The Sims 4 has seen a massive increase in players after the life management simulator went free-to-play last year. According to EA, the game is now reaching over 70 million players worldwide, boosted by the extra 16 million new players that signed on after its free-to-play status change in October 2022.
At 70 million players, The Sims 4 is now the most-played game in the entire franchise. The game’s latest premium expansion pack, Growing Together, apparently had the largest launch week sales of any pack since its expansions began rolling out in 2015.
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Phillip Ring, executive producer of The Sims 4, spoke about the journey The Sims 4 has gone on for nearly a decade:
“It’s incredible to see how much our community has grown over the past eight years, and our players continue to inspire us with the countless ways they explore life in The Sims 4. We know The Sims 4 continues to be a creative outlet for people, and our team strives to deliver new and innovative gameplay content that empowers our players to embrace the chaos that comes with self-discovery.”
The Sims 4 originally launched on PC in 2014 before finding its way to PS4 and Xbox One in 2017. In February 2019, EA stated that the game generated more than $1 billion in revenue and managed to amass 33 million players by February 2021, even before the base game went free-to-play. That’s pretty impressive and shows that The Sims franchise still attracts plenty of mainstream players on a regular basis.
In related news, EA unveiled The Sims 5 last October under the codename Project Rene. Thanks to playtests that happened around that time, hackers were reportedly able to get their hands on the game and generate Denuvo tokens from the early build of The Sims 5 without requiring online access or approval from EA. The publisher has yet to set a release date for the next entry.
Source: Video Games Chronicle
