The Sims 4 may be getting a little carried away, having launched over a decade ago, but that doesn’t seem to have dulled the hobby in the long-running simulation line; EA has just announced that The Sims 4 has managed to attract more than 15 million new players this past year.
To put that in perspective, The Sims 4 took six years to gain 20 million players after its founding in 2014, a number that skyrocketed following EA’s decision to turn the previously top-tier title into a free-to-play duel. . in October 2022. That industry shake-up more than quadrupled The Sims 4’s target market, with EA touting 85 million players in May of this year, and we now know the day twelve months have brought a total of 15 million new players.
That practically new figure used to be unmistakable as part of EA’s Q2 2025 financial earnings report (“Higher participation resulted in higher-than-expected web bookings for the franchise in the second quarter,” the publisher noted), and helps provide more context for its announcement earlier this year that, despite its age, The Sims 4 will continue to be “a core Sims delight” as the series moves “beyond sequential, inflexible releases of the Sims”.
The rise in popularity of The Sims 4 also explains EA’s renewed focus on the ten-year-old duel, and the writer has promised more Trojan horse cures more frequently, perhaps because it seems to solve years of “irritating” technical problems. “. This is due to an area of new tasks in the game, such as the new Reaper’s Rewards Tournament live service and a non-stop flood of new DLC.
Following the expansion list is the extremely promising and fantastically macabre Presen & Demise expansion for The Sims 4, which launches this Thursday, October 31. Its base follows a free, event-ending base duel update that significantly increases the Sims’ ghost-like gameplay (and makes it possible to hit Demise), and is derived from a new line of DLC packs designed by the creators.
Things have certainly changed since Swimmingpoolgate.
