving the way you want with arcane tricks of furniture placement or by installing mods. If you're one of Maxis' programmers, though, and you're in an "ask for forgiveness instead of permission" kind of mood, maybe you just rewrite the entire under-the-hood AI in about a week during development.

Former Maxis developer David "Rez" Graham is now the director of game programming at San Francisco's Academy of Art University but worked QA back on 1999's Sim City 3000, and by the time of The Sims 4 was serving as lead AI programmer. That's AI in the "programmed NPC behavior" sense, not in the generative AI sense.

(Image credit: Maxis, Electronic Arts)

One of the stories he likes to tell from that time: completely overhauling the AI logic inside every sim's brain right in the middle of development.

"The core of the AI for The Sims 4 took me a month—maybe not even that—to write, and then two to three years of iteration," Graham said in an interview with PC Gamer. "At one point, I rewrote the core of the AI, just rewrote it, and that was a scary thing to do."

Graham had two computers at work, he recalled: one for development and one that just ran the build of the game. "I'm not happy with what's happening," he said of playing the build of The Sims 4 at that time. "I mean, it's working. I'm just not happy with it. [Sims] weren't choosing the behaviors that I wanted. They weren't solving for their motives in the way that I wanted to solve for them, and I'm just like 'there is such a better way to do this.'"

Graham didn't go completely rogue in the way you'll sometimes hear from the war stories of developers at big studios in the aughts, but he did take a gamble. The Sims 4 was approaching an alpha state, at which point there was no way he'd get approval to flip the table on the whole AI system. For about a week, Graham spent his nights working away on a separate development branch until around 11pm until it was in a state he was happy with.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

He went to his boss, The Sims 4's lead gameplay engineer Peter Ingebretson, and claimed he wanted to rewrite the AI. "He gave me this look. It's a look that I'll treasure forever, of: 'what you just said sounded crazy, but also I'm willing to hear you out.'"

Graham spent the next hour convincing Ingerbretson, mathematically, of how he wanted to rebuild The Sims 4's logic, which is when he revealed the truth: "Here's the cherry on top: I've already done it though."

Graham got approval for the extra time needed to finish shoring up his new AI logic and time with a member of Maxis' QA team to do the initial round of debugging before taking his changes to the wider team. "To everyone's credit, they instilled a huge amount of trust and said: yeah, okay, let's do it," Graham said. One big stack of bugs later, he was ready to make the swap to the new AI for The Sims 4.

"It was one of the best projects, one of the most interesting projects, I ever worked on because as a developer most of the time you walk into a project that has some establishment," Graham said. "For The Sims 4 there was a very, very basic, weighted random [system] that chose actions and nothing else. There was very little in the AI. So it was the first time that I got to really sit down and build the AI from nothing. I mean I took those files and deleted them.

"I don't know how many AI programmers get to do that."

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The Sims announces a Creation Club-style Marketplace and Maker program enabling content creators to sell their work directly to players

andy.chalk@pcgamer.com (Andy Chalk) — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 18:15:34 +0000

Sims 4 players who want more stuff in their game will soon be able to "discover, purchase, and play" new content via the Sims 4 Marketplace, an "in-game destination" unveiled by EA today. And for those who prefer to make (and sell) that content, it also announced the Sims Maker Program, which will enable approved content creators to publish their work directly to the Sims 4 Marketplace, and earn money for their work.

The new Marketplace "is fully integrated into The Sims 4," EA said, enabling players to browse and purchase Maker Packs—"a curated collection of Create a Sim and/or Build/Buy items created by a Maker"—and other content using Moola, a new virtual currency. Creators will set the cost of each Maker Pack, and will earn 30% of their Maker Pack sales—so if someone purchases the Snazzy Living Room pack for 400 Moola, for instance, the creator will earn $1.20.

This new program will not replace free content: EA said content creators can continue to offer their work for free on other platforms, under the terms of its standard policy, although content available elsewhere cannot be sold through the Marketplace. Standard Sims 4 content, like expansions, Game Packs, and Stuff Packs, will also still be available for purchase through regular channels using real money.

The Sims 4 Marketplace and Maker program sounds more than a little like Bethesda's Creation Club, which rolled out to some controversy not quite a decade ago and has since proven to be either not a bad idea after all, or maybe just something we all got used to, depending on how you look at these things.

It's a different world now than it was then, though, and I think there's a lot more room for something like this to succeed (or at least to be given a fair shot), especially among Sims fans, who have demonstrated time and again that they don't mind paying for what they want.

Many Sims modders already get paid for their work through things like Patreon, but EA's enforcement of its policies around selling Sims 4 custom content has been unreliable and the community has a sticky relationship with paid mods as a result. An official Maker Program means EA takes a cut instead of another platform, but may at least mean the rules are clearer. This will bring official custom content to console players for the first time, which is a nice bonus.

Electronic Arts

The Sims 4 Marketplace is set to launch on PC and Mac on March 17, and will come to consoles "in the next couple of months"—no solid date on those platforms just yet, sorry. If you want to sign up for the Maker program, you can dive into that process at ea.com. You'll have to be at least 18 if you want to get in on the action, be "comfortable communicating in English," live in a non-embargoed region, and have an account in good standing. Assuming you've got those bases covered, you'll also have to submit two examples of your work for a "technical evaluation." Applications for the Maker program will open on March 5.

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All the Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy cheats you need to attain a noble lifestyle without the effort

Grace Dean — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:30:32 +0000

The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy expansion allows players to join dynasties and become nobles for the very first time. Rising up the ranks or choosing to take down your rivals is a game of patience, drama, and unforeseen consequences. Luckily, a public peeing scandal couldn’t stop my rise to power for long.

But, as with any The Sims 4 expansion, there’s cheat codes that can make your journey a little easier. So, whether you’re aspiring to become the head of a Dynasty or ruler of the entire Kingdom of Ondarion, the path doesn’t have to be so treacherous. From fulfilling the Social Puppeteer aspiration to earning a quick and easy Noble promotion, here’s all the cheats you need to know in The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy.

How to enable The Sims 4 cheats

Before you can use the cheats in The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy expansion, you need to enable them. Simply press Ctrl + Shift + C to open the cheat console in the upper left-hand corner. Then type your cheat codes into the console and press enter to activate them.

If you’re looking to use the shift + click cheats from this guide, the first cheat you'll need to enter is "testingCheats true". This enables a lot of freedom to use The Sims 4 cheats, and in Royalty & Legacy, it’s especially handy for shifting Favor and enabling Power Shift events.

The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy skill cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

The new Swordsmanship skill will enable you to rise up the Noble career ranks, defeat opponents in duels, and even potentially pull the Simcalibur sword from the magic stone. Here’s how to level up quickly:

Stats.set_skill_level major_Swordmanship 10

The max skill level for Swordsmaship is 10, but you can enter any value up to 10 to pick a more specific skill level.

The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy trait cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

If you’re looking for an easier way to get the Threadshifter trait than working out how to complete Anansi’s Trials, then there’s a cheat for you. Plus, there’s other traits you can equip if you’re looking to possess Noble standing:

Traits.equip_trait trait_Threadshifter - equip Threadshifter trait
Traits.remove_trait trait_Threadshifter - remove Threadshifter trait
Traits.equip_trait trait_noblecareer_BlueBlood - equip Blue Blood trait
Traits.equip_trait trait_noblecareer_Promised - equip Promised Noble Inheritance
Traits.equip_trait trait_noblecareer_ExRank - equip Former Noble Hustler
Traits.equip_trait trait_noblecareer_RegalRomancer - equip Regal Romancer

The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy career cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Learning how to become a noble in The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy isn’t as linear as the usual career paths, but if you want to cut out the middleman, here’s the cheats that’ll help you:

Careers.add_career Noble - to join the Noble career
Careers.promote Noble - earn a Noble promotion
Careers.demote Noble - earn a Noble demotion

The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy dynasty cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

To rule a great dynasty, you need prestige and unity. Luckily, you can cheat your way there, as any mischievous ruler might do:

Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_prestige 0 - for Prestige level 0
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_prestige 100 - for Prestige level 1
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_prestige 450 - for Prestige level 2
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_prestige 1350 - for Prestige level 3
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_prestige 3300 - for Prestige level 4
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_prestige 6700 - for Prestige level 5
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_prestige 11100 - for Prestige level 6
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_prestige 16100 - for Prestige level 7
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_prestige 21100 - for Prestige level 8
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_prestige 26100 - for Prestige level 9
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_prestige 31100 - for Prestige level 10
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_unity 0-44 - for a Crisis state
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_unity 45-84 - for a Neutral state
Stats.set_stat rankedstatistic_Dynasty_unity 85-130 - for a Stable state

The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy aspiration cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

The Social Puppeteer aspiration has many devious and sometimes tricky milestones you need to complete. The final reward is an Ironclad Reputation, meaning you can’t be extorted and you also have a much better chance of extorting others. If you want the trait without all the hassle, you can use this cheat:

Aspirations.complete_current_milestone - to complete the Social Puppeteer aspiration

The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy death cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

In Royalty & Legacy, there’s a new way to cause a Sim’s death and that’s by tampering with the new cuckoo clock item. Make it easier by using this cheat:

Traits.equip_trait trait_Ghost_SecretPassageway - death by cuckoo clock

The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy shift+click cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

As long as you’ve followed the instructions for enabling shift+click cheats mentioned above, you’ll be able to select your Sim and pick "EP21 - Royalty & Legacy…"

Under this branch, you’ll see "Noble Favor…" which gives you a choice to pick level 1, 2 or 3 in favor of the Commoners or level 1, 2 or 3 for Royal favor. You can also choose level 0 which will give you neutral favor.

There’s also "Power Shift Events…" where you can either "Create Crystal Slippers" to find crystal slippers in your Sim’s inventory which they can wear at Grand Balls to enhance charisma. Or "Create Noble Frog" which will also then appear in your inventory. From there, you can choose to kiss said Noble frog and marry them.

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How to become a noble in The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy

Grace Dean — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:02:27 +0000

In The Sims 4: Royalty & Legacy, there’s a new active career: becoming a noble and leading a (somewhat) life of leisure. Your sim will work their way up to eventually ruling a kingdom, whilst navigating scandals, earning "favor," and spending a lot of time on the throne.

But, joining the noble career doesn’t take the usual linear path of choosing to ‘Find a Job’ on a phone or computer. No, that’s for commoners. To become a noble, there are a number of different ways to join, ranging in levels of difficulty, as well as possibly setting you back a Simoleon… or 3,000. It’s the best paid job in all the land though, so you’ll make your investment back in just five days. Here are all three ways to become a noble in The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy:

Research your noble legacy
Find a high-ranked noble
Buy a throne

How to become a noble in The Sims 4

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Research noble legacy

This is a simple way to join the noble career path, and all you need is the book, "The Duchess Diaries: A History of Nobility". Fortunately you can find it on any bookshelf around Ondarion. If for some reason you can’t find it, you can also buy it for 20 simoleons from your bookshelf or on a computer like any other book.

Choose the option "Research Noble Legacy" and you’ll learn about the "fantastical drama of Duchess Dalina who was pressured to abdicate by her mother when she caused the Mice Rebellion by cooking too much grilled cheese, or the well-known Count Steven V who attempted to split the inheritance between his 27 children." Just a hint at the scandals that can be unleashed in Royalty & Legacy, and your ticket to the throne.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Find a high-ranked noble

Another way to become a noble is to find someone already excelling in the career. To determine who’s a high-ranked noble, you can access the Kingdom Manager in the top right of the Manage Worlds screen. Here, you’ll get a list of all the nobles in the kingdom, starting from the highest ranking.

Once you’ve figured out who is a high-ranked noble (level four or above), pay them a visit and select "Request Knighthood" under the "Friendly" interaction category. This option will be available immediately, but there’s also the option to "Attempt Introduction," which you might want to try first. It’s likely they won’t want to talk to you and if they don’t know you, they’re also unlikely to give you a knighthood. It takes a while to ingratiate yourself and with much easier options out there, I’d recommend leaving this one as a last resort. If you fancy a challenge, try increasing your Charisma and Swordsmanship skills and then just keep badgering them.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Buy a throne

Thrones are a new item in the Buy/Build mode for Royalty & Legacy and they’re also the key to becoming a noble. There’s two kinds; Majestic and Ornate, costing 2,500 and 3,000 Simoleons respectively. Once you’ve purchased one and placed it in your home, you interact with it and choose "Join Noble Career."

It’s as simple as that and, to be honest, you’re going to need the throne for a lot of your noble duties, so you’ll have to buy one eventually anyway. If you’re not ready to invest though, you can invite yourself into the home of one of the noble families in Ondarion and use their throne to join the career path.

How to inherit a noble title

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

A sneaky fourth option? Not quite. While you can bestow your noble title to members of your family from spouse to children (teen or older), they’ll need to be part of the noble career to be able to inherit it. Once they’ve joined the noble career though, they don’t have to rise in the ranks. All they have to do is wait for you to abdicate or pass away and they’ll inherit the noble career level you’ve worked so hard for.

If they have a higher title than the one they'd inherit, they’ll keep their current title instead. Or, if they’ve been promised a noble title from someone else that is higher, that will trump yours. Either way, you can join the career and do none of the work. If you don’t promise anyone your noble title and you lose it (say through extortion) any spouse or child living in the Kingdom and in the noble career can select the throne and "Claim Lost Career Rank."

How to get promoted in the Noble career

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

It’s also worth talking about how to get promoted in the noble career, which is also not as linear as usual progression. Your sim will still need to complete tasks and earn their ticks to reach promotion-ready status, but instead of it being automatic, you must select the throne and choose "Noble Promotion." From level three onwards, you can also choose to "Receive Promotion through Coronation Speech" or "Receive Promotion through Coronation Ceremony."

If you want to avoid the pomp, you can always just choose "Noble Promotion" and it’ll trigger immediately. Looking for an even quieter royal life? You can enable automatic career progression in the pack settings menu and if you qualify, it’ll happen at 7am.

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How to complete Anansi's Trials in The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy

Grace Dean — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:01:25 +0000

In The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy expansion, there's now a whole new world of exploring your social standing, noble ranking, dynasty prowess, and focusing on your rise to the top (and stepping on people's heads to get there). Amongst all the scandal and bravado, there are new mysterious events to uncover called Power Shifts.

From pulling the magical "Simcalibur" sword from a stone to kissing frogs and turning them into a Sim you can romance, Power Shifts are often fairytale inspired but not all of them are good. In fact, there's one Power Shift that'll encourage you to cause mischief, be deceitful, and spread secrets: Anansi's Trials. This crafty spider character wants to reward you for being naughty. So, it's time to spin your very own web and unlock a new Trait.

Anansi's Well location

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Where is Anansi's Well?

In Ondarion, the world in the Royalty & Legacy expansion, travel to the Darong Dynasty residence located in Dambele. It's a massive mansion also called Dambele Palace.

Once there, head left slightly from the main residence and you'll see Anansi's Well hidden within a courtyard. The well is unique, displaying a spider-like structure at the top and is situated within a spiderweb of tiles surrounding it. You'll also notice spiders crawling around the well that your Sim may well be frightened of.

How to complete Anansi's Trials

First, you need to interact with Anansi's Well by selecting "Examine Anansi's Well". A poem will pop up that reads: "Anansi, sly weaver of tales untold. Calls forth a Sim both curious and bold. To enter his Trials is to dance with the sly, Where riddles twist under the spider's eye. The wise earns boons from challenges met, But careless Sims find tangled debt." This marks the first of many riddles.

You can then 'Ask for Anansi's Advice' which will cost you one Simoleon. This isn't a necessary part of the trials, but may help you solve clues or hint at things that could happen deeper within the Trials. You have to wait a while before you can ask for more advice, but the advice does seem to be different each time.

Trial One: Weave a Story

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

To accept your first trial, select "Trials…" then "Trial One: Weave a Story". You'll notice the other three trials, but you can only complete them in order.

The riddle is as follows: "Spin a tale with wit and weight. Speak a story, and let Anansi decide your fate." You'll also notice a moodlet that says you've started the trial and you've got three days to complete it. So, it's best to get to work.

For this riddle, you need to find a Sim and tell them a story in the "Friendly" section of the interaction menu. It doesn't matter where you head, but I opted for Ye Olde Voyager, the new bar in Verdemar. A nearby option would be the new Backroom lot that appears to be a library, that has a hidden nightclub on the floor below.

Once you've told a stranger a story, Anansi will pass judgement. Fortunately, it seems he's pretty pleased with most stories you tell. You'll get a Confident moodlet and be able to move onto the next trial.

Trial Two: Offer a Secret

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Head back to Anansi's Well and this time select the second Trial. The riddle here is: "Whisper what hides beneath your smile. Hold a secret too tightly and the web may twist, but share it and Anansi's favor finds you." It seems Anansi loves secrets and it's time for you to share a secret with someone.

First, you'll want to have a secret to share and that's done in a number of ways in the Royalty & Legacy expansion. You can simply select "Gossip…" and ask Sims for secrets (as long as you have mutual acquaintances), you can research your own family tree in the Family Tree Compendium, or you can buy secrets from the Information Broker on a computer.

After sharing the secret, you'll get Anansi's approval and a Fine moodlet allowing you to move onto the third Trial. Back to the well!

Trial Three: Spin the Web

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

For Trial Three, the riddle is as follows: "Weave a trick. Twist a thread. Let another stumble while you rise. Let Anansi judge if you are clever enough to dance in the web."

For this one, you don't have to be part of the Noble career, but it does unlock a new interaction if you want to give it a try. Then, you can "Lie About Royal Lineage" under the Mischief category. Alternatively, you can always "Lie about Career".

Anansi loves it when you tell a lie, proving your deceitful nature, and prompting him to open up Trial Four.

Trial Four: Fulfill The Thread

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

The fourth and final Trial will take you a little longer, unless you're already skilled up in Writing. The riddle reads: "Gather the words that linger in your mind, and bind them to the page. If written with excellence, it will endure gracefully in Anansi's web. This is your final trial."

For this, you need to write a story, but, not just any old story, an excellent one. So, you'll need to get your writing skill up. I tried writing a book at level 1, 2, 3 and 4 and Anansi didn't like them. At skill level 5 though, I wrote a book that was of "Excellent" quality and he finally gave me the reward for completing his trials. If you really don't want to spend time on the writing grind, you can always use Sims 4 cheats to increase your skill level.

Anansi's Trials rewards

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Once you've completed all four of Anansi's Trials you are rewarded with the Threadshifter Trait. This trait will allow you to shift Favor and rewrite your social standing.

To do this, you'll have a new interaction when you click on your Sim that says "Shift Favor". By selecting this option, you can switch between having Favor with the Commoners and Favor with the Royals, depending on what suits your situation. You won't be able to do this whenever you like though, you'll have to wait a while between each swap.

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A public peeing scandal couldn’t stop my rise to power for long in The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy

Grace Dean — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:00:55 +0000

For a Live mode fanatic, The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy expansion is a regal delight. Not only can your sim become the ruler of the entire kingdom or the head of a dynasty, but the path you take to get there can be embroiled in scandal with lashings of explosive drama.

The Royalty & Legacy expansion may have coincided almost perfectly with Valentine’s Day, but while throwing grand balls and rising to the top as a royal power couple is one option, there’s some real fun to be had by being messy and unfaithful too.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Buying and selling secrets, exposing scandals, extorting friends and even family are dastardly ways to secure your place at the top of society. But I found it's all too easy to topple from the spotlight with a scandal as simple as accidental public urination.

The fragility of noble dignity

In Royalty & Legacy, you can join the Noble career, working your way up to become the highest-ranking in all the land. You can also pursue the new life aspiration "Social Puppeteer" by finding and spreading secrets about other sims. I wanted to see what I could achieve with such power, creating Constance who I played by ascending the Noble ranks to become Queen. After achieving that, I decided to rock her world with a scandal, enlisting her husband, Rami, to cheat and trigger a divorce.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

That royal rift meant I could take advantage of the new events called Power Shifts, one of which I can trigger by kissing a frog. So, Constance did just that, rebounding from her broken marriage with an amphibian smooch, which turned into a woman named Presley who became her wife.

That could have been scandalous enough already. But then, Presley peed herself in public. It wasn’t meant to happen. I was too busy forcing Presley to carry out Noble tasks like practicing her Swordsmanship skill and replying to Noble mail. My plan was to have Presley challenge Constance for the Throne. Toppling a dynasty wasn’t on the cards yet, it turned out, as Presley ruined her reputation by emptying her neglected bladder in the street. Before the expansion, her public urination would’ve resulted in an "embarrassed" moodlet and a dire need to take a shower. In Royalty & Legacy, if people witness such a shameful event, well, you’ve got a scandal on your hands and it’s what people do with these scandals that make all the difference.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Scandals can happen in a number of ways. There’s practicing voodoo on other Sims, kissing frogs—which no one witnessed Constance doing—having a sordid affair, birthing a secret love child, and even sending fake breakup letters. It’s not entirely clear how many scandals you can make happen, but I certainly enjoyed finding out. Peeing in public seemed like a fairly mediocre scandal, and yet it catapulted Presley into usurping an entire dynasty.

Instead of covering for Presley by promising to keep the secret, which Queen Constance could have done, I opted to have her extort her own wife into abdicating her noble title. Why? Well, as I mentioned, Presley was working her way up the Noble rankings, and could have eventually earned the right to duel the Queen for her place on the throne, a threat Constance could not suffer. After all, only one sim per world can hold the title for ruling the realm.

A villain is born

Despite earning "favor" with the royals, an interesting new concept that allows you to carry out particular tasks to win said favor, and holding court to help the Sims of Ondarion with their problems, the Queen’s betrayal became Presley’s villain origin story. Scorned and angry at the Queen for taking her noble title, I decided to pivot Presley into becoming fully toxic, plotting to pull the same abdication scam on the head of a dynasty. In some ways, this felt like my own villain origin story, an unexpected revelation from the Royalty & Legacy expansion—and one I loved.

Armed with her notebook, where you can record and check the secrets you know, Presley headed to the computer to buy as many secrets as possible from the information broker, a mysterious sim named Connie Fidential (get it?) that will buy and sell you the secrets of other sims.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

But, Presley’s target wasn’t the queen. No, that partnership had already ended in divorce and Presley no longer had her sights set on crown and court. As Presley grew tired of living in the shadows, a divorced ex-frog with a bladder problem, she set her sights on Enzo Alto, a dynasty head who's conveniently single by default.

When you know a secret about someone, you can expose it either just by word of mouth or on social media. But, one simple scandal wouldn’t be enough to stop Enzo being the head of his dynasty. All that would cause is a bit of embarrassment and a purple cloud following him around before eventually lifting after a few days.

Secrets only last a certain amount of time before "fading", which can be tracked in the notebook. Enzo's secret penchant for voodoo had a seven day timer, so Presley had to move fast. Trouble is, you have to live in the same household as the head of the Dynasty in order to join in, giving Presley her opening to topple it. So, the seduction began. It didn’t take much. It never does in The Sims 4, right? A barrage of flirting, suave kisses, and even a quick WooHoo in the new "secret passageway" behind a cuckoo clock and Enzo was thoroughly charmed.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Toppling a dynasty

Married and moved in, it was time to strike. Armed with the several secrets she’d brought from the information broker, Presley chose to extort Enzo to take over as dynasty head. He handed it over with a surprising amount of dignity and even a hug, completing Presley's ascent from frog to riches.

And while there’s a "unity" standing in your dynasty that dictates whether you’re stable in your relationships or in crisis, Presley bringing down the Alto dynasty didn’t cause too much disruption. It was almost like she was destined to take over all along.

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It's been 7 years since the last Fallout game, so one gamer took matters into their own hands and made an entire Vault in the Sims

Issy van der Velde — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 17:26:31 +0000

I love Fallout, but we haven't had a new Fallout videogame in quite some time. Sure, I could go and replay Fallout 3—the best one—but why go to the Wasteland when you can bring the Wasteland to you? That's what realgrillgamer thought (I assume) when they made their very own Fallout Vault in The Sims 4.

This isn't just some house with a few bits of extra Fallout-themed furniture modded in—although there is an awful lot of custom material in there—it's a three-tiered bunker complete with gear-shaped doorway plonked right in the middle of the desert. Vault 18 took "over 90 hours to build, and it’s still not done," writes the creator on Reddit, where they go by HeyR.

I built a Vault in the Sims! from r/thesims

Vault 18 is chock-full of detail. There's a communal space like the one from Lucy's Vault in the Fallout TV show, hallways filled with chairs and potted plants, even an Overseer's office complete with the iconic desk.

I have to admit, with Sims 4's glossy sheen over everything, Vault 18 actually looks like a pleasant place to live. Not like those experimental death traps in the games and show. The only problem is the lack of sleeping space—there are just two bedrooms, so I assume everyone sleeps at their work stations. Or, maybe it's only for the ultra-rich and only two families could afford to secure their spot.

If you're wondering why someone would go to all this effort, realgrillgamer's Tumblr blog—which goes by yet another name, juliussims—has the answers. Their bio reads: "A mostly vintage Sims blog. If it's art deco or Bauhaus, I'm into it."

Fallout's retrofuturist aesthetic is a staple of its visual identity. While it mostly leans on 1950's American iconography mixed with some old-fashioned sci-fi, there's a good dash of art deco in there, too, especially in the surface-level pre-war buildings.

If you want to check out the designs for yourself, you can find them on the Sims Gallery by searching the creator's name there, realgrillgamer.

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Of course there's a tiny Bridgerton reference in The Sims Royalty & Legacy expansion because it's basically a Lady Whistledown simulation

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:18:11 +0000

The next Sims 4 expansion, Royalty & Legacy, launches next week and the details we've seen so far are all to do with family legacy and scandals. Coincidentally (or likely not) it's landing right in the middle of season 4 of Bridgerton, the regency era romance TV show that is also all about the scandals of capital 'S' Society. The new expansion essentially puts you in the role of chief gossip columnist Lady Whistledown, uncovering and spreading secrets about the nobility.

Gameplay screenshots are from the preview build of Royalty & Legacy which not final and is subject to change.

We're all Whistledown now

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

The new life aspiration for Royalty & Legacy is "Social Puppeteer" with goals like discovering secrets of other sims, extorting them with those secrets, and exposing them to ignite a scandal that damages reputations. Eventually I'm meant to work my way up to finding out secrets about the Robin Hood-like "Royal Robber" character and becoming friends with the shady information broker.

Secrets and scandals are all tracked in my sim's notebook with details about each secret's severity and how long before it "fades into obscurity" and ceases being useful, which is usually a matter of a few days or a week for "major" secrets. Any secrets of their own are also logged in the notebook.

It's all so very Whistledown-like that I went digging to see if there was a reference to the show anywhere in the expansion the way The Sims often adds easter eggs in the descriptions for in-game items. The cheeky Bridgerton reference is tucked away on a new rug item, of all things. The two pieces of the "This Rug Is Made For Walking Rug by Regalissimo" have little nods to the opening greeting of each of Lady Whistledown's publications, saying "Nothing can end your dynasty, dear reader" and "The land that you see in front of you, dear reader?"

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Quite good timing on that, after an early episode of the latest Bridgerton season that premiered just two weeks ago really hangs a lantern on it when Queen Charlotte asks Penelope "Lady Whistledown" Bridgerton to recite her upcoming publication aloud, specifically demanding she begin with "Dear reader."

Sims of Society

It's only a tiny nod, but the comparisons are only going to pile up higher when Royalty & Legacy launches just a couple weeks ahead of Bridgerton season 4 part 2. There are already dozens of player-made Bridgerton families waiting to be downloaded from the gallery including several based on the season's romantic lead Sophie Baek.

Choose a household, dear player. (Image credit: Electronic arts)

Royalty & Legacy's new features around family trees and hidden family connections play into this season of Bridgerton pretty darn well too. In the expansion, family trees can have "secret connections" and "forged connections", meaning you can play out some extra realism of Sophie's story as a nobleman's illegitimate daughter. All the eager Live Mode players are going to have a lot of new dramatic storyline possibilities when they dig into the web of family connections you can create.

From just a few hours with the preview build of Royalty & Legacy I did see a lot of potential for dramatic storylines but I did feel, again, that life sims should be strategy games. Asking a sim for a secret about a mutual acquaintance gives a popup where I can accept or reject the secret as true and I wish that digging for secrets would just result in one being generated whether I like it or not, adding risk to my choice to go looking for them.

Electronic Arts

That's likely to be a monkey's paw request though, because my secret digging so far has resulted in multiple instances of the same secrets for several different sims—a love affair with the base game burglar Robin Banks or some illicit use of voodoo dolls. There are definitely more fun kinds of secrets to uncover (secret relationships, secret children, etc) but it feels like I might have to play both sides of the chess board to make them happen.

We'll have more to say about Royalty & Legacy after playing the launch version of the expansion on February 12, but here are some other little bits and features I picked up after a few hours with the pre-release build:

Noble Decrees can be enacted by reaching level 5 or higher in the Noble career
Noble Decrees are a bit like lot effects that apply to the entire kingdom, things like increased skill gains, higher cooked food quality, or increased rates of twins
The reward trait for completing the Social Puppeteer aspiration is an "Ironclad Reputation" that makes a sim immune to extortion via secrets
Non-noble and base game sims can also have secrets
You can use the Family Tree Tapestry item to forge a family connection to another sim
The Royal Robber can sometimes leave a gift of simoleons outside your door
There are 10 ranks of nobility for a kingdom and you can change the title names (masculine, feminine, and neutral) for all of them in the kingdom editing menu from neighborhood view
You can extort a dynasty head to forgive or name outcasts, change heirs, receive "favor", make rivalries or alliances, abdicate their position, or just for money

As a Sims 4 Build Mode freak, today's free update is way more important than the new expansion

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 22:47:25 +0000

The next expansion for The Sims 4 is all about royal dynasties, family secrets, and scandals. While I love that for everyone who was dying for some new family tree features, that's all squarely in the realm of Live Mode and I am a staunch Build Mode woman. I almost don't feel tempted by Royalty & Legacy at all because The Sims 4 dropped something that was made just for me in a new base game update: more staircase customization.

The Sims 4's pre-expansion base game update happened today and yes, there's some family tree stuff in there too but I don't care because, I am quite serious, look at these stairs:

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Those are flared stairs—how grand! Of course the new feature is supposed to pair well with all the big ballrooms EA wants you to build to host dramatic waltzes in the expansion, but as someone who rarely hits the play button I will just be here tweaking the railings for about five hours.

As briefly described in the patch notes, you can add a flare to the top or bottom of a staircase, either symmetrically or asymmetrically, which is an admirable amount of forethought for how us Build Mode freaks are going to want to use it. I jumped in quickly to test it out and it basically works how asymmetric roof gables do: a new pair of arrows at the bottom and top of the steps that you can use to widen the end (with certain width intervals) and holding shift to drag just one side at a time.

We can also now apply stair rails to just one side or the other of a staircase and change the length of the rail so that it stops partway down. Great for ballrooms, sure, but suburban McMansions with forked staircases are going to get a little glitter from this update too. Interestingly you can also have a railing stop before the top of stairs, not just the bottom.

This isn't quite as revolutionary a change as when configurable stair bends were added but still, this is going to keep me busy for a bit.

Here's what else got added in today's February 3 base game update:

Family tree relationship labels for in-laws, half siblings, great grandparents, step parents and step children, and more
Autonomous flirting between in-laws and step-relatives now prohibited by being close relatives
Flared stairs
Customized stair railings
"Africana" style filter in Create-A-Sim
Jewel-tone metallic nail swatches
"Lost Legacies" four-week gameplay event begins

The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy launches next week on February 12 and yes, it will have a bunch of new Build Mode items in it as expansions always do. Seriously though, I'm just happy with new stair tool toys.

The Sims 4's most notorious sex mod gets launched 400,000 times a day, which is more people than I realized were even playing The Sims every day

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 20:52:40 +0000

Boldly I will log onto the internet today and admit I am boring. I've never installed Wicked Whims. The notorious adult content addon is one of the biggest Sims 4 mods out there, quickly updated after every official patch as fans lament they can't bear to play without it. It sure feels like everyone but me is Wicked-pilled, which may not be far from the truth: The mod's creator says that it gets launched an astonishing 400,000 times per day.

German news site Taz (Die Tageszeitung) published an interview this week with Turbodriver, the modder behind Wicked Whims and its less naughty equivalent Wonderful Whims. It's a bit of a drive-by in which Turbodriver only briefly touches on topics like being compensated for modding, access to adult content online, and whether he finds his mods controversial.

The details about himself he's willing to share (his identity not among them), mostly boil down to not seeing himself as an educator or an activist. Wicked Whims has contraception, explicit sex, and abortion, but that's in pursuit of the realism that players want more than making a statement, he claims.

What was way more enlightening to me was the girthy daily player count that Turbodriver estimated. Translated from German by Google Translate, Turbodriver said that Wicked Whims is used 400,000 per day. "That's how often my server is pinged, at least, because someone starts the game and has installed the mod."

That's not 400,000 unique users per day, mind. Turbodriver may not have access to that information and the 400K figure likely includes some of the same users playing more than once per day. Horny doesn't sleep, you know. In a Patreon post from December, Turbodriver says that the number of Wicked Whims players has been growing every year alongside The Sims 4's main playerbase.

I'm attempting to convert apples to oranges here, but looking at the concurrent players (not daily unique users) for the top games on Steam via Steam.db versus the 400,000 daily launches (also not daily unique users) for Wicked Whims, it seems like the number of folks playing just Wicked Whims (versus unmodded The Sims 4) could hold its own in the consistent top 10 games being played at any time on Steam.

It's tough to dismiss Wicked Whims as a niche mod for horn dogs when you see that kind of number. It's come by that smutty reputation fairly—the top line feature is "fully animated and interactive sex"—but you're more likely to hear Sims fans online praising it for realistically depicting fertility and menstruation or the nuanced attraction system that they prefer over what was added in the official Lovestruck expansion.

As for what he's working on adding to Wicked Whims next, aside from the less sexy bug fixing and code library improvements he also detailed in the December post, Turbodriver gave Taz one little spoiler: a new camgirl profession. It really is all work and no play around here in sex mods land.

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The Sims 4 Royalty and Legacy: all the confirmed features in the next expansion

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 20:17:05 +0000

The first Sims 4 expansion of the year has been revealed and it's cause for celebration for two groups of players: the Romantasy fans who are going to start churning out 'enemies to lovers' warring dynasty storylines and everyone who's been asking to finally get an expansion with an African theme. The Sims 4 Royalty and Legacy is all about creating family dynasties, earning prestige, and responding to scandals—this one is definitely for the Live Mode players.

Seriously, stop me if you've read this one. (Image credit: Electronic Arts)

EA says it partnered with the same Pan African Gaming Group as it did for the West African update last year to work on the new Create-A-Sim and Build/Buy mode items for Royalty and Legacy. One of the three neighborhoods in the expansion's new world is also West African-inspired.

Royalty and Legacy release date

Sims 4 Royalty and Legacy launches on February 12, 2026 for the usual $40 expansion pack price.

Typically there's bonus content included for players who buy the expansion within its first couple months, which is happening again, but this time it's two full new kits. The upcoming Tea Time Solarium and Silver Screen Style kits are included with Royalty and Legacy if you buy it before March 15.

Sims 4 Royalty and Legacy trailer

The reveal trailer for Royalty and Legacy gives away quite a lot of the planned features coming in the expansion plus hints towards a bunch more. You can see three main families (dynasties) that will feature in the expansion's story, traces of the new "scandals" system, meters for dynastic "prestige" and "unity" and more. Plus a whole lotta swords. You can't do royalty without some ornamental pomp.

There's a gameplay trailer scheduled for January 22 that will show off more of the nobility system.

Sims 4 Royalty and Legacy features

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

New world: Ondarion
New career: Noble
New lot type: Backroom
New skill: Swordsmanship
New resource: Favor
New WooHoo: Secret passage
New death: Cuckoo clock
Dynasty system
"Scandals" system
Sword duels
Secret passageway item
Swordsmanship tournaments

Royal dynasties

Family dynasties are the big new feature for the Royalty and Legacy expansion and seem like they'll operate from a menu similar to other group features like clubs and werewolf clans and so on.

Here's what's been revealed about how you'll manage a dynasty:

Choosing "values" which may be the same as or cross over with existing Traits
Designate an heir
Designate an outcast (seems to imply just one?)
Usurp the head of family
Expel a sim from the dynasty
Earn "Prestige" for the dynasty—likely to unlock perks at level milestones
"Scandals" like bad behavior or infidelity can lower PRestige
Respond to scandals by issuing an apology, denying it online, or writing a book

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Backrooms

This new lot type in Royalty and Legacy is dual purpose. You can build it as a library, gym, or museum that will then transform into a night club at night.

The reveal trailer for the expansion didn't show this system in action, but I'd guess it likely reuses the lot segmenting tools from For Rent and Businesses and Hobbies to denote the daytime rooms of the lot versus the night club portion.

Sims 4 Royalty and Legacy new world

Left to right: Bellacorde, Dambele, Verdemar (Image credit: Electronic Arts)

The new world for Royalty and Legacy is called Ondarion which will have three neighborhoods (and three corresponding dynasties). Here's what EA has said about each:

Dambele is the West African-inspired neighborhood and home of the Darong Dynasty, "where the arts are cherished, and shared spaces such as the open palace gardens and communal market embody its culture of generosity and togetherness."
Verdemar is home of the Thebe Dynasty and "populated by heroic outlaws and cunning nobles, is as unpredictable as the sea that surrounds it."
Bellacorde is home of the Capp Dynasty and "defined by romance, opulence, and candlelit corners that invite illicit rendezvous."

Over half of The Sims development team is working on The Sims 4 and 'the next evolution' so I guess it's time to start speculating again

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 20:49:34 +0000

I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day because the year was 2022 when I first watched EA tease the "next generation Sims game" with the codename Project Rene. Two years later it said "actually that's not the Sims 5 though" and spent another year being weird and silent before finally admitting today that yeah, Project Rene is now a mobile game. Simultaneously though, it made sure to mention that a huge portion of the team is working on "the next evolution." Here we go again.

In its start of year blog post today, EA says it is "committed to singleplayer life simulation experiences," and reiterated that it is continuing to work on updates and improvements to The Sims 4. After that, it coyly adds:

"Singleplayer PC and console experiences will always be a part of our future, with more than half of our global development team dedicated to The Sims 4 and the next evolution. More news in the coming months!"

The Sims 4 and "the next evolution," apparently two different things.

(Image credit: Maxis, Electronic Arts)

The recent rumors point to anything from a Sims 4 code base rewrite to a full remake, though the grist for that mill was mostly unsubstantial vague-posting from unconfirmed sources. After all the hubbub about it, well-known Sims 4 modder SimMattically stepped in to put a damper on things by posting, "there’s no Sims 4 remaster."

So it's likely not working on a remaster and likely not working on The Sims 5, but is working on a "next evolution," and crucially one that's singleplayer, not another attempt at taking The Sims online.

The only other hint we have is EA's investor presentation from 2024, during which it announced (and has still never really explained) a platform called The Sims Hub to unify The Sims 4 with Project Rene and other Sims games. During the same presentation, EA entertainment & technology president Laura Miele said that the team would be "updating the core technology foundation" of The Sims 4. The direction for Project Rene seems to have shifted in that time though, so I'd hesitate to put too much stock in any other plans EA announced over a year ago.

This tiny acknowledgement of something else in the Sims team pipeline feels like a bone thrown to keep all us life sim dogs from snarling over the confirmation that Project Rene really is just the mobile game we don't want. At this point though, this tired old Sims hound will take it.

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It's not the news we wanted but it's what we expected: EA has finally admitted Project Rene is a 'mobile-first' game

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 20:40:02 +0000

I'm going to hold your hand when I say this: Project Rene is a mobile game. When EA first teased the next Sims game, we understandably thought the pretty new lighting engine shots it showed off meant we were looking at The Sims 5. After a couple agonizing years of leaks, silence, rumors, and speculation, EA has finally just admitted what we'd all figured out: Project Rene is a "social multiplayer" mobile game.

EA shared a news update about the future of The Sims series today, setting expectations for the new year. After spending a bit more time trying to calm fans down about the EA buyout we're understandably very wary of, it goes on to be, if not what I'd call transparent, then at least more clear than ever before about the relationship between The Sims 4 and Project Rene.

"Thanks to ongoing player feedback, Project Rene has evolved to focus on social multiplayer play, offering a more direct way for friends to share creativity together. It is not the successor to The Sims 4 and is a separate experience from any future deep, singleplayer life simulation experience. It introduces a new way to explore and play together within the growing Sims family of games, welcoming Simmers who want to connect directly with other players."

In case there was any remaining doubt that we're talking about the same online mobile game that we've been seeing leaked footage from for over a year, the image below, included in the post, is titled "SimsLabs_Rene2.png". This is the same little outdoor plaza where we've seen custom characters walking around completing small goals like decorating together or working shifts at a cafe.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Every time leaked images from these playtests make the rounds, fans are pretty bummed. Most of us don't really want a small mobile Sims game. Adding insult to injury, EA has ignored every leak so far and refused to give players any clarity on what we're seeing. So at least in that department, today is a relief.

What I find most interesting is that EA says "Project Rene has evolved" into this current state. It's almost an acknowledgement that we weren't out of line to believe that at one point this was The Sims 5 and got internally rebooted during development.

While Project Rene may not be what most of us wanted from a new Sims game, EA does also remind us that it's still "building a family of new Sims experiences across PC, console, and mobile," and that it's "committed to singleplayer life simulation experiences." The same blog post reveals that over half of the full Sims team is working on "The Sims 4 and the next evolution," though any transparency about what that means is coming months down the line, it says.

"City Life Game with Friends" playtest on Google Play. (Image credit: Electronic Arts)

"In 2026 you can expect to hear more from us as we continue playtesting new ideas and experiences," it also says. Don't hold your breath though. It would be pretty in character if this is the only clear communication we get about The Sims series future for the rest of this year.

Sims 4 cheats: Life hacks
Sims 3 cheats: Classic hacks
Sims 4 mods: Play your way
Sims 4 CC: Custom content
Project Rene: What we know
Games like The Sims: More to life

Are you a proper Sims buff? See if you can name all 97 expansion, game, and stuff packs in our quiz!

Mollie Taylor — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 15:00:00 +0000

More quizzes!

(Image credit: Larian Studios, PC Gamer)

Want to keep testing your knowledge of gaming trivia? We've got loads more PC Gamer quizzes, on everything from healthbars to weird currencies to absurd patch notes.

Nothing says "dollhouse simulation game that doubles as a satire on capitalism" quite like 97 paid expansion, game, and stuff packs. The Sims has been churning out DLC before people even knew what to call it, and 25 years later we're practically drowning in all of the extra add-ons and doodads you can hand over your precious money for.

But just how many of them can you actually name? Can you still recall all seven original Sims expansion packs from memory, or have you somehow catalogued all 52 of the expansion, game, and stuff packs that are in The Sims 4 as of this quiz going live? Yep, you read that right—The Sims 4 alone accounts for over half of the paid DLC available across the entire series.

That's even excluding the fact that I've deigned not to include kits in this list—there are simply too damn many of them (48 at the time of writing, almost all of the rest of The Sims 4's DLC combined) and are churned out at such a rate that I imagine there'll be another half a dozen by the time this quiz gets to you.

Even as a certified Sims sicko, this one was a real memory test, so I hope you can all do better than me. Be sure to let us know how well you did in the comments!

The Sims' biggest sex mod creator says that around 300,000 people use it—that's more than some of Steam's top games: 'It doesn't make sense to me'

Mollie Taylor — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 12:24:07 +0000

Despite its tame rating, sex has always wormed its way into The Sims series—I fear it's a canon event to Google "how to make Sims naked" as a teenager. But it arguably didn't blow up into more mainstream simming until Turbodriver's WhickedWhims came along in 2016, offering a package of nudity, animated sex, birth control, menstrual cycles, and even STIs where that stuff had traditionally been scattered across various corners of the internet.

It's one of those mods that, despite its steamy themes, has become widely accepted among the community in the way that, for a while, your mum reading Fifty Shades of Grey in a café was all cool and dandy. Even though we all knew what those books were about.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

WickedWhims is so popular, in fact, that its creator can't quite believe how many simmers are galavanting around their game with it. Turbodriver sat down with ROMchip last year to talk about his mod and just how many goddamn people are using it.

"It's not a small community anymore," Turbodriver said. "The number of people playing with WickedWhims is so big that I just can't even believe it." When asked how big, he said: "The numbers are so huge that I can't believe they're actually real. It doesn't make sense to me.

"I was investigating that recently. One of the things I do with the mod is that, when you turn the game on, it checks if you have the newest version and if you don't, it tells you that. It does that once per day, and so the people who load into the game have to connect to my server to see if the version number is correct. So, I can see how many people connect per day, and I have around 300,000 daily players.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

"This is beyond normal, this is insane. I don't even understand why that number is so large, because this is more than most games."

I only have to assume that those numbers also include WonderfulWhims—Turbodriver's less sexy version that nixes most of the NSFW stuff but retains the more realistic relationship systems. Even as someone who has been incredibly aware of how normalised the mod is in a lot of simmers' games, I have to admit the number even surprised me.

But hey, if there's one thing that people love about The Sims, it's having total freedom to make your silly virtual people live whatever life you want. And if you want their life to be boinking every adult in a four-tile radius, then mods like WickedWhims help make that possible.

Rumors about a Sims 4 remaster are probably bunk, but we do already know EA is quietly cooking up some unified multi-platform Sims Hub

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 20:41:55 +0000

The fate of The Sims 4 has been a big question mark for, oh, over a year now. There was the announcement that The Sims 5 isn't happening, the still-unexplained The Sims Hub collective platform unifying different games, the recent EA buyout news that has content creators stepping back from their official partnerships, and now rumors of a Sims 4 remaster. I wouldn't put much stock in that last one though.

Rumors about a possible Sims 4 remaster came to a boil earlier this week thanks to a post by The Sims Community collecting a small handful of vague "I know something you don't" style posts on X by those claiming to have some inside info. It's either a "rewrite" of The Sims 4 or a "remaster" or "Sims 4 HD," according to a variety of unconfirmed sources.

There were also images leaked from a playtest—of what appears to be the same mobile Sims game playtests that have been leaking on the regular for around a year—along with mention of a "platform for the future" likely referring to the same The Sims Hub that EA vaguely announced last year and has yet to officially mention again.

After enough hubbub about what a Sims 4 remaster might entail, how it would affect existing DLCs, and whether EA would attempt to charge money for it while leaving the current un-remastered base game free, one of the bigger sims modding and content creators SimMattically stepped in with a post on X to debunk it all:

"I’m in no position to reveal anything about it, nor do I want to, but with so much partial information floating around after the leak and so many discussions happening everywhere, I feel like it’s okay to clarify at least one thing: there’s no Sims 4 remaster."

What we do know from EA's official communication from the past year or so is that there are several different Sims games in the works, including the multi-platform Project Rene and a Sims mobile game, which it hopes to tie together on a platform called The Sims Hub with a shared user content gallery and marketplace. That's the big not-really-a-secret that these rumors seem to hinge on.

Beyond that, EA's declined to comment on the many leaks and community meltdowns since that announcement beyond one very quick little finger wag tucked in a larger announcement that playtests are "slices of experiences" and may not always be for what we think they are.

If EA wants The Sims 4 to continue shambling on as a forever game in this new platform, it probably will continue with the commitment to bug fixes that it's embarked on and may even be working on some kind of engine-level overhaul for The Sims 4 for the same reason. As usual, it probably won't deign to give any details.

With the buyout looming, I suspect even EA itself doesn't fully know the future of The Sims 4, regardless of what internal plans and playtests it's been running up until now. I've reached out to EA for comment on The Sims 4 remaster rumors and will update this story if I get a reply.

Sims 4 cheats: Life hacks
Sims 3 cheats: Classic hacks
Sims 4 mods: Play your way
Sims 4 CC: Custom content
Project Rene: What we know
Games like The Sims: More to life

The life sim revolution was supposed to happen this year but it completely evaporated

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 19:01:42 +0000

All signs pointed to 2025 being a banner year for Sims players. After decades with only one series to choose from for our dollhouse-core fantasies, two new competitors—Inzoi and Paralives—set launch dates for this year. Meanwhile The Sims 4 publicly buckled down on bug fixes for its DLC-crammed game.

But Inzoi didn't deliver the adrenaline shot I'd predicted and (still upcoming) Paralives has always been expected to be the smaller contender. Now, news about the future of The Sims series itself just keeps getting worse. The life sim revolution I'd predicted didn't turn up this year and now I'm worried it never will.

The Sims 4 (Image credit: Maxis, Electronic Arts)

Eleven months ago I was optimistic. Even though we'd already gotten the bad news that there isn't going to be a Sims 5, things were looking swell for the rest of the series during its 25th anniversary in January. EA made some updates to The Sims 4 base game and re-released The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 in the Legacy Collection, making all four main games easily available on PC again for the first time in years. Heck, I fell in love with The Sims 2 again.

Meanwhile the release date for Inzoi had been set for March and it seemed like if anyone was going to successfully challenge The Sims series' dominance it would be this sleek and beautiful sim with all of Krafton's money behind it. But after an initial week or so of players digging into silly simulation quirks like stealing babies and catching sharks in rivers, it sunk in that Inzoi just didn't have much depth yet.

Inzoi (Image credit: Krafton)

Inzoi is still in early access and Krafton is actively releasing game updates, new cities, and free DLCs, so it's not as though it's a failure. But Inzoi hasn't taken over the genre. It's not to life sims what Baldur's Gate 3 was to turn-based CRPGs, for instance. Inzoi didn't sink; it got becalmed, stuck out at sea without the wind to carry it anywhere.

The summer doldrums struck The Sims 4 too. There's been a steady plodding decline over the course of the year in the number of people searching for The Sims 4 and also in its concurrent players—on Steam at least. Overall interest in The Sims does cycle some every year, but this year it feels like I'm looking at widespread community exhaustion in graph form.

Now, to kick us while we're down, news of the EA buyout has struck, with players rightfully anxious that the values of the new owners will be hostile to the queer and inclusive series. There's been so much concern from fans that several of the biggest Sims 4 content creators are stepping away from their official partnerships in response. I don't know if that's going to tank the playerbase in the long run or if folks will continue quietly playing, but it certainly isn't going to help.

The only thing left to save us from life sim malaise is Paralives, launching into early access ~~on December 8~~ sometime in 2026 after years of semi-public development. I've been anticipating its neat custom building tools and very stylized characters, and I do have some hope that it won't suffer from the same limited life activities as Inzoi.

Paralives (Image credit: Paralives Studio)

Paralives isn't one that I'm expecting to pull off an upset in the genre on its own though. It was always going to be the second punch in a one-two combo with Inzoi. Without having successfully bloodied EA's lip earlier in the year it sure looks like this ring has no winner left standing.

Taking a wider view doesn't improve the outlook either. Paradox's life sim Life By You got canned last summer. The only other things on the horizon are Jake Solomon's small town life sim and Will Wright's life sim Proxi, both of which feel quite distant.

Instead of an explosion for the genre, this year has become an awful squelch. Somehow Inzoi's launch shook the confidence of Sims players but didn't retain all those disaffected players for itself, resulting in what feels like a net negative for the genre as a whole. Paralives still has a chance to impress me, but I don't see a world where it revitalizes excitement about life sims all on its own.

The life sim revolution has been delayed—maybe indefinitely.

Sims 4 cheats: Life hacks
Sims 3 cheats: Classic hacks
Sims 4 mods: Play your way
Sims 4 CC: Custom content
Project Rene: What we know
Games like The Sims: More to life

EA's bug-blasting mission in The Sims 4 continues, with its latest patch preventing Sims from WooHoo-ing in broken steam rooms and rampaging werewolves from getting distracted by Tiktok

Rick Lane — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 12:32:58 +0000

Late in September, EA committed to two months of maintenance for The Sims 4, as its community reported a growing number of bugs afflicting the 12-year-old life sim. The publisher wants the ageing sequel to continue as the primary platform for virtual soap operas for the foreseeable future, rather than replace it and its many expansions with a full-on sequel. But the bugs piling higher than a locust swarm in a grain silo threatened to undermine the game's foundations.

The first batch of bugfixes landed with immediate effect, addressing issues like deformed pets and vanishing ghost children. Slightly later than planned, the second QoL patch has now arrived, fixing more than 150 problems raised by the community on the EA forums and social media.

As with any systems-heavy game, The Sims 4's complex web of interactions often produces patch notes that read more like a comedy script than an actual changelog, and this latest update includes some classics of the genre.

For example, EA has tweaked "relationship decay" on couples who have a baby because it was "too fast and destroying relationships" (which frankly sounds realistic to me) while Sims have also been instructed to put items like food, drink and books into the relevant storage area, rather than "random inventories like the ICYA-Chest or Sticker Storage Box."

Elsewhere, EA has toned down some of the Sims' kinkier traits. They've adjusted the behaviour of Sims trying to get steamy in steam rooms, ensuring they "can only WooHoo in steam rooms that are indoors and not broken" and will "stop unsuccessfully attempting outdoors". Quitters. Meanwhile, in defiance of the Randy Newman song covered by everyone from Joe Cocker to Tom Jones, EA has made it so "Sims will stop wearing hats while in their nude outfits".

My favourite from the list, though, relates to The Sims 4's werewolves expansion pack, simply stating "Werewolves will not use their phone when rampaging." Even rabid lycanthropes cannot resist the hypnotic allure of short-form video.

(Image credit: EA)

Alongside the many bugfixes, EA has also added a new, free collection of items into The Sims 4 themed around West African culture. Created in partnership with the Pan African Gaming Group and Sims players with direct connections to West African countries, the collection lets you create a sim with fashion and accessories inspired by West African designs, cook plates of jollof rice with sides of chicken drumsticks, and decorate home with aloe plants, woven baskets, hiwe area rugs, and more.

This latest update represents the end of EA's quality-of-life initiative, though the publisher's original post on the subject notes that "ongoing work" will be shaped by players "utilizing the EA Forums and casting your votes". EA is also planning a larger technology refresh for The Sims 4 at some point in the future, at least according to an interview EA president Laura Miele gave to Variety in July.

Whether this will be affected by EA's recent acquisition remains to be seen, though The Sims 4's content creators have already departed in droves due to the Saudi-backed buyout, while the developers have stated that the game "will always be a space where you can express your authentic self".

Sims 4 cheats: Life hacks
GTA 5 cheats: Phone it in
Stardew Valley cheats: Farm faster
Minecraft commands: Unblocked
Fallout 4 cheats: Nuclear codes

After the Saudi-backed EA buyout, OG Sims director says diversity isn't just 'critical,' it's 'existential for the business': 'Love is love and people are people'

Joshua Wolens — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 16:43:50 +0000

The future of EA has looked, well, uncertain since it got picked up in the biggest leveraged buyout in private equity history. For one thing, it's now on the hook for $20 billion in debt. For another, the buyout came from a group of investors that included Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Affinity Partners—founded by Donald Trump's son in law Jared Kushner.

LGBT people and women more generally face repression in Saudi Arabia, while Kushner, of course, has strong ties to a Trump administration which has made attacking LGBT rights a cornerstone of its platform.

The presence of such conservative elements in the EA buyout has had more than a few Sims fans worried that the state's involvement in EA might lead to a clampdown on the series' more diverse elements. That'd be a terrible idea for a lot of obvious, moral reasons, but one OG Sims designer (via FRVR) says it would be "existential for the business."

Charles London, who worked as art director on The Sims 1 and creative director on The Sims 2, said that representing same-sex relationships in the earlier games was "everything" for the series. "I think it's existential for the business, right? It is certainly for society. I think it's incredibly important for there to be a mainstream, beloved brand that says, 'love is love and people are people.'"

But it's also that spirit of embracing all humanity that allows The Sims "to be universally appealing", says London, whether the audience be "Young, old, male, female, gay, straight, other, right? American, Iranian, whatever."

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Representing as much of humanity as possible is what lets The Sims create an "empathetic and emotional connection to that game" among players, says London. "It's not that there’s so many pants you can dress them in". Though to be fair, London does acknowledge the sheer volume of pants options is also an important part of the appeal.

London reckons that a world in which EA chucked LGBT players under the bus is a world in which EA is doomed. "When we are in reactionary periods—to have stalwart, beloved brands that are capable of sending this message is critical to society. But it's also critical that those brands keep the faith because, if they don't, they’re going to stop being brands," as they lose the ability to appeal to wide groups of people.

In London's recollection, it was this kind of thinking that led to same-sex relationships being incorporated in the original Sims games. He says Maxis wasn't a "band of fearless social revolutionaries," but that "When it came to sexuality, we realised that we had to implement it in the game in order for these little humans to be little humans… We chose the [option] that was both technically simpler, but also that was the one where we could look at ourselves in the mirror."

So he hopes, of course, that those kinds of choices keep being made, and he sounds relatively optimistic. "That includes not just sexuality, it includes body image, it includes race, and it includes the choice of clothing. It includes the choice of architecture, the choice of job, structure, all the magnificent diversity of actual human life, and this is something that the team, I think, deeply understands. Deeply, deeply understands."

Sims 4 cheats: Life hacks
GTA 5 cheats: Phone it in
Stardew Valley cheats: Farm faster
Minecraft commands: Unblocked
Fallout 4 cheats: Nuclear codes

'This isn't a one-time effort': The Sims patch set to fix over 150 of the community's most reported bugs, from making kids look more like their parents and ensuring nude Sims no longer wear hats

Mollie Taylor — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 12:09:10 +0000

As I have written time and time again at this point, The Sims 4 is a mess. One that only gets more complex with every kit, game pack, and expansion that gets stuffed into its spaghetti code. EA has been making a more concerted effort to address the multitude of bugs and glitches since it introduced a more dedicated team last May, with numerous laundry list bug fixes happening over the last 18 months.

This time, the developer is looking towards the EA forums, a verifiable hive of community-reported issues. It's also a place where other players can vote on bug reports—the higher the votes are, presumably the more common/irritating the issue is. A November 4 update will see over 150 fixes coming—from the top-five most voted fixes to some rather niche squashed bugs.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

EA says that since announcing it wanted to more heavily prioritise community-requested fixes back in a post back in September, it's seen a "148% jump in views and 903% surge in votes; this helped us understand what's affecting your game the most and directly shaped what we worked on for this update."

In terms of how that's shaken out for popular fixes, the most popular bug report was photos taken with the in-game camera disappearing from saves entirely, turning them into little more than black rectangles adorning Sims' walls and tables. It's a bug that was reported at least two years ago, which feels kinda wild that it's only just now being addressed.

Other top-voted bugs that'll be receiving a fix are:

The 'Sabotage' interaction being available even when the Sim had no relevant traits or aspirations.
Mixologists not taking drinks orders because they're too busy yapping to other Sims.
Kids not inheriting certain facial features of their parents, like noses and mouths, even when both were the exact same Sim (this bug has allegedly been around for a decade).
Romantic relationships decaying seemingly as a result of having a baby. Which, ouch.

Outside of the most voted, there are a multitude of base game and pack-specific fixes coming, too. Bizarrely, there are two hat-related fixes—NPCs like patients and ranch hands won't wear random hats anymore, and Sims in the nude won't be keeping their beanies on, either.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Equally strange fixes include Sims no longer using their phone while jogging or in the water, Sims putting books and food back where they belong rather than in random chests or boxes, and preventing WooHoo with the Grim Reaper from being cancelled.

My favourite fixes here, though, are two relatively small ones: a reduction in the footprint size of a number of music players, and making sure outdoor trash cans stop randomly breaking. With the former, it should make placing smaller music players much easier, rather than them sharing a similar footprint size to larger players like the Kaboom Box.

The latter has been an issue that plagues more than a few of my saves—on numerous occasions, outdoor trash cans will straight-up stop working, rendering me unable to interact with them or dump the contents of my full indoor trash cans into them. It's such a small bug that creates big frustrations, so I'm glad to finally see a fix for it.

You can peep the full laundry list in EA's forum post, with the patch set to arrive sometime on November 4. It shouldn't be the only time the developer does this, either. The post promises that "this isn't a one-time effort," adding "We're committed to addressing community-raised issues consistently, and work is already underway on the next batch of fixes planned for December and beyond."

As The Sims content creators depart over EA's $55 billion Saudi-backed buyout, the dev team promises the game 'will always be a space where you can express your authentic self'

andy.chalk@pcgamer.com (Andy Chalk) — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 22:24:54 +0000

The Sims development team has posted a message on X reassuring fans that its "mission, values, and commitment remain the same," and that "The Sims will always be a space where you can express your authentic self." The message comes one day after three of The Sims 4's biggest content creators removed themselves from EA's creator network over the company's looming acquisition by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and private equity firms, a move that was subsequently followed by numerous others, including Vixella and Syd Mac.

"We're continually inspired by our incredible players and creators; by your imagination, creativity, and the joy you bring to The Sims every day," the message states. "We deeply respect that everyone experiences The Sims in their own way and will make choices that are right for them. However you choose to play, create, or share, we're grateful to be part of your journey.

"Our mission, values, and commitment remain the same. The Sims will always be a space where you can express your authentic self."

It's a very anodyne message, except in the very specific context that The Sims community finds itself in. The Sims has a well-established reputation as a progressive game, established through its recognition of queer identities and relationships, a stance backed by action: Rather than removing same-sex relationships in the My Wedding Stories expansion in 2022, for instance, EA opted to simply not release it in countries with anti-LGBTQ+ laws.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

That attitude may be at risk once EA is brought under the control of the PIF. Saudi Arabia is ruled by a notoriously oppressive regime where LGBTQ+ rights are non-existent and same-sex relationships are illegal. Former BioWare lead writer Trick Weekes predicted in September that "gay stuff" will not have a home at the company once it falls under PIF control, and frankly it is hard to square the country's high-profile intolerance of the queer community with, say, The Sims 4's trans and disability-inclusive update released in 2023.

It's possible that EA's new overlords will turn a blind eye to the whole thing: The Sims still boasts a big community that's not shy about spending money, and at the end of the day that's what it's all about. But that won't matter for some, because also at the end of the day, once this deal is closed EA will be part-owned by a nation that denies and punishes the existence of queer people. No matter how the game proceeds from here, that's the real-world consequence, and it's a fact that some people—very possibly a lot of people—take seriously.

The Sims team concluded its message by teasing "exciting things we have coming in 2026 and beyond." More details on that will be shared on October 27, "the first of ongoing updates that address the things that matter most to you."

Some of The Sims 4's biggest content creators have just stepped down from EA's creator network in the wake of the $55B Saudi-backed buyout: 'This situation is a nightmare for our community'

Mollie Taylor — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 15:34:43 +0000

Some of the biggest content creators for The Sims 4 have announced their departure from the EA Creator Network in the wake of the company's $55 billion Saudi-backed buyout.

James Turner, Jesse 'Plumbella' McNamara, and Kayla 'lilsimsie' Sims took to their respective YouTube accounts to reveal that they had requested to leave the programme—which offers its members access to games, events, and opportunities to work alongside development teams for each content creator's relevant game—specifically highlighting the buyout as the reason.

All three have been heavily involved in The Sims community and the developer itself for a number of years—they've all contributed towards packs either through creating lots or collaborating on kits like Plumbella's Pastel Pop Kit and lilsimsie's Comfy Gamer Kit.

James Turner has created all manner of tools and mods over the years too, as well as formerly running custom content website The Sim Supply. The trio are some of the biggest names in the Sims content creation space, which makes their departure over the buyout all the more damning.

In a post on his YouTube channel, James Turner wrote: "With the news of the buyout and understanding who will be owning EA in the future, I plan on shifting our focus to include more variety. In addition to that I have decided to leave the EA Creator Network and have asked to remove my creator code."

Those creator codes are essentially affiliate links, and while it's unclear how big a revenue stream that was for James Turner, it's still a pretty big stance to take. "I'm excited about what the future holds for the channel and the content, it will be a new chapter," he continued. "I've been on this platform creating videos for nearly 2 decades and in that time we've seen change, we've adapted, and this will give us that opportunity once again."

The same is seemingly the case for both Plumbella and lilsimsie. While the former didn't specifically mention removal of her creator code, she wrote: "Due to the recent sale, I have asked to leave the EA Creator Network and I will not buy or make content around any future release. I think taking this stand is the right choice for me personally, but I'm not going to judge anybody on their decision. I'm in a privileged position to be able to say I'm leaving so easily."

She added: "I hope that the sale falls through, and if it doesn't, I hope that those that stay put pressure on EA to maintain the level of inclusiveness that The Sims has always been about."

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Lilsimsie echoed many of the sentiments written by both: "The values represented by the people acquiring EA are fundamentally at odds with what I stand for and support. I've been losing sleep over it for weeks, and I've been deeply struggling with what to do moving forward.

"I have so much love for The Sims. This game has completely shaped my entire life, and I care so deeply about The Sims and the community."

She added: "It is my hope that pressure from creators and the community might encourage EA’s leadership to reconsider the long-term impact of this sale and to preserve the values that have made The Sims so beloved ... Under this new ownership I feel I cannot maintain a direct association to the company. I also truly believe that they benefit more from my early access content than I do, and I think that stepping away is the strongest action I can take against the sale."

Regarding how the buyout has affected content creators and Simmers as a whole, lilsimsie continued: "This situation is a nightmare for our community. Nobody supports this sale, and it is putting creators in a very difficult position. They have built their entire career and livelihood over a game that they have no control over."

There'll undoubtedly be more creators coming out to announce their departure from the Creator Network before long—and I'm sure ones before this have stepped away in the weeks following the buyout announcement—but three of the most popular community figureheads doing this in a matter of hours feels huge.

Will it stop the buyout? No, but taking a stance like this in a mini-exodus is probably the best thing these creators could have done given the circumstances. It'll be interesting to see if it'll have any long-term impact, even if it's just an extra brush to tarnish EA's already crumbling reputation.

Server shutdowns claim another victim: The Sims Mobile will disappear for good in January

andy.chalk@pcgamer.com (Andy Chalk) — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 17:03:34 +0000

Sorry, Sims fans, but I have bad news for those of you who enjoy doing all that sul sul stuff on your mobile devices. Today's update will be the last: The game is being delisted on October 21, and the servers will be switched off on January 20, 2026, rendering the game unplayable.

Today's update will disable real money transactions in The Sims Mobile, but will grant players unlimited energy to "make it easier to complete projects and enjoy the last few months of play." The game will roll along until January 6, 2026, at which point all Build Mode and Create A Sim items will unlock for all players, with no level-based limitations--everyone gets everything.

"We want to give everyone the opportunity to build their dream home, design their perfect Sims, and experience everything TSM has to offer before the servers close," EA said in the shutdown announcement. "We would love to see what you create if you would like to share it with us."

Seems a little weird to me that EA isn't just doing that right from the hop. The game is cooked anyway, so why not just open the floodgates and let players go ham? At a time like this I can't help but think back to Gary Larson's famous pearl of wisdom: No size restrictions and screw the limit.

In any event, players will then have 14 days to go to town in whatever ways they wish, after which it's all over: "The servers will shut down at 1:59 PM UTC [on January 20, 2026]. After this time, The Sims Mobile will no longer be playable. Because game progress is stored on our servers, saved data will no longer be available."

The writing's been on the wall for The Sims Mobile for some time now. EA ended new in-game events in January 2024, although it continued to replay previous events. And the lack of crossplay with the persistently popular Sims 4 means it's never been really an essential Sims experience.

Still, it's been a good run—The Sims Mobile went into full release in March 2018, a year after being soft-launched in limited markets for testing, and the disappointment on the Sims Mobile subreddit runs pretty deep.

Wtf? Are they serious? from r/SimsMobile

In the memory of TSM from r/SimsMobile

Comment from r/SimsMobile

I guess it’s time to say good bye to all of this :( from r/SimsMobile

Comment from r/SimsMobile

The takedown also feels a bit strange in light of the unclear future of The Sims. EA remains cagey about Project Rene, the next major Sims game, and in the meantime has been clear that The Sims 4 is going to continue carrying the water for the foreseeable future. So why not The Sims Mobile too? Everything's in place, it's not taking up development resources, and surely server maintenance can't cost that much—why not let it continue to grind out a few bucks every month until whatever's coming next is ready for the spotlight?

I don't know, and no doubt the situation is more complicated than I make it. If nothing else, though, the end of The Sims Mobile is yet another reminder of the ethereal nature of game ownership in the digital era: It's your until someone decides it's not.

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After creating countless boring hotels, I've made a list of Sims 4 custom venue ideas for more tailored getaways and stories

Andrea Shearon — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 18:03:46 +0000

The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits expansion takes the hassle out of micromanaging households by introducing its new Getaway system, which adds custom venues, daily schedules, and roles tailored to each Sim. It makes it easy to set 'em and forget 'em, and just like brainstorming small business ideas in Businesses & Hobbies, so much of the fun here stems from getting creative with your Sims 4 custom venue ideas.

Think of getaways as an extra layer of customization that merges travel and generic lots, but instead of trusting your sims to roam free, you can give them a to-do list that they'll (usually) follow. Your sims can fill roles you design and specify, or the game can supplement gaps with random assignments.

I like using it to send child sims off to camp for a weekend while knowing they'll come home better for it, or for keeping bigger households busy and on-task so I can focus elsewhere. If you're struggling with the who, what, when, and where details, I've got a list of Sims 4 custom venue ideas to help plan your next getaway.

Private music academy custom venue

(Image credit: EA)

My first, more adventurous custom venue started as a boarding school, but I decided to try something a little more personal, so I made a little cottage where a music legend taught young prodigies. A little bougie, I know, but getting creative with the roles was a blast. I made the teacher a stern older woman and music snob who spent most of the day critiquing her students, but at night, she always sat down with them for a warm heart-to-heart and home-cooked meal.

Typically I ran this setup with just three students and their mentor, but later added an assistant to help with meals and cleaning. It was a fun venue to watch the day-to-day events unfold at, or I could leave my child sims there and trust they would return with new talents.

Roles: Mentor (x1), Assistant (x1), Student (x3)

Music academy getaway role and schedule ideas
Main Activity	Role Brief
Have Breakfast	Assistant cooks and serves meals, Mentor and Students begin their day
Build Creative Skills	Adult sim can mentor, Students work on violin or piano skills
Build Mental Skills	Students do homework or play chess, have adult sims take a break
Care and Mentor Children	Adult sim can care and mentor children, Students socialize and stay near others
Have Dinner	Mentor and Assistant cook, sims have dinner together and prepare for bed after

Haunted forest custom venue

(Image credit: EA)

I have a witchy sisterhood of spellcasters and vampires, so I wanted to create a haunted forest uniquely tailored to occult sims. The objects from the Life & Death expansions are some of my favorites, so I incorporated a ton into my design for a dark, wooded area with a small cabin and crypt.

You'll need The Sims 4 Vampires and Realm of Magic game packs to make occult sims, along with Paranormal stuff if you want to hold seances. I suppose you could remove those requirements if you're just creating something spooky to explore with regular households, but that's a lot to replace from the activity schedule if that's the direction you choose.

Roles: Head Witch (x1), Chaotic Witch (x1), Witch (x7)

Haunted forest getaway role and schedule ideas
Main Activity	Role Brief
Have Breakfast	Head Witch prepares meals and serve, other sims fulfill needs and eat
Cast Spells	Chaotic Witch can cause mischief and mayhem and cast chaotic spells, balance with others casting helpful spells
Free Time	Read tarot cards, meditate, use cauldrons
Self Care	Have sims fulfill their needs while the Chaotic Witch interrupts with scares and mischief
Enjoy the Outdoors	Grab snacks and drinks, hangout around bonfires and ponds, stargaze
Do Seances	Gather around seance tables, Head Witch can tend to stressed sims

Music festival custom venue

(Image credit: EA)

When I first got into Sims 4 mods, I downloaded a concert venue to try recreating some of my favorite bands. I remember being heartbroken that it wouldn't work, but I've finally made up for it years later by making my own music festival as a Sims 4 custom venue—complete with a stage, outdoor bar, overnight camping space, and even rows of food stands.

The vendors mostly came from City Living and I added a ton of camping goodies from the Outdoor Retreat pack to set up tents and outdoor restrooms. I also used all twenty role slots just to keep the festival looking busy, though it does get a little chaotic. You can make the band a solo act if you want more attendees, and make sure you include festival staff to keep the place running.

Roles: Singer Songwriter (x2), Venue Staff (x1), Bartender (x1), Food Vendor (x2), Roadie (x2), Super Fan (x2), Attendee (x8)

Music festival getaway role and schedule ideas
Main Activity	Role Brief
Grab Quick Snacks	Assign this to everyone with Food Vendor roles facilitating
Music	Musicians should play with instruments, have Super Fans behave obnoxiously
Free Time	Swap performers, have attendees satisfy needs and socialize
Have Lunch	Sims can grill or visit food vendors, socialize around picnic area
Music	More performers, continue to have other sims watch live entertainment
Mix and Mingle	Staff and Bartenders tend guests, sims can socialize around the campfire or bar

Pet training custom venue

(Image credit: EA)

In a true act of simulating my fantasy life, I created a reality where my pets are well-behaved angels that listen to everything I say—or at least one where it's easier to teach them. Instead of the typical board-and-train facilities I see in real life, I created a Sims 4 custom venue where dog owners can visit with their pups for days to work on shared skills. After all, what good is dog training if the owner doesn't learn with them?

You can send pets along for getaways, so I created a few roles for trainers and groundskeepers, then left the rest for pet parents and their dogs. It's cute screenshot city, and an excuse to make not only a dog park, but a whole pup-themed experience. I wouldn't dream of telling my cat what to do, but I'm sure you could make something like a cat show work.

Roles: Trainer (x2), Vet (x1), Groundskeeper (x1), Pet Owners (x5), Pets (x5)

Pet training getaway role and schedule ideas
Main Activity	Role Brief
Care for Pets	Trainer and Vet help tend to Pets, Pet Owners fulfil needs and socialize
Pets Play and Learn	Pet Owners and Pets use obstacle courses and toys
Have Lunch	Trainer and Vet tend Pets again, Pet Owners have lunch
Play with Pets	Pet Owners spend time with their Pets and socialize

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Family reunion custom venue

(Image credit: EA)

It's basic compared to the rest, but planning and designing a custom venue for a family reunion getaway was easily my favorite of the bunch. I set it up to run out of a fancy Victorian home with a chef and housekeepers, making sure there was ample room for gatherings in the dining room and private gardens, and then designed a schedule for maximum emotional chaos.

I scheduled time for stirring up disagreements at the dinner table, sitting through unnecessary family criticism, and causing general mischief. My first schedule damaged a few too many relationships though, so I toned it down in the evenings and made time for family bonding and drinks.

After using this for a regular family get-together, I think I'll plan more of these around specific holidays. It's a nice way to avoid remodeling homes when I get the seasonal Christmas or Halloween bug, and orchestrating a week of feuding with extended relatives is more entertaining than I'd like to admit.

Roles: Chef (x1), Housekeeper (x2), Immediate Family (x4), Extended Family (x6)

Family reunion getaway role and schedule ideas
Main Activity	Role Brief
Drink Coffee	Chef prepares coffee, tea, and breakfast, Housekeepers maintain venue, Family sims fulfill needs and snack
Summer Activities	Sims go outdoors for using pools, swings, loungers, and playing with water balloons
Free Time	Assign a mix of social behaviors like fight, hug, be mean, and be funny
Have Dinner	Chef and Housekeeper cook and serve others, Family eats together while mostly friendly
Drink Bar Drinks	More social behaviors with drinks and drama, Chef can continue serving

Space Camp custom venue

(Image credit: EA)

Camp Gibi Gibi is cute and all, but I've got a permanent chip on my shoulder from seeing Space Camp advertisements as a kid and never going. I made my own space-themed learning center to compensate, complete with ridiculous spaceship walls from the Get Famous expansion. Those props are so large that I had to use Sims 4 cheats to clip them through walls and save space.

Anyway, that's not something you absolutely need, but I found the Get Famous props helpful for setting the tone. I also added things like the Retro Rocketship for a camp leader to use, a little cluster of telescopes with an observatory, and a cosmic-themed crafting project from the Parenthood pack

Roles: Camp Leader (x1), Camp Mentor (x3), Camp Cook (x1), Campers (x8)

Space camp getaway role and schedule ideas
Main Activity	Role Brief
Self Care	Sims can tend needs while Camp Cook prepares breakfast
Build Child Skills	Campers can work on solar system projects or activity tables, adult sims mentor and entertain
Play on Playground Equipment	Campers play outside, adult sims clean up camp and socialize
Care and Mentor Children	Camp Cook can prepare and serve meals for dinner, other adults tend to Camper needs and mentor
Stargaze	Everyone heads outside for stargazing and using telescopes, Mentor can use rocket science

It's been 20 years and I still have no idea how The Sims has managed to convince so many artists to rerecord their biggest hits in a gibberish language

Mollie Taylor — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 15:00:00 +0000

Welcome to Soundtrack Sunday, where a member of the PC Gamer team takes a look at a soundtrack from one of their favourite games—or a broader look at videogame music as a whole—offering a little backstory and recommendations for tracks you should be adding to your playlist.

I've been a huge Paramore fan ever since I heard Pressure an embarrassing number of years ago. But unlike your usual old-school music discovery methods—the radio, bargain bin CDs, listening to your pal's MP3 player—the way I stumbled across what is now one of my favourite bands is a little strange. I actually first heard Hayley Williams warbling in The Sims' nonsense language, Simlish.

It first made an appearance in the console version of The Sims 2, and I was hooked from the very first radio play. It took me some time to realise that Pressure and Paramore was a real song performed by a real artist—listen, I was a child, and a bit of a stupid one at that—but Simlish renditions of real-world songs have since become an integral part of The Sims experience.

Sure, you could probably just add the songs in English and be done with it, but The Sims intentionally avoided using real languages in the game for a reason. Simlish is there to serve as a way for characters to communicate emotions and for dialogue to exist (important in a game all about human interaction) without it feeling repetitive or disrupting player-created storylines.

So that's how we ended up here, two decades later: a whole host of Simlish covers of real songs—most often re-recorded by the actual artists themselves—which still continue to serve as a wonderfully niche method of music discovery for me.

So, how did this even start?

Despite largely existing as a PC game, it was actually the series' console entries that were early pioneers for licensed music performed in Will Wright's fictional language. The Urbz: Sims in the City was the first to go all-out on converting real tracks into Simlish.

Not only did the game's storyline extensively feature The Black Eyed Peas as characters, but the group also provided covers of both Shut Up and Let's Get it Started. Though if the Simlish lyrics are any indication, it was more likely a cover of the song's earlier more expletive version. They also performed a handful of original Simlish songs—I was lowkey devastated to discover that Jaba Dew Wah did not in fact have a real-life rendition.

From there, Simlish cover tracks began creeping into The Sims 2 expansion packs. The game's first one, University, introduced the College Rock radio station along with tracks by Abra Moore, Go Betty Go and The Daylights.

I'd argue that the first major one, at least for me, came with Depeche Mode's Simlish version of Suffer Well as part of Open for Business' New Wave radio station in 2006. Things only got wilder from there, with the likes of Barenaked Ladies, Hot Chip, The Pussycat Dolls, Plain White T's, Machine Head, Lily Allen, and Good Charlotte making their way into various expansion packs.

Then, she came along. Katy Perry recorded her track Hot N Cold for final Sims 2 expansion pack Apartment Life and, I assume, enjoyed it so much that she got an entire stuff pack themed around her in The Sims 3 along with a second Simlish track, Last Friday Night.

Going through the list of Simlish tracks over the years feels like a time capsule into pop culture. Artists who used to dominate the charts—I still remember getting all giddy watching Pixie Lott record Mama Do in Simlish for the launch of The Sims 3—and it's honestly wild to see just how big some of the artists are who agreed to sing some of their biggest hits in some loosely constructed gibberish. Hell, My Chemical Romance did a cover of Na Na Na for The Sims 3: Late Night expansion pack. That's literally Gerard Way singing!

Now, in The Sims 4, the game boasts over 100 Simlish tracks, which is wild. Some of them are the return of old faves like my beloved Pressure, but others come from some of the biggest, coolest pop and rock stars of recent years: Charlie XCX, Glass Animals, Lizzo, Trivium, Lola Young, and The Hu.

Hell, last year's Life and Death expansion pack was my introduction to British indie rock band The Last Dinner Party, whose discography has since become a firm staple in my Spotify playlists. Even 20 years later, the games are continuing to broaden my taste in music.

For all the problems I've had with The Sims over the years, its dedication to weaving in pop culture with its own Simlish twist has never been one of them. It's easily one of my favourite things Maxis has continued to do over the years—something so wholly unnecessary when you think about it, but which brings so much life and flavour to the game.

How to get an Imaginary Friend in The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits

Andrea Shearon — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 23:12:15 +0000

An old feature from The Sims 3 is back as The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits expansion adds new Imaginary Friends for the youngest members of the household. They'll start as simple dolls, but as child Sims play and grow fonder of their new toys, they unlock the ability to turn them into a magical bestie only they can see.

It doesn't have to end there either—Imaginary Friends can become real Sims if their friendship grows strong enough. After hanging out with the Adventure Awaits dolls myself, I'm ready to offer a little friendship coaching and guidance on how to get an Imaginary Friend in The Sims 4 and make them real when the time comes.

How to get an ImagineMe Doll in The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits

(Image credit: EA)

First things first, you'll need to buy an ImagineMe! Doll from Build Mode before conjuring up any make-believe buddies. The Adventure Awaits expansion add four dolls with varying personality type, but your Sim can choose a different personality from one of the same four options:

Krafty Kid - Creative personality
Pretty Pegacorn - Evil personality
Wild Child - Competitive personality
Lil Monster - Goofball personality

Before working on anything else, I recommend solidifying your personality choice and renaming the ImagineMe Doll—once you've turned the toy into a friend, you can't edit these options again. I've also got a few quick notes to keep in mind as you play with new pals:

Sims can have multiple ImagineMe Dolls, but only one Imaginary Friend
You can summon friends from Imagination Land by interacting with their doll
You can also get rid of your Imaginary Friend permanently by selecting "Send back to Imagination Land forever"

Sims 4 cheats: Life hacks
Sims 3 cheats: Classic hacks
Sims 4 mods: Play your way
Sims 4 CC: Custom content
Project Rene: What we know
Games like The Sims: More to life

How to turn a Sims 4 doll into an Imaginary Friend

(Image credit: EA)

Child Sims can take one of three paths to turn their ImagineMe Doll into an imaginary friend: reach level 3 in the Creativity Skill, experience severe loneliness from depleted Social needs, or befriend the doll. If you aren't using Sims 4 cheats, I found it easiest to have my Sim play with the doll all day until she considered her Pretty Pegacorn stuffie a friend. Remember you only need to complete one of those milestones, not all three.

When they've satisfied one of the conditions, a child Sim should see a "Turn into Imaginary Friend" option when interacting with the doll. A few seconds of channeling a little magical creativity and tadah! You've given your child Sim an Imaginary Friend only they can see.

Making a new mystical friend can also give Sims different buffs depending on their interaction. Having my Sim "pour her heart out" to the doll gave her a confidence boost, Unburned, and just the act of turning the doll into an Imaginary Friend added another buff, Friend of Mind.

Make an Imaginary Friend real in The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits

(Image credit: EA)

Kids don't have to outgrow all of their toys, and the same goes for their ImagineMe Doll. To make an Imaginary Friend real, have your child Sim keep working on their relationship until they're close friends. Once your Sim grows into a teen, they can interact with the doll and select "Offer to make real".

From that moment on your Imaginary Friend is no longer an entity only one Sim can see—they're their own person. They'll join your household as a teen and grow just like any other Sim.

Alternatively you don't have to make the offer and can leave Pretty Pegacorn or Wild Child as dolls forever. Sims can still interact with the toy in less fantastical ways, choosing to either reminisce on the old days or seek comfort from it when they're down.

The Sims 4 gets a much-needed update to the increasingly buggy base game, as EA assures players that 'your concerns are heard' over issues like deformed pets and missing ghost children

Rick Lane — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 13:00:00 +0000

The Sims 4 has been going through a bit of a mid-life crisis lately. A wayward patch issued in July triggered a rampant pregnancy epidemic, while the most recent Enchanted by Nature DLC received a less-than enthusiastic response from players. Now, it seems the community is generally fed up with the increasingly buggy state of the base game, with EA revealing plans for two solid months dedicated to bugfixes and quality-of-life support.

"We see your feedback on technical issues and game performance. And we want to assure you that your concerns are heard," the publisher wrote in a post on Monday. "Over the next 8 weeks, our dedicated teams will dive in to resolve current issues and get ahead of unforeseen technical disruptions."

Those plans kicked off in earnest with a big update to the base game that arrived late on Thursday. The headline feature of this patch was a newly added playpark for kids to run themselves ragged on, as well as a 'play pretend' interaction for kids who presumably can't get to said playpark for whatever reason. The update also adds a prototype "memory boost" feature to eke some extra performance from your PC, though you'll need to opt into this in the game settings.

The meat of the update, though, is a voluminous list of bug fixes. These address a mixture of issues, some raised by the community, others selected from EA's existing "bug archive". There are far too many to list here, but a couple of highlights include pets being straightened out so they "no longer get deformed when traveling to another lot after aging up", while unfortunate child sims "now show up as ghosts when they die due to over heat and freezing".

EA plans a second round of bugfixes in October, and is asking the community to upvote their most desired fixes in The Sims 4's bug report section of the EA forums. "Each upvote you cast on a reported issue helps us determine which problems are causing the biggest disruptions across the community," the publisher points out. "The earlier we receive votes, the better. We’ll provide an update on our progress if we’re unable to address all of the top-voted issues in our October Laundry List."

(Image credit: EA)

It's good to see EA working to tidy The Sims 4 up a bit, but I do wonder whether part of the problem is simply that The Sims 4 is now 12 years old, and wasn't designed to be the platform that EA has decided it is going to be. There was supposedly a fifth Sims game in development under the codename Project Rene, which would seem like an ideal opportunity to create a more robust launchpad for the all-encompassing Sims experience that EA wants.

EA president Laura Miele has since ruled this out, claiming that it wouldn't be fair to existing fans who have invested lots of time and money into The Sims 4:

"What I wouldn't want to have happen is you have to start from day zero and start from scratch and give up all of the things that you have created, give up all of the content that you've purchased over the years," Miele said during an interview with Variety in July. "We put out over 85 content packs over the last 10 years on The Sims 4, and so resetting that is not player friendly and not a good idea for our community."

It's a reasonable line of argument, but players are well accustomed to new games supplanting old ones, and the existence of a Sims 5 doesn't stop them from playing The Sims 4, unless EA decided to withdraw the game from sale.

In the same interview, Miele mentions that EA is planning a technology refresh and additional modes of play for The Sims 4, the former of which might help with all the bugs and other issues. Alternatively, it might break the game entirely, especially given the sheer amount of additional, optional stuff players can plug into the game.

Moreover, such an approach doesn't offer the opportunity to address some of the more fundamental issues with The Sims 4. While it certainly has plenty to offer players these days, it was never the deepest of Maxis' simulations (The Sims 3 had far richer AI, for example) and stubbornly sticking with it seems like a missed opportunity to create a strong foundation for a new era of Sims play.

Nonetheless, for now EA is sticking to its plan of retrofitting The Sims 4 with platform heels, so we'll just have to hope the next few weeks of hardcore bug-fixing gives them a sufficiently clean foundation to work with.

Sims 4 cheats: Life hacks
Sims 3 cheats: Classic hacks
Sims 4 mods: Play your way
Sims 4 CC: Custom content
Project Rene: What we know
Games like The Sims: More to life

The Sims 4 has finally added the ability to disable your hundreds of DLC packs which feels like both a good and bad thing

Mollie Taylor — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 11:34:53 +0000

As someone who played The Sims 3 on a tragically specced laptop, I'll always remember feeling mildly guilty whenever I ignored its suggestion to "select only a couple of packs at a time to ensure the best game experience," checking every box for every DLC I owned and hearing the whirr of my fans desperately fighting for their lives.

Thankfully that's not an issue I've had with The Sims 4—the power of a better-optimised game not shackled to a 32-bit prison—but I've certainly had moments where I wished I could disable a pack or two here and there without having to faff around with the EA app's advanced launch options. Well, after almost 11 years, I finally can.

(Image credit: EA)

The Sims 4's latest base game update has added a proper pack selector which, side note, really highlights the sheer number of paid DLC it has. Unlike The Sims 3—which made you select packs before you booted up the game—The Sims 4 has it tucked away in the main menu.

It's certainly less of a requirement to disable packs than it was in the previous game, too. EA doesn't recommend doing it for any optimisation purposes (yet) and it seems more like a way for people to temporarily go without packs that are particularly disruptive to gameplay. It's giving more optional than necessary, which is exactly how it should be.

I'm a fan of its introduction, personally, but I still have that tiny bit of fear lingering in the back of my brain that EA is eventually going to use this as a crutch for when the game bloats and potentially destabilises even further. From what the developer has been saying, it seems like The Sims 4 is sticking around for the foreseeable future, and with it already having the highest number of packs in the series, I imagine keeping everything running smoothly is only going to become more difficult.

For the most part, though, this is just a genuinely good quality of life addition. As long as it works. Which in YouTuber lilsimsie's case, it currently doesn't seem to be. Disabling all of the packs is an easy enough task, but it seems as though re-enabling them can take at least 20 minutes. To be fair, lilsimsie was trying to re-enable every single pack in the game, but it's certainly worth keeping in mind.

Personally, I hope having this in-game pack selector is a stepping stone to being able to fine-tune what we can pull from each pack in the future. Certain gameplay features can be checked on and off, but it's still pretty selective. Being able to disable larger gameplay overhauls while still keeping the furniture and Create-a-Sim items would be huge. I just hope that doesn't take another 11 years to happen.

'It's not player friendly': EA boss says making The Sims 5 is 'not a good idea for our community' because players have over 10 years of spiritual, mental, and financial investment

Mollie Taylor — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 15:04:12 +0000

EA continues to be rather confusing about what the future of The Sims looks like, but one thing remains clear: The Sims 5 ain't happening, and the series as we know it now is going to become something very different.

As spotted by GamesRadar, EA president Laura Miele hammered home the point in an interview with Variety and honestly? As a lifelong Simmer, it's all looking and sounding a little bleak.

The short answer is: The studio is still going all-in on its 'The Sims Universe' idea—which continues to be a fairly confusing concept in itself—and multiplayer gameplay. Miele said the team is "hard at work and feverishly developing what this platform is going to be." Does she offer up any further explanation? Eh, sorta.

"What we're doing is upgrading and refreshing all this technology, and we'll be adding modes of play—but we are also going to be creating and updating the base technology and the base user experience on the core game," she told Variety. "So you're going to have this life simulation, you're going to have multiplayer capabilities, we are going to have mobile expressions of this."

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Okay, there's a lot of corpo speak to unpack here. For the most part, Miele is pretty much telling Variety the exact same thing she told investors in September last year: The Sims 4 is going to continue to serve as the foundation for the series for the foreseeable future, with EA putting resources into ironing out bug fixes and prepping the game to withstand the weight of an extra several years' worth of DLC.

We've been aware of the multiplayer component as well, which seems to be the direction EA is taking with Project Rene. The developer's already done some playtesting—which has been pretty hush-hush bar a couple of leaks—and is also likely what Miele is referring to with "mobile expressions," since it's pretty clear at this point that Project Rene is taking a more cellular approach.

While some players (myself included) have still clung onto some small hope that The Sims 5 will happen, Miele believes starting over fresh serves nobody.

"What I wouldn't want to have happen is you have to start from day zero and start from scratch and give up all of the things that you have created, give up all of the content that you've purchased over the years," she said. "We put out over 85 content packs over the last 10 years on The Sims 4, and so resetting that is not player friendly and not a good idea for our community."

(Image credit: Maxis, Electronic Arts)

I can kind of see where Miele is coming from here, in a roundabout way. Each new Sims release has essentially stripped years of content and then served it straight back to us packaged up in various expansion, game, and stuff packs. Going from dozens of niche DLC choices to a barebones base game does suck.

At the same time, I'd argue that EA simply does not have to do that. Perhaps 85 content packs in a decade is a touch too many. Perhaps folding in some of these long-standing features—like pets, university, the weather—into the base game and then introducing more experimental ideas through paid packs would be better. Too ambitious of me?

I just continue to worry about EA shoving so many different plugs into a busted-up extension cord. The Sims 4 is spaghetti code patched up with sludge, and I fear the rope bridge is fraying with every new $5 kit that dares to walk across it. Even with a dedicated team tackling a never-ending laundry list of bugs, I'm not sure if piling more stuff on top in the process will ever help truly fix things. Especially if EA wants it to form the bedrock of the series for years to come.

The Sims 4's rampant pregnancy bug was apparently caused by 'performance optimizations' and has now been fixed

Rick Lane — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 14:45:51 +0000

The baby boom is over. EA has neutered a bizarre bug recently introduced to The Sims 4 that erroneously marked Sims as being pregnant, irrespective of whether they were male or had previously engaged in 'woo-hoo'.

The bug initially appeared last week, slipping undetected into the game in a base game patch that coincided with the launch of the new Enchanted by Nature DLC. The bug indiscriminately identified random Sims as being pregnant, while also seemingly breaking everything else related to pregnancy. Baby bumps were flattened, pregnancy tests vanished from the shelves, and despite my earlier assertion, these phantom pregnancies never seemed to produce simulated sprogs.

The bug also had several other side-effects adjacent to the game's reproductive cycle. It prevented falsely impregnated Sims from aging, but stopped them from woo-hoo-ing ever again. Now there's a deal with the devil for you.

Anyway, EA says this has all now been fixed. "Today’s update will fix the recent issues seen with Sim Pregnancy introduced on July 1," the publisher announced on its website yesterday. "The issues were related to performance optimizations and have now been reverted to resolve the issues reported." I'm sorry, but the excessive pregnancies in The Sims 4 were caused by improved performance? That's too perfect.

Alongside this general fix, EA also notes that "any Sim pregnancy related mods should return to their pre-update functionality, though you should still check with the specific mod author for updates." It had not occurred to me up until reading this that Sims 4 pregnancy mods would exist, and having just Googled it, I can only apologise for how severely I underestimated the Internet on that one.

In any case, your Sims should become pregnant in the normal way now. At least, as normal as a game that lets your Sims have kids with The Grim Reaper gets. As for how the Enchanted by Nature DLC has been received more broadly, the community seems divided on it. One Steam review by EmeraldOak calls it "one of the best packs that [EA has] released", while others observe that the fairy theme is a bit bland and superficial, which to be honest sounds typical of The Sims 4.

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The Sims 4 Enchanted by Nature expansion adds emotionally draining fairies and a whole lotta green

Andrea Shearon — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:11:50 +0000

The Sims 4 delves into the fantastical again with its second expansion pack of the year, Enchanted by Nature. It's quite the contrast to the grindset-minded Businesses & Hobbies expansion from March, adding all manner of fairy dust and greenery to continue my cottagecore girlie era in a woodsy, whimsical update.

And when you get a good look at it, this expansion looks a little more twisted than its closest thematic cousin, Cottage Living, but in a good way. Like in a way that appeals to my bog witch sensibilities, with fairies that absorb other Sims' emotions and get into all sorts of mischief. There are also new nature-focused skills, more cross-pack interactivity, and an abundance of plant life that lets me aggressively decorate the world in green.

Enchanted by Nature release date and trailers

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

When is The Sims 4 Enchanted by Nature release date?

The Sims 4: Enchanted by Nature release date is on July 10, 2025. EA's announcement also mentions a specific time, set for 12 pm CDT/6 pm BST and 2 am AEST on July 11.

Enchanted by Nature is listed on Steam and the EA Store, but since it's still a bit of a wait, The Sims 4 has its usual expansion-themed event, Nature's Calling, leading up to next month's release. If anything, it's worth jumping into just for subscribing your Sims to a new collectible called Touch Grass Weekly. Brilliant.

The Enchanted by Nature gameplay trailer shows off moody magic, doll houses, and gnomes

The Enchanted by Nature reveal trailer introduced Innisgreen with a Sim fueled by the new Nature Nomad aspiration, and Mother Nature's influence escalated from there. There's a quick look at gardening, foraging, and other outdoor activities that even include troubling sinus ailments—there's no way a Sim modeled in my likeness survives that much pollen.

Today's gameplay trailer expands on all of that, but offers a more detailed look at Fairy Sims and how transformation in the expansion works. I'm mostly surprised by how much we get to add to the mystical Sims from the beginning, with options for fancy new wings, skin tones, tattoos, and accessories.

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Enchanted by Nature gameplay features

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Innisgreen and Fairy Sims are the biggest pulls, but the expansion hasn't forgotten your regular Sims. Nature Nomads live off the land, roughin' it outdoors until those survival skills come with ease. The aspiration makes Sims better judges of what's safe to pick up and eat off the ground versus what's a no-no, plus they can just get comfy and fall asleep anywhere. A bit envious of that one.

All that frolocking comes with its own issues, too, risking ailments like Greenie Meanie, Emotional Void, Simoleon Fever, and Sonic Sinuses. But no worries there, as a Sim with the Elixir Enthusiast aspiration becomes a cure-all wizard, or so they claim. Using the new Apothecary Table, your Sims can make all sorts of concoctions for improving moods or fixing nasty afflictions.

Sims can transform into new Fairy Sims

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

The whole fairy transformation thing means your Sim is no longer a regular ole nobody and counts as an Occult Sim. In addition to all of the ethereal customization options for their new look, you'll have more traits, skills, and even two different life paths to choose from. There's stuff for the non-fae folk, too, but there are a few notable quirks to choosing the supernatural:

Story paths for Harmonious or Discordant Fairy lifestyles
Customizable wings, skin tones, ears, teeth, glowing body art, and accessories
Special fairy WooHoo, whatever that entails
Abilities to influence other Sims' moods, stir up drama, or even change their ages
Bloom plants on command, shrink in size, or bring gnomes to life
Consume Emotion Potions or sustain yourself on other Sims' emotions
Or don't consume either and wind up with the lethal Emotional Starvation ailment

Enchanted by Nature includes more cross-pack compatibility

Businesses & Hobbies included a long list of cross-pack interactions, and Enchanted by Nature seems to keep that trend going with more features not limited to just Fairy Sims. I'm hopeful owning both means I can run an outlandish plant nursery, but that's not part of the official list (yet).

Cats & Dogs, Horse Ranch, and the Cottage Living expansion packs include special animal interactions with Fairy Sims
Occult Sims from the Werevolves and Vampires game packs, plus the Island Living expansion, can use special elixirs from the Apothecary Table
A new Fear of Magic trait makes Realm of Magic's Spellcasters frighten some Sims
Fairy Sims share unique interactions with other Occult Sims from across the series

Other Enchanted by Nature gameplay features

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Visit Innisgreen and its neighborhoods: Sprucederry Grove, Everdew, and Adhmor
Become a Naturopath, turning Sims into wellness gurus
Create Luck Charms to influence Sims' luck for better or for worse
Grow Aura Bloom, Lightning Root, and Mood Bush outdoors for special benefits
Indoorsy types can stay home and fill their space with houseplants

After another disappointing Project Rene leak I wish EA would finally step in and say anything at all to Sims fans

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 21:24:37 +0000

It's happened again: Screenshots and footage from a playtest allegedly for Project Rene have leaked and fans are disappointed. It's me. I'm fans. The cross-platform, online Sims game is still so totally shrouded in mystery and each new playtest leak just makes me wish that Electronic Arts would say anything to its players.

A newly posted video shows almost six minutes of gameplay for a mobile Sims game which the uploader claims is from this year and played on an Android phone—which lines up with a "City Life Game With Friends" listing attributed to EA that players found on the German Google Play Store. Here's what the Google Translation of that store page says:

"Welcome to the City Life Game with Friends! Create your character—a unique individual with their own appearance, style, and story—and join friends and other players to explore a vibrant neighborhood together. Get new outfits from the thrift store, work at the local cafe, or complete quests. Develop your skills in art, music, and conversation. Collaborate to design block party locations, grant wishes at the plaza fountain, discover hidden collectibles, and more."

An official screenshot for "City Life Game with Friends" on Google Play. (Image credit: Electronic Arts)

In the posted video there's a familiar outdoor plaza area we've seen from other alleged Project Rene leaks where the player walks around with their customized sim among other player sims with goals like making a wish in a fountain and working a shift at a cafe.

The player uses a virtual joystick to navigate, earns gold simoleon coins for completing to-do list items, introduces themselves to other sims with emotes and an interaction menu, and walks over to a space with a prompt to "decorate together" presumably with other players.

Sims fans are unimpressed, and the generic mobile game interface and clearly in-development light rendering isn't doing it any favors. Playtests are by definition incomplete, and are often not representative of the final game, especially visually. But when these occasional leaks are the only information we're getting, it's difficult not to just take it at face value.

An official screenshot for "City Life Game with Friends" on Google Play. (Image credit: Electronic Arts)

EA remains frustratingly cagey about Project Rene—and the other in-development Sims projects—officially confirming very little aside from the fact that it isn't actually The Sims 5 and will be cross-platform. Half of what we know about Project Rene comes from years old Behind The Sims videos and another half from an EA investor presentation last year that never got properly acknowledged in player-facing communication.

We still don't even know if these mobile game playtest leaks we keep seeing actually are Project Rene—though in the absence of information that's what players are guessing. Ever the optimist, I keep reminding myself that this might be The Sims Project Stories mobile game also revealed during that investor presentation. EA still hasn't told us anything about that either, so we're just left to our assumptions.

In January this year, Mollie Taylor and I got the chance to interview Sims series boss Lyndsay Pearson leading up to the series 25th anniversary. "Leaks are unavoidable, unfortunately," Pearson told us then, adding that there have been times where very old playtest footage leaks, causing more confusion.

It's true, leaks are pretty unavoidable. They're made worse by the lack of communication though. While EA keeps its lips zipped, it's difficult not to assume that the thing it originally announced as the "next generation" of The Sims and a "creative platform" has been rebooted and downsized into this online mobile game.

Meanwhile, The Sims series' new competitor Inzoi launched in early access last week. Though it has plenty of work left to do on creating an in-depth life sim, Krafton is certainly beating EA at the communication game.

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The best part of The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies expansion is just coming up with fun small business ideas

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 00:31:23 +0000

The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies expansion has opened its doors to pretty much any kind of small business venture you can dream up. It's perfect for my Build Mode brain that loves to spend four hours designing a place and then never playing it. That's the hard part though: coming up with ideas for small businesses in The Sims 4.

You can stick to some obvious picks like the pottery shop and tattoo parlor that the expansion's new skills are angled towards or some of the funnier ones like a cat cafe that it encourages if you've got the Cats & Dogs expansion. But the small business system is so permissive that your imagination really is the limit.

If your creativity cortex isn't booting up, I'm here to help jumpstart your inspo needs with some freebie ideas for fun small businesses and how to set them up in Businesses & Hobbies.

Speakeasy bar

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Making a speakeasy is, in fact, very easy. It's the first thing I made with the expansion and isn't really functionally different from just a regular coffee shop or bar. You'll just want to build it in a secret basement or back room for maximum prohibition vibes. Some of the bars that came in the Lovestruck expansion are perfect for that era of architecture, by the way.

You can adjust the business activities to things like dancing and have DJing as employee tasks if you want more of an underground club vibe. The important bit is to just make sure your customers are going to drink and any employees are going to serve.

Speakeasy small business
Business Activities	Target Customers	Employee Tasks
Drink bar drinks	Age: Young adult, adult, elder	Tend bar
View art	Financial status: Moderate, wealthy	Clean
Listen to music		Be friendly

Note also that you can only have one small business on your lot open at once. That's a bummer for some setups you might have envisioned, but for a speakeasy it means you can have one sim run a legit business by day and then another sim open their secret bar by night after it closes, which is a fun storytelling hook.

Daycare

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Running a daycare small business in The Sims 4 sort of works. You just have to suspend your disbelief and use your imagination a bit. It doesn't function as a way for your other sims to actually pay for childcare so really it's just a way for your small business owner to care for kids (or cats) all day while getting paid.

Remember to untick the "caregiver stays at business" and toggle the "criteria required" on with your customer age preference so that parents will drop their kids off and pick them up later.

Daycare small business (for children or pets)
Business Activities	Target Customers	Employee Tasks
Play with toys	Supervised Customer: Infant, toddler, child (criteria required)	Care for little ones
Play with infant and toddler toys		Clean
Use activity table

You can add even more business activities specific to the age group you want as well, like playing voidcritters or doing puzzles if you want to have a preschool-style kids daycare instead of infants.

Laundromat

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Running a laundromat and saving up is a total rags to riches player's dream small business. You'll need the Laundry Day stuff pack, which will let you toss a bunch of stackable washer and dryer units into a room. Pair with some of the cracked walls and ratty furniture from the For Rent expansion if you really want to grunge it up.

You can earn money from "services" when customers use your laundry machines but this type of business is a bit easier to run if you set the entrance fees to "hourly" to mimic how a laundrette user would be paying up on fixed intervals for machines. Just make sure your employees are ready to clean up washing machine leaks and fix busted appliances.

Laundromat small business
Business Activities	Target Customers	Employee Tasks
Do laundry	Age: Young adult, adult, elder	Clean
		Fix objects

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Comedy club

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

At last Johnny Zest can live out his dream as a comedian. You can start things off small in a garage space and then move on up to build a separate comedy club venue if you want. Remember: all the cool comedy clubs have brick walls.

In theory you can leave entrance fees disabled and just make money off drinks if you hire a bartender employee to serve customers while your talent wows them on stage. I'd recommend going with a one-time entrance fee like the cover charge or ticket price at most comedy clubs. Oh, and make sure to make a small platform 'room' for your stage so you can mark it as "employees only" to keep customers from walking right through the performance.

Business Activities	Target Customers	Employee Tasks
Watch live entertainment	Age: Young Adult, Adult, Elder (criteria required)	Do comedy
Drink bar drinks	Trait: Goofball, cheerful

For a little extra fun you could turn this into a drag cabaret instead if you set up an employee uniform inspired by your favorite Drag Race stars and have them either perform standup comedy or musical numbers.

Internet cafe

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Another fun throwback business idea is the old internet cafe. Set up a space with tons of chunky desktop computers and charge your customers an hourly rate to sit around playing Blicblock. Your small business owner almost doesn't need to do anything at all to make this place a success other than greet customers every once in a while.

If you want to step it up into something more involved though, you could run a tabletop gaming shop instead of an internet cafe where customers pay a one-time entry fee to play table games and also buy MySims trophies you've collected.

Internet cafe small business
Business Activities	Target Customers	Employee Tasks
Play videogames	Age: Teen, Young Adult	Be friendly
Be friendly	Skill level 2+: Videogaming

Petting zoo

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Running a petting zoo can work for anyone who has the Cats & Dogs expansion but is even better if you have the Cottage Living expansion with cows and llamas. Charge a one time entry fee to become a master of agritourism as sims visit just to hang out with your livestock.

If you want to expand the operation into even more suburbanite farm activities you can have garden plots available for customers to "tend and harvest garden" or even "look for frogs" in ponds on the lot.

Petting zoo small business
Business Activities	Target Customers	Employee Tasks
Care for animals	(Any)	Care for animals
Play with pets

Host club

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

This is a weird one but hear me out: The Yakuza series fan in me loves the idea of running a host/hostess club where employees chat with and entertain their customers, and maybe flirt a little bit too. It's finally the perfect job for Don Lothario. Just make sure you're targeting wealthy customers if you really want to nail the style.

Charge a one-time entry fee as cover and then make the rest of your money on drink sales. Just make sure to also set up an employee uniform so that your staff comes dressed in glamor to entertain. You'll probably want to hire separate employees to be bartenders so your hosts can stay focused on clients.

Host club small business
Business Activities	Target Customers	Employee Tasks
Drink bar drinks	Age: Young adult, adult, elder (criteria required)	Be friendly
Dance	Marital status: Not married	Be romantic
Be romantic	Financial status: Wealthy
	Trait: Romantic

How to get disruptive customers to leave in The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 22:32:02 +0000

The Sims 4 really does reflect the best and worst parts of life, including the reality of dealing with disruptive customers in retail jobs. The Business & Hobbies expansion came with the ability to run all sorts of new small business ventures—with so much freedom that you might need help just coming up with small business ideas—and also comes with the total unpredictability of customer relations.

When someone shows up to your pottery class determined to be a problem, your small business-owning sims are going to need to stiffen up the old spine and give the troublemaker the boot. As it goes though, the ever-expanding Sims 4 interaction menu makes it tough to initially know how to send your disruptive customers packing.

How to make disruptive customers leave in The Sims 4

You need to welcome a customer before you get this option to send them away. (Image credit: Electronic Arts)

To make a disruptive customer leave in The Sims 4, you need to welcome them first. It's a little counter-intuitive because obviously you want to get rid of them, not welcome them. The thing is, there are other small business-specific interactions that you can't perform with a customer until you've gone through the first step of greeting them—like how you often have to greet any acquaintance sim before more specific interactions open up.

You may have so many customers coming and going from your store that you won't realize your sim hasn't actually greeted them all individually. Usually that's not an issue. They're still plenty happy to buy stuff or use the services you're providing.

You can sometimes spot a disruptive customer based on what they're doing. Some might stink up your store with farts or stand around eating a sandwich. They're just generally not reading the room. If there's any doubt though, hover over the sim in question and they'll have red text above their name that declares them a "disruptive customer" clearly spelled out.

If you don't see the interaction choice for kicking out your annoying weirdo:

While playing as your small business owner, click on the disruptive customer
Select the "Welcome to business" interaction with the hanging sign Businesses & Hobbies icon
After greeting, interact with the disruptive customer again
Select the Small Business > Send disruptive customer away interaction

You can try to just nip the behavior in the bud by asking the customer to knock off whatever it is they're doing with interactions like "ask to stop eating and drinking own food" at your restaurant venue. To solve things fastest though, just show 'em the door.

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The Sims 4 is finally bringing the burglar back to the series after a decade away

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 19:52:36 +0000

I enjoy The Sims most when it's ruining my day with random events and today The Sims 4 is bringing back one of the greats: the burglar. After a not-so-sneaky teaser this week The Sims 4 has dropped a base game update which, among a list of bug fixes, also adds a unique new thief to snatch your family's stuff. It is great to see the old gag make it back to the series, especially after I've had such a good time getting burgled in The Sims 3 recently.

The burglar was a series staple for The Sims until The Sims 4, where they've always been tragically absent. Back in the day, a horror movie-esque violin wail would signal danger approaching the house—sometimes just a raccoon coming for your trash but sometimes a wrong'un to steal away those hard-bought possessions.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

"The infamous Robin Banks (yep, that’s her name—we couldn’t resist) only strikes at night, sneaking into your Sim’s home while everyone is fast asleep (or even if they are awake!)," EA explains in its dev diary for the update.

Along with the burglar herself, The Sims 4 is bringing back burglar alarms to put in your homes as just one of many ways to foil an attempted robbery. Police NPCs are returning too as the default responders to alarms or calls to report the burglary.

Interestingly, there's a lot of interaction with current DLCs too, from dogs being able to chase off burglars to werewolves scaring them away or spellcasters enchanting them into leaving. There's even a new lot challenge called "Heist Havoc" that makes burglaries more common on a designated property.

"In total, we’ve included over 50 unique reactions across the base game and 17 different packs, along with 37 player-directed interactions," EA says, which does really seem like a lot.

I'd felt like the burglar was an odd choice for a base game update ahead of the Businesses & Hobbies expansion in that they don't feel all that related to each other, but at a meta level both have a pretty clear focus on increasing interactions between expansions and the base game, which is refreshing to see.

In other Robin Banks FAQs:

Yes you can befriend her (but can you woohoo?)
Yes she can die but a new burglar will fill her shoes
She can steal Buy Mode objects but can't swipe most Build Mode features

My complaint with Live Mode in The Sims 4 lately has been how, compared with other parts of the series, it so often asks the player permission to make anything interesting happen. I'm just hoping that the return of the burglar means I'll actually have to deal with the consequences instead of seeing a popup on screen that lets me veto the event. Based on what's been laid out in the announcement post, it sure does sound like this is the kind of 'deal with it' random event chaos I've been hoping to get more of.

The burglar (and police and burglar alarms and so on) are all coming to The Sims 4 base game in a free update that goes live today, so go on and start installing those home security systems now.

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This Sims 2 mod makes all your sims very horny but that's not actually the best part

Justin Wagner — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 17:32:58 +0000

Now that The Sims 2 is kinda-sorta playable again on modern machines, you might expect it to be perfect right out of the digital box; its rich simulation of the modern day-to-day (circa 2004, anyway) is among the best you can find. But let’s just lay it out there: these sims are a bunch of sexless dweebs.

I didn’t deck my sims out in clothes from the H&M Fashion Stuff pack so they could laze around on their home lot, needing me to poke and prod them to do anything but pee every five minutes and put their dirty plates on the floor. I want sims whose hearts are ablaze with the fires of romance, getting lost in crushes and jealous daydreams as eagerly as they get lost in their own swimming pools. As always, mods come to the rescue. Perhaps, in the case of Twojeffs’ Autonomous Casual Romance mod, a little too excitedly.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

The mod, which encourages sims to develop and pursue romantic relationships of their own accord, works subtly at first. The Sims 2 packs in a ton of romantic interactions by default, but you’re typically selecting them from a menu to cultivate a relationship manually once your sim develops a want or aspiration in that vein. With ACR, sims randomly get the hots for other sims and act on those desires independently and frequently, running the full monty from woo to woohoo. ACR's default settings are arguably a bit ridiculous, with everyone in the neighborhood acting like they’d just loaded up on aphrodisiacs.

My quest began humbly. I made the most appealing sim the game allows—an unemployed bachelor with a Musketeer’s goatee and a tracksuit he never takes off named Darren Gorp —and sent him to the club. Darren saw it all firsthand. Everyone was hitting it off; dancing, flirting, running off for The Sims’ signature PG-friendly mating rituals. Despite the tone shift from how I normally play The Sims (working overtime to afford a nicer couch and another dog) it brought a rare sort of liveliness to everyone in the neighborhood.

Except Gorp, of course, who when left to his own devices failed to overcome his low attraction scores, struck out majorly, and went home alone. I think his aspirations to become a career criminal and "mean" personality trait were turn-offs. That night, he passed out on the sofa while a robber stole his TV.

ACR does require an "adjuster object" be placed on any lot where you want all this autonomous love stuff to happen—it’s all tweakable and the adjuster is inconspicuous enough, appearing as a stack of books. You can also disguise it as any number of trees or bushes. I just pretend it’s a spiritual anchor to late-career John Waters.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts, modded by Twojeffs)

You’re free to fine-tune your sims’ coolness with infidelity, booty calls, casual relationships, their gender preference, whether they can get pregnant, whether they leave the socks on when they woohoo, and so on. You can even foster crushes and determine who they’d envy others having a relationship with. That’s just on the sim level; you can make sweeping global changes like deciding your whole neighborhood is jealous of everyone else’s lovers or making everyone gay overnight. Maybe you’re sick of it all, and want a completely non-horny game where sims are asexual and reproduce through divine intervention. That’s on the table!

In my mind, the strength of this mod has little to do with the romantic aspect and everything to do with the increased autonomy. Regardless of how you tune your adjuster, you’ll find your sims’ behavior more dynamic than ever, letting them make more of their own choices and getting to observe the consequences. It might seem slight if you aren’t into the romantic aspect of the sims, but it enriches the simulation in ways I didn’t expect.

Love becomes as messy and complicated as you want it to be. Maybe you want your sim neighborhood to reflect the real world, with sims flirting, hooking up, and finding their own relationships independent of your explicit guidance. Or maybe you loved Baldur’s Gate 3 before Larian nerfed the Sex% speedrun, and you want to relive the glory days. Either way, ACR is as much a tool for raunchy silliness as it is a lightning rod for engaging drama, making it a perfect fit for The Sims.

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This cheat mod makes The Sims 2 feel like a god game and it turns out I am a cruel, cruel god

Justin Wagner — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 19:37:03 +0000

The whole 'trap Sims in the pool with no way to get out' shtick is such a cliche, and it’s a real pain in the neck to actually get done. By the time anyone actually dies my Sim has had to run to the bathroom about twenty times. No, I need a good old fashioned smite button—something that can finish off any joker with a hand buzzer before he can say "sul sul."

Luckily my prayers were answered with Aaroneous’ Sim Manipulator, a mod which grants me that smite button and so much more. The mod comes with a coterie of controller objects, from a weather machine to an NPC spawner and everything in-between. If there is a thing that can happen to a Sim, chances are you can force that interaction with a controller. Make your children’s grades straight As, force everyone to be hungry, inspire new hobbies in existing Sims, make it rain figuratively or literally, and so on.

In a Sims veteran’s hands, these tools allow unmitigated control over each character’s progression, current state, and lifestyle, binding nearly every aspect of the simulation to your whim. In my hands, the idyllic streets of Pleasantview started to look more like a game of Dungeon Keeper.

In fact, maybe I never deserved these mods. They’re meant to aid roleplaying, allow me to quickly relocate and customize Sims, alter ages and faces, switch careers and time of day, set the stage in any way I see fit. But that never even crossed my mind.

Within minutes of installing the Sim Manipulator, I spawned half the neighborhood into a single lot, and once they started doing jazzercise or whatever unprompted in my living room, I turned myself into a witch and used my weather machine to make it rain lethal indoor fire.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Later, I was trying to practice my free throw outside the neighborhood grocer, and some utter rando decided to invite himself to play with me. Since I’m a god, I fill his bladder and strike him with lightning. What’s he going to do about it? Tell someone a god filled his bladder and struck him with lightning?

Anyway, there’s more to virtual life than schadenfreude. The Sim Manipulator has an impressive suite of features, ranging from the aforementioned godlike powers to the more grounded ones like the ability to swap outfits on a dime instead of having to go change clothes manually. It basically lets you access a ton of Sims 2 cheats without having to remember them all.

While it’s fun to screw around with the more outlandish features, I’d recommend it to anyone looking to control the game’s moment-to-moment a bit more or pack a house full of werewolves and vampires without any fuss. There’s even a census feature allowing you to view a number of stats related to your neighborhood’s cast of Sims and NPCs. Once the novelty wore off, I mostly used it to teleport myself to the bathroom and back.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts, modded by Aaroneous)

Somewhere in-between the extremes there’s a way to use this mod that could encourage new sorts of emergent storytelling. Maybe you want a Sim who’s enemies or best friends with everyone in the neighborhood the day they move in, or you want your elderly grandfather to evade death’s door for another week so he can watch his granddaughter graduate college. Is it cheating? Maybe, but The Sims 2 is hardly an esport, and if I wanted to be subject to reality’s every cruel whim, I’d go outside. For now, it’s back to the weather control machine.

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The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies expansion includes a ton of cross-pack play that I'm pretty psyched for

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 19:19:59 +0000

The Sims 4 is now well into its nostalgia-fueled "Motherlode season" celebrating the series' 25th anniversary and also revealing the next Sims 4 expansion pack: Businesses & Hobbies. After the Life & Death pack at the end of last year we're apparently in a double word plus ampersand expansion era—who do I have to pander to to get a pun around here?

The new expansion pack is all about the rise and grind lifestyle of turning your hobbies into small business hustles. It now has its first gameplay trailer—after the requisite leaks and trailers that preceded it, of course—so we've got a decent overview of what exactly is coming in this pack.

Businesses & Hobbies release date and trailers

When is the Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies expansion release date?

The Sims 4: Businesses & Hobbies release date is on March 6, 2025.

There's an unknown reveal for February 25, which is the week before the expansion release. I'd bet that's the drop date for a free game update related to the expansion. As in past expansions, we can probably expect a couple related game features to get added to the base game.

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Check out the Businesses & Hobbies gameplay trailer

The first reveal trailer for the Businesses & Hobbies expansion confirmed a lot of the broad details about the new tattooing and pottery skills. It also gives a quick look at the new menus for running small businesses and building multi-purpose lots—more on those below where I'll cover all the details gleaned from the Businesses & Hobbies announcement post.

The gameplay trailer gives a slightly deeper explanation of how small businesses and learning skills works. In particular it goes over the alignment of your small business (dreamer, neutral, or schemer) and how you'll be able to manage employee salaries and tasks.

Businesses & Hobbies gameplay features

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Main features

Own businesses and run them from dual-purpose commercial/residential lots
New pottery and tattooing skills with custom tattoos
New skill "mentor" system

Pottery and Tattooing skills

The two new skills fueling your small business aspirations in this pack are tattooing and pottery, both of which look like pretty involved skills that let you go hands-on instead of just letting the skill bar slowly tick up.

With tattooing you'll be able to custom create tattoos in a Create-A-Sim menu. You can pick lots of new pre-made designs but also create your own by layering elements and choosing colors or just drawing directly on your sim's body. It's not far off from how painting custom coats for pets in the Cats & Dogs expansion works. You'll also be able to share and download tattoo designs from the gallery.

As for pottery, it looks like it has a lot in common with the jewelry making skill from the Crystal Creations pack. You'll choose a ceramic shape from a list for your sim to create on a pottery wheel and then choose whether to glaze it with a color or leave it unglazed in the kiln.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

New ownable businesses

One pretty neat part of Businesses & Hobbies is how much cross-pack play it's going to support. The ability to run your own shop won't just be restricted to the ones existing in current packs and the new tattooing and pottery skills. You'll also be able to open businesses related to other expansion packs—and some game packs and stuff packs—that you own:

Pet cafes (Cats and Dogs)
Dance clubs (Get Together)
Arcades (Get Together)
Karaoke bars (City Living)
Acting school (Get Famous)
Spas (Spa Day)
Laundromat (Laundry Day Stuff)
Bowling Alley (Bowling Night Stuff)

After creating your business, you'll also have a menu where you can set a name and logo as well as entrance fees and the kinds of customers you'd like to attract. You'll also manage your employees, their salaries, and their work tasks.

As you play, leveling up your small business will unlock perks in the three small business alignments: dreamer, neutral, and schemer.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Multi-use lots

The part I'm psyched about, as a Build Mode enjoyer, is that the Businesses & Hobbies expansion is going to expand the multi-unit lot features we got in the For Rent expansion to now handle multi-purpose lots which are both residential and commercial. Instead of creating a new "Small Business Venue Lot" you can instead add a small business on an existing residential zoned lot.

Like in For Rent, you can designate entry permissions by room. In this case it's public, residential, or employees only. That means your enterprising sims can have a private loft with their family built on top of their tattoo parlor, for instance. Oh, here's a freebie idea: building a dance club with the Get Together pack beneath your sim's ground floor home in the style of a speakeasy.

Other gameplay features

New world: Nordhaven
New skill: Tattooing
Custom tattoos that you can draw or design with layers
Sharing tattoo designs on the gallery
New skill: Pottery
Advanced pottery skill Kintsugi
Become skill mentors and earn Mastery Perks points
Teaching classes or lectures as a mentor
"Hobby meetup" events to find sims with similar interests or skill mentors
Ticket kiosk for controlling whether visitors pay a one time or hourly entrance fee

The Sims 2 has the most unhinged drama in the entire series that finally seduced me away from my beloved Build Mode

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 21:58:24 +0000

I'm not a Live Mode player. Or at least I haven't been for the past decade of playing The Sims, so I'd assumed that the itch had left me in my teen years and being a Build Mode girl was a personality trait I aged into. That is until The Sims 3 and, as of this week, the re-release of The Sims 2, completely changed how I like to play.

Over the past year I've gotten back into playing The Sims 3. I have a lot of love for its more realism-driven Build Mode and bygone tools like Create-A-Stye, but to my surprise I found a lot to love in Live Mode too, at times struggling to put it down and return to my usual MO of quietly building little houses.

The Sims 4's approach to Live Mode is massively different from the series' past, a phenomenon that I got to ask about when interviewing Sims series boss Lyndsay Pearson last month. Where The Sims 4 is terrified of stepping on your toes—with popups asking everything from whether you want to confirm that a Sim officially "likes" a hobby they're trying, to random neighbors calling to ask your opinion on who they should make friends with, let alone allowing your sims to die—The Sims 3 is happy to throw potholes in your path and make you navigate around them.

I've recently had fun digging into becoming a car thief in The Sims 3, enamored by how random events like burglary or romantic attraction make The Sims feel so much more lively than The Sims 4 and its constant permission-asking to make anything interesting happen.

The Sims 2, however, is completely unhinged. Here's a loose retelling of events from just my first night playing:

Day 1: I load up the Goth family to find Cassandra Goth hopelessly crushing on neighborhood playboy Don Lothario. Cassandra foolishly proposes marriage to Don, spiraling into despair as her little brother Alexander bashes on the piano nearby.
Day 2: Mortimer Goth and Dina Caliente mutually have crushes on each other already—Dina because she wants to marry rich and Mortimer as he laments the disappearance of his wife Bella. Unplanned by me, Mortimer sweeps Dina off her feet into a kiss as a greeting the first time she visits the house. So he's not that torn up.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Day 2 (cont.): While Mortimer and Dina canoodle upstairs, I react to a thunderstorm setting a tree on fire by (foolishly) sending Cassandra out to extinguish it. I don't know what I thought was going to happen but Cassandra gets struck by lightning in her underwear and lives just long enough to walk back inside and die in the kitchen.
Day 3: Alexander is the only one to notice Cassandra's death. Mortimer is too wrapped up in Dina's arms to bother feeding his son, who subsists on potato chips. Alexander comes home from school to find out that Dina is moving in with them already. When I try to promote household harmony by having Alexander ask Dina for homework help, he accidentally walks in while she's cuddling with Mortimer in bed and hates his new not-stepmom instead.
Day 4: Dina and Mortimer get engaged and I notice that Alexander has three different wants in his list for buying a pet, so Mortimer takes him to the pet shop to adopt a large terrier who they name Worthington. That night, Cassandra's horrifying underwear-clad electrocuted ghost haunts Alexander causing him to wet his pajamas.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Day 5: Mortimer plans a birthday party for Alexander but basically nobody comes. Despite that, Alexander is happy (because of Worthington) and successful (after doing his homework unassisted), though when he ages up into a teenager and picks his turn-ons he is (as prodded by me) suspiciously into characteristics that Dina has.
Day 6: Dina fulfills her wish to start a job in the law career—which seems to defeat the purpose of her desire to marry rich but Dina contains multitudes. Worthington gets a job (because pets can have jobs) as a movie set extra but decides on his first day that he's feeling too lazy to go to work.

After all that, I look at Mortimer's lifespan timer counting up days until death and wonder if perhaps Dina should put off this marriage and wait to marry the new Goth family heir. Maybe he'll get over the trauma of catching her in bed with his dad by the time he ages up again.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

I had to drag myself away from The Sims 2 that night, past my real-life bedtime, and realized that I'd not touched my beloved Build Mode at all.

I played The Sims 1 and 2 as a kid, but I've slept a few times since then and my CD-ROMs are likely gathering dust in a box in my childhood bedroom. I'd forgotten so much of its inherent silliness that I either took for granted or never quite noticed back when it launched.

Legacy Launch

It's a bit of a shame that the Sims 1 and 2 re-releases last week launched to a lot of players experiencing crashes and bugs and frustrated by the small number of actual performance improvements made for the re-launch. There's since been a patch for some of those issues, though it seems likely plenty still remain.

Now that I've spent time in all four mainline Sims games within the same week I can confidently say that The Sims 2 is the one that nails the chaos and humor of Live Mode best.

Ghosts are an incessant menace floating around the Goth household, even before Cassandra's demise. My sims' basic needs are a constant battle to keep filled, unlike the much more forgiving Sims 4. It has whole cutscenes to mark big life events like first woohoos between partners and marriage proposals. And heck, dogs can have jobs. I love that.

Something about The Sims 2's interface puts all the drama immediately at my fingertips in a way that The Sims 4 has never managed to. Existing townie relationships draw my eye as a place to begin stirring the pot and the way that The Sims 2's simulation chooses to constantly ramp up the dramatic tension without my say-so keeps the madness going.

Build mode has my heart in The Sims 3 and 4. And the re-release of the original The Sims has reminded me just how novel a concept it felt like at the time. But as a newly-minted Live Mode drama-seeking freak, The Sims 2 is an absolute winner.

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Psychologist says 'there's a real sense of effort' to The Sims 4's emotional realism, from Maslow's Hierarchy to personal pep talks

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 18:47:20 +0000

The Sims series turned 25 this week and to mark the occasion we've asked a psychologist to take a reality check on The Sims 4. The series is meant to simulate life, sure, but certain things are always going to be exaggerated for comedic effect. You can't really die from laughter, right? Well, probably not.

Charted psychologist and author Dr. Audrey Tang sat down to take a look at how sims behave: their basic needs, personality traits, the power of moodlets, and more. She was able to give some reassurances on one of The Sims' weirder deaths—extreme emotion could possibly exacerbate a heart condition or give you shortness of breath but dying of it? Probably not. Laughter is good for you, physically and psychologically!

While death by joy doesn't get a pass for realism, Dr. Tang gives props to The Sims for other psychological principles it incorporates. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, while not really scientifically proven, is a handy framework for looking at human motivation and prioritizing basic physiological needs over social and self-actualizing goals. Dr. Tang says it is actually quite neat that The Sims 4 mirrors that prioritization—by not allowing a sim to do fun tasks like practicing music while they're dead tired.

Dr. Tang also says that giving yourself a pep talk in the mirror to increase your self-confidence really does have some research to back up how it by primes your brain to see the positives throughout your day. Meanwhile short term comforts like good food can offset big emotions like grieving the loss of a loved one, but the process of mourning lasts a lot longer than the meal does in real life. That's an interesting one that The Sims 4 has built on itself recently with the Life & Death expansion pack and its grieving styles.

In all, Dr. Tang gives The Sims 4 a passing grade in her reality check. The game isn't meant to rigorously simulate true human behavior, sure, but she says "there's a real sense of effort that was put in there to make it as realistic as possible."

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After The Sims 1 + 2 rereleases stumbled out to mixed reviews, EA issues a patch that boldly declares they 'should now launch in most situations'

Rick Lane — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 18:39:07 +0000

Some might argue launching is the absolute minimum you should expect from a videogame, a fundamental prerequisite to enjoying the included experience. But I like a little frisson in my basic boot functionality. The nervous excitement of clicking the shortcut, the tense wait as the screen cuts to black. Will the game boot? Will it crash, or freeze? Will it reduce my machine to a smouldering heap of wires and silicon?

Such uncertainty is the secret spice that makes PC gaming so exciting. So I was disappointed to see EA has released a new patch for the Sims 1 + 2 legacy, which among other fixes ensures The Sims 1 "should now launch in most situations". Note it doesn't say "will now launch in all situations", so there's still hope for runtime daredevils such as myself.

Base functionality is one of numerous issues EA addressed in its patch for the Sims 1 + 2 Legacy, after both packages launched last week to a less than stellar reception. Both games and their included expansion packs currently sit with a 'Mixed' rating on Steam, with players citing issues ranging from the games booting in super low resolutions, to frequent crashes, to the aforementioned failure to launch at all.

For the Sims 1, the patch fixes several issues surrounding use of Alt+Tab and Alt+Enter, which could cause the game to crash or for the taskbar to be hidden. It solves a problem where players were unable to click on various parts of the neighbourhood map, as well as a flaw where "the travel screen, when travelling between neighbourhoods/worlds, can sometimes appear garbled, or glitched." And of course, there was that startup issue whereby "on some systems, The Sims can appear to launch and then immediately exit", which the patch fixes. Mostly.

As for The Sims 2, EA fixed a crash caused by Alt+Tab and Alt+Enter, as well as the sequel's annoying tendency to launch at 800x600 before scaling said resolution to "fill the entire monitor". It also nixes a problem where "the game would sometimes crash when creating a family", which anyone who has created a family in real life will empathise with, alongside a glitch where "sometimes non-adult Sims (children, pets) would disappear." There's nothing worse than walking your dog for them to suddenly warp into null-space, so I'm glad EA has resolved that.

You can read the full patch notes here. EA stresses that some issues "may still be in the process of being addressed" and includes some "general notes" about both games. These discuss issues the Sims team is currently investigating, and advise players on performing certain actions the games aren't really designed to support (such as moving the window between multiple monitors with different resolutions).

None of this changes the fact that both packages appear to be extremely basic ports reminiscent of Konami's Metal Gear Solid rereleases from 2023. Not that every rereleased game needs a Nightdive-level makeover, but ensuring these decades-old games look crisp on a modern display and run without fuss isn't much to expect when being charged £20-30 a pop.

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Will Wright says the original Sims AI was actually too good: 'Almost anything the player did was worse than the Sims running on autopilot'

Jody Macgregor — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 00:26:35 +0000

As part of the 25th anniversary of The Sims, the New York Times spoke to the original game's lead designer Will Wright, who gave some insight into how its AI was programmed. Part of the inspiration came from an unlikely source: his house burning down in 1991.

It was nothing like the fires in The Sims, which are usually caused by someone with a low cooking skill being anywhere near a toaster. Wright's house was caught in the Oakland Hills firestorm. "When I returned to the ashes of my house, I noticed that the only things still alive were ants," Wright said. "They had burrowed deep into the ground to survive the fire and were living off the dead carcasses of what they could forage."

Rebuilding his life, and having to reacquire so many of his basic possessions, fed into the idea for The Sims. But so did his observations of ants, which he'd been paying attention to as SimAnt was a year into development at the time. When it came time to program Sims, they were given a similar AI to SimAnts, only where the ants prioritized activities based on pheromone markers in their environments, the Sims cared about objects. The fridge broadcasts its ability to reduce hunger, the bed broadcasts its ability to reduce tiredness, and so on.

The problem was, Sims were too smart about prioritizing their needs. "In early versions of the game, the autonomy was too good," Wright said. "Almost anything the player did was worse than the Sims running on autopilot."

Maxis had to dial it back, and instead let each Sim choose randomly from a selection of their top priorities. Which is how we ended up with a game where Sims wet themselves instead of going to the toilet, make themselves a bowl of cereal instead of cleaning up, and wander off to do something else before they've even eaten the cereal.

The sequels dialed this overcorrection back a little, making it possible to sit back and watch your Sims go about their lives without disaster. Having been trained on the original, I can't help but micromanage my Sims still, even though I don't always need to. What if they burn the house down and there's nothing left but ants?

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The Sims 2 cheats: all the console commands you need for the Legacy Collection re-release

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 19:02:57 +0000

With the re-release Legacy Collections now launched, you'll want some Sims 2 cheats in your mental rolodex to keep the early aughts life sim under control. The Sims 2 was a pretty big jump from The Sims 1—from 2D into 3D, a bigger overall simulation of life, and a much bigger list of cheats too.

See also: Sims 1 cheats | Sims 2 cheats | Sims 3 cheats | Sims 4 cheats

This is the point in the series where some popular staples like bigger money cheats and needs cheats came into play, which we'll walk you through below. It's also the game that has a handy registry of cheats if you type "help" into the cheat console. That thing is a bear to scroll through though and doesn't always provide the context you'd want to figure out how to put those cheats to the best use. I'll walk you through the most helpful cheats in The Sims 2 along with some that aren't actually listed in the in-game menu.

How to enable Sims 2 cheats

To open the cheat console in The Sims 2 press Ctrl + Shift + C which is the same as all the other Sims games. Type in one of the cheats below and hit enter and then type "exit" and hit enter to close the cheat console when you're done.

The Sims 2 console doesn't give much acknowledgement that the cheat you entered was successful so you'll have to keep a close eye on the interface to verify that you got the results you wanted.

Best Sims 2 cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Sims 2 money cheats

Cheat	Effect
kaching	Adds 1,000 simoleons
motherlode	Adds 50,000 simoleons
familyFunds [name] [number]	For example "familyFunds Goth 50000"
familyFunds [name] [+/-][number]	Increase or decrease family funds by a specific number. Note there's no space between the +/- and the number!

Sims 2 needs cheats and mood cheats

Cheat	Effect
maxMotives	Maxes out the needs (motives) for all sims on the lot
motiveDecay [off/on]	Turns sim needs decay off or on

Unlike The Sims 1, luckily The Sims 2 does have a couple cheats for controlling your sims' moods. It refers to a sim's needs as "motives" in cheats parlance. You can make your sim instantly happy with the "maxMotives" cheat and then disable decay on all their needs with "motiveDecay off" if you want to keep them happy until you decide otherwise.

You can also use testing cheats and the Shift+Click cheats (below) to click on the lot mailbox to make everyone on the lot happy at once.

Sims 2 move objects cheat

The move objects cheat in The Sims 2 is "moveObjects on" and like The Sims 1 it works a little differently than you're used to if you've been playing The Sims 4 for over a decade.

The Sims 2 move objects cheat does not give you full gridless placement but it does let you ignore placement distance requirements between objects. That means you can place furniture pieces clipping into each other or closer together if you want. See the build mode cheats below for more on better object placement.

The main function of move objects in The Sims 2 is still allowing you to pick up and move objects that aren't normally editable. With move objects on you can move lot items like the mailbox and garbage bin or delete annoying things like leaky puddles. You can move objects while sims are using them or move prop objects they've pulled out. You can even move a sim or delete them entirely—though I don't recommend that as it removes them from your family.

Sims 2 live mode cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Cheat	Effect
aging [on/off]	Turns off aging for current household but needs to be re-entered any time you switch households
disablePuppyKittenAging [on/off]	Disables or enables aging for pets
aspirationLevel [0-5]	Sets current sim's short term aspiration meter
aspirationPoints [number]	Add aspiration points to spend in the "rewards" tab of the interface
lockAspiration [on/off]	Locks aspiration score for sims on the lot
unlockCareerRewards	Unlock career items for current sim
setHour [0-23]	Change the time, where 1 = 1 am and 23 = 11 pm
forcetwins	Forces your pregnant sim to have twins
slowMotion [0-8]	Slows the game below normal speed with 8 being the slowest setting
stretchSkeleton [#]	Stretches or shrinks your sim's height, for example "stretchSkeleton 1.3"
boolProp testingcheatsenabled true	Enables Shift+Click cheats (more below)
addNeighborToFamilyCheat [on/off]	Unlocks the Shift+Click cheat "Add to Family"
ageSimsCheat [on/off]	Unlocks the Shift+Click cheat "Set Age" to change a sim's life stage

Sims 2 build/buy mode cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Cheat	Effect
moveObjects on	Pick up objects that are normally non-interactable
setQuarterTilePlacement [on/off]	After turning on, press Ctrl + F to toggle object placement on quarter tile increments
roofSlopeAngle [15-75]	Sets angle of roof slopes on lot
changeLotClassification [low/middle/high]	Determines which townies will move into an apartment in the Apartment Life expansion
clearLotClassValue	Clears the lot classification in Apartment Life
boolProp allow45degreeangleofrotation [true/false]	After turning on, use < or > while placing furniture to rotate it diagonally

One of the best build mode cheats for The Sims 2 is "setQuarterTilePlacement on". Since The Sims 2 doesn't have gridless placement, this helps you build homes that look a little less artificial with more precise object movement. After using the cheat, press Ctrl+F to toggle quarter tile placement on. You can use this in conjunction with "moveObjects on" to make use of small spaces by placing objects closer together than a single tile. Just make sure to test that your sims can still actually use them.

There is also an individualRoofSlopeAngle in the cheat registry but there's a handier tool in the interface for that which will allow you to set a specified roof angle and click on individual pieces of roof to apply that angle.

Sims 2 UI cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

The following Sims 2 UI cheats can remove certain elements like plumbobs and thought bubbles for taking better screenshots or add unlockable post-processing effects.

Cheat	Effect
plumbBobToggle	Toggle visibility of a sim's overhead mood plumbob
showHeadlines [on/off]	Sets visibility of sim speech bubbles and thought bubbles
boolProp enablePostProcessing true	Enable custom bloom, vignette, letterbox, and film grain settings (below)
bloom [R G B #]	Sets custom color and bloom filter with values 0-1. For example "bloom 0.1 0.3 0.8 0" for a bluish hue with low distortion
vignette [X Y #]	For example "vignette 0.5 0.5 0.9" to get a strong blurry aura centered on screen
filmGrain [#]	Set film grain level between 0-1, for example "filmGrain 0.5"
letterBox [#]	Set letterbox effect for values from 0 to 0.4

Sims 2 Shift+Click cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

As you may remember in other Sims games, The Sims 2 has a set of Shift+Click cheats available for quickly triggering certain effects without typing in a command. Before you can use them, you need to enter the cheat "boolProp testingcheatsenabled true" and then you can hold shift and click on your sims or other objects to use the cheats below.

Target	Cheat	Effect
Sim	Set aspiration	Change lifetime aspiration goal
Sim	Change suit	Change into outfits, including making a sim naked
Sim	Change fit	Make a sim "get fit"
Sim	Set birthday	Moves sim's age meter up to 1 day remaining in current life stage
Sim	Spawn	Generates all sorts of debugging test objects and can also spawn a magic lamp and voodoo doll
Sim	Set age	Must use console cheat "ageSimsCheat on" first, then pick a life stage to change sim to
Sim	Display > Show sims gender pref	Gives a popup showing the sim's autonomous romantic attraction
Sim	Give cellphone	Adds the NOYIN 2680 phone to sim's inventory
Sim	Give MP3 player	Adds the Cozmo MP3 player to Sim's inventory
Sim	Give game	Adds the LeTournament Decahedron XS handheld game system to Sim's inventory
Sim	Make vampire / Cure vampire	Turn Sim into vampire or back into human
Sim	Kill > Give dead token / die by flies	Kill the selected sim
Unselected sim	More > Make furious with this sim	Makes selected sim furious with other sim, shown in relationship panel
Non-household sim	Make sim my contact	Adds neighbor to selected sim's relationships panel
Non-household sim	More > More > Add to family	Adds neighbour to current household, requires "addNeighborToFamilyCheat on" first
Sink/Shower/Toilet/etc	Set dirty state	Set clean level, maintenance, clogged, and other states for plumbing objects
Mailbox	Make NPC	Spawns a specified NPC including burglar, skunk, random passerby, and many more
Mailbox	Make pet > Dog/Cat/Kitten/Puppy	Spawns a specified pet type
Mailbox	Neighborhood > Make me know everyone	Adds all sims and animals in neighborhood to sim's relationship panel
Mailbox	Neighborhood > Make friends for me	Adds "best friend" status to sims in relationship panel
Mailbox	Neighborhood > Invite all neighbors	All sims living in lots in the current neighborhood spawn on the lot
Mailbox	House > Make all happy	Max out needs for all sims in the household
Mailbox	House > Make all needs static	Disable sim needs from changing
Mailbox	House > Make all needs dynamic	Reenable sim needs changes