Sims 4 update purges 'wholly unacceptable content' from its gallery

A close up of a female sim in The Sims 4 with medium-length black hair and an off-the-shoulder orange top. She's looking off to the side with a scared expression. — (Image credit: Maxis)

Update: Sadly, it's likely the "unacceptable content" this update refers to is a spate of racist and antisemitic posts that had been uploaded to the gallery recently. As SimsCommunity reports, the Sims 4 had been experiencing a surge in racist content since the game went free to play, and it's probably the case that these updates to the profanity filter are meant to deal with that.

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Original story: EA likes its profanity how it likes its coffee: filtered. No wonder, then, that a recent update to The Sims 4 has taken a scouring brush to the game's gallery, purging it of "wholly unacceptable content" and making updates to the game's profanity filter to prevent people from uploading unwholesome content in future.

"We are aware of and have seen some select instances of wholly unacceptable content that has been uploaded to The Sims 4 Gallery," reads the update on EA's official Sims 4 blog, which says the game's team has "reviewed, and made critical updates to, the profanity filter to help prevent this from happening again in the future".

Unhelpfully, the post doesn't actually go into any detail about what this epidemic of unacceptable content was before exhorting players to keep an eye out for more of it in future, and it's not like the Sims is short on gross stuff. Maybe people were uploading memories of that bug that made Sims want to date their family members, or perhaps everyone was getting too excited about WooHooing werewolves. The possibilities are endless.

Admittedly, we can probably make a pretty good guess as to the kind of stuff people were uploading, but it'd be helpful to have something a bit more specific to go on than a general 'Remain cautious'. Just keep your head on a swivel in that gallery, I guess.

It's been a big year for The Sims. Not only did we all get to relive our most awkward and gangly years in July's High School expansion pack, but EA came out and announced The Sims 5 in October. It's going by the codename "Project Rene" at the moment, and beyond a brief snippet of gameplay we don't know much about it. It's super early in development though, so don't feel too bad if you recently splashed out on a load of Sims 4 DLC. It's going to be the current version for a while to come.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.