Leak: Sims 5 Will Be Free-To-Play

After being around since 2014, The Sims 4 went free-to-play in 2022 and the number of players got up again. In the same year, Project Rene was revealed, but we've gotten more content for Sims 4 than updates concerning Sims 5. Lately, we've gotten a look at some prototype footage of Sims 5 from the devs, but that's it.

• If you'd like to watch some good movies while playing Sims, check out this free Amazon Prime trial !

Sims 5 Will Be Free-To-Play

The source of this leak was a job listing, posted officially on the EA careers website. Unfortunately, the job has been taken or EA took it down for other reasons, so all there's left is a screenshot of the job offering.

In this job listing, Maxis was looking for the Head of Monetization & Marketplace, Project Rene and in their description of the position revealed some delicate information.

BREAKING: A career listing for @TheSims Project Rene has revealed details that the next generation of The Sims will be taking a free-to-play route! pic.twitter.com/N2ciPKAjnq

— The Henford Hen (@TheHenfordHen) June 28, 2023

Did you spot it?

The first two bullet points reveal the most about the next Sims game:

• "Own Project Rene’s in-game marketplace of content and ucg (free and paid), and manage a data-informed player-centric player purchase journey - maximizing value to players, optimizing player spend patterns, and minimizing player churn"

So from this piece we can assume that the Sims 5 will get its own in-game store for official and user generated content – so probably paid and free content. It could be possible that we'll be able to download all kinds of content straight from the game.

• "Own pricing of all content in this free-to-enter game, ensuring we have an optimal pricing and content architecture. Provide guidance to content teams on in-game content needs to meet player demand."

EA seems to have accustomed to the idea of giving the main game to the players for free. What the exact difference between free-to-play and free-to-enter is... well, we don't know exactly either, but it is probably linked to the in-game store and (who would have thought?) microtransactions.

After the boost in active players for Sims 4 since the game is entirely free, it seems like a no-brainer to start the same with Sims 5. But the Sims community is skeptical. This could be a step to a subscription-driven game, based on microtransactions. Since the Sims 4 was planned to have a premium membership that was dismissed right before the launch, it's not unlikely that EA still could implement this concept to the next game.

But anyway; there's no release date for the Sims 5 and therefore there still can be changes made. So for now, all we can do is wait and be happy to have our horses.

Even though Sims is pretty close to real life, there are a few video game mechanics that would be awesome in real life.