The Sims 1 and 2 Legacy Collections launch to 'Mixed' reviews on Steam as EA investigates 'various issues'

Don Lothario looks very sad — (Image credit: Maxis, Electronic Arts)

EA has shared a community update stating it is investigating reports of "various issues" in the Legacy Collection re-releases of The Sims 1 and 2. Over on Steam, the games are both sitting at a "Mixed" score from user reviews, with complaints of crashes, bugs, and a general lack of quality or improvements.

"We recognize some fans are currently experiencing issues with The Sims: Legacy Collection and The Sims 2: Legacy Collection," an EA employee wrote in a post to The Sims Game Info Hub on the EA forums. "We are currently investigating these issues and hope to have more information on fixes soon."

No UI scaling at resolutions of 1080p and above (you know, modern ones), leading to small, difficult to read icons.
This is even worse for the pre-rendered Neighborhood view, which seems to be presented as a small, low-res window in the center of the screen.
Crashes at launch and after assorted durations of play time.
Lack of modernizations, QoL fixes, or basic features like Steam Cloud saves or MacOS support.
Retention of known bugs from the original release of The Sims 2.

I've seen some positive reviewers contest the UI complaint on The Sims 2, but overall, these re-releases appear to be fundamentally compromised. What's more, even once you get past the overt failures, EA is charging $20 and $30 for The Sims 1 and 2 respectively when they are, in the best-case scenario, bare bones ports of the original games to Steam⁠—Nightdive's The Thing: Remastered charges $30 for a version of the game with numerous light touch quality of life, graphical, and gameplay upgrades. MSRP for Beamdog's Baldur's Gate Enhanced Editions, which similarly add a ton to their respective games, is $20 a pop.

The situation reminds me of the disastrous initial release of the Metal Gear Master Collection, where similarly basic ports of classic games were compromised by a multitude of technical issues. That collection has redeemed itself somewhat through updates, but I still had to turn to mods for the best experience on Steam Deck. It has not been a good week for EA: After its latest Sports FC and Dragon Age: The Veilguard underperformed sales expectations, it appears that the publisher has gutted BioWare, with a number of veteran developers either shuffled to other studios or laid off entirely.

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch. You can follow Ted on Bluesky.