The base version of The Sims 4 became free-to-play earlier this year in February, almost nine years after its launch, but we won’t have to wait that long for its sequel to do the same. According to a job application for “Head of Monetization and Marketplace,” The Sims 5 will be “free-to-play.”
As Kotaku reported, the person who gets the job will be responsible for deciding the best prices for paid content — it could be expansions or microtransactions, anything that costs real money in the game market. The best prices are the ones that make a profit for EA while the players are still investing. Just like how The Sims 4 works now, The Sims 5 will have a base game that can be downloaded for free, but all expansions will still cost money. You can read an excerpt of the list below.
- “Project Rene’s own in-game content marketplace and [user-generated content] (free and paid) and manage a data-centric player purchase journey – increasing player value, optimizing player spending patterns and reducing player churn.
- In-house pricing of all content in this free-to-play game, ensuring optimal pricing and content architecture. Provide guidance to content teams on in-game content needs that meet player demand.”
However, there are some concerns that arise from this model. While The Sims 4 is now an incredibly popular and popular game in the community, its launch was completely bare-bones. Fans were disappointed to find that the open world of The Sims 3 had been gutted and replaced with much smaller, less customizable zones. The game also had no cars, no pools, no ghosts, no career paths, and no whole life cycle of toddlers (basic from the second game).
Since The Sims 5 will be free to play, it remains to be seen how much will be saved for DLC and how extensive the base game will be. It’s even possible that there’s a paid version with more content – until EA explains or reveals further details, we can only speculate.
TheGamer has reached out to EA for comment.
We haven’t seen much of The Sims 5 yet, but early footage was shared late last year that gave us a glimpse of the construction mode. Soon after, playtests began and information emerged claiming that The Sims 5 would feature apartment interiors and neighborhoods. Interestingly, these neighborhoods included cars, so it feels less stripped down than when The Sims 4 launched.
“This playtest mostly focused on the new building and furniture features,” the hermit said. “It had 4 preset studios that you could play around in, or one empty one that you could build into. There were no sims in it at all.”