The Sims™ 4 News

The Sims 4 is fast approaching its 10th birthday this September, a fact that genuinely instilled me with the crushing sense of time marching relentlessly on when I checked its release date a moment ago. That near-decade has brought a whole heap of additions, expansions, packs and updates to the enduring life sim game, to the degree that the underlying tech serving as the foundation for dozens of later mechanical and visual elements can sometimes look a bit wobbly these days.

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Prospective Sims competitor Life by You has caught its third delay, and this one's come as a bit of a surprise, since only three weeks ago the team at Paradox Tectonic seemed extremely confident that they were going to hit their June 4 early access launch. Furthermore, this time the team has elected not to announce a revised release date, which marks a departure from the first couple of delays, both of which came with a new target already in sight.

A short update post on parent company and publisher Paradox Interactive's website announced the delay late yesterday, citing a need for "additional development time", without going into detail. The statement from Mattias Lilja, the recently installed deputy CEO at Paradox, further stated that: "While we would have preferred to commit to a new release window, we believe it is more prudent to hold off while we plan ahead, rather than committing to a new date that we cannot be certain to meet." He ended by thanking players for their patience, and affirming that further information would be made public as soon as possible.

This latest delay once again leaves life sim fans in something of a limbo state, with several exciting new titles announced over the past few years — including Life by You, Project Rene (a.k.a. The Sims 5), inZOI, Paralives, and an as-yet-unnamed project that recently recruited former Sims lead Grant Rodiek — but none with firm release dates. inZOI and Paralives currently have broad early access windows of "late 2024" and "sometime in 2025", respectively, but with Life by You now indefinitely delayed, there's nothing you can mark on your calendar for the time being.

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The Sims 4 is nothing if not a teetering jenga tower of updates and add-ons and DLC packs, and the latter half of 2024 will be no exception for EA's life sim king. Yesterday saw the release of an update to the base game's swimwear, kicking off the updates teased in the recently-revealed new roadmap, Season Of Love. The roadmap video's vibe is that it and its partner saw you from across the bar and wondered if you'd be interested in joining them, and it kind of weirds me out.

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Back in January of this year, The Sims community was shaken to learn that Grant Rodiek — who had worked at Electronic Arts since 2005 and been a major figure in the last several generations of the franchise, including most recently being named game director on Project Rene (a.k.a. The Sims 5) — was departing the company after nearly two decades. In what can only be described as quite the plot twist, yesterday we learned what he's doing next: teaming up with former XCOM and Marvel's Midnight Suns devs on a new life sim that's quite clearly hoping to rival The Sims series.

It's early days for Midsummer Games, freshly founded by Firaxis alumni Jake Solomon and Will Miller, but the studio has already recruited Rodiek for its debut project, described as "a next-gen life sim that emphasises player-driven narratives, allowing communities to share memorable moments that grow out of the creativity of players themselves."

Not much else has been revealed yet — there's not even a title, and clearly we'll have to wait some years to see the game in action — but the concept is an intriguing one. Studio co-founder Jake Solomon has been teasing for a while in interviews (like this one via PC Gamer) that he'd like to make a life sim that focuses specifically on "small town drama", citing influences as varied as Gilmore Girls and the novels of Stephen King. And, given how much Simmers love recreating their favourite TV shows, movies, books, and even other video games in the iconic life sim, he could be onto a real winner with that idea, especially now that he's secured one of the most experienced producers in the genre.

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This season, you'll swoon over 2 stylish free updates and get romantic with 2 destination kits! But that's not all – embrace all those tingly butterfly feelings with a flirtatious new expansion pack!

It's a new season. Make your move