When do you think will come the final demise of the Sims 4 (or maybe you don't think - or hope - it'll ever end)? He or she who comes the closest will have bragging rights for being right.
Ready. Set. Post your predictions.

It will never end. The Universe will reach maximum entropy; heat death will arrive and the stars will all be burned out. But still, EA will be releasing a new pack of tiny chairs for lone quarks to rest their charm upon.

I don't have a specific date in mind, but it will end, eventually. Probably when EA's Wall Street overlords start giving Andrew Wilson the side eye for using server space for a game that they deem unworthy.

EA just announced that they are 'sunsetting' Battlefield 3 and 4. They didn't give a reason. When asked about it, they have their non-answer, answer.



EA is delisting Battlefield 3, 4, and Hardline on older platforms at the end of the month

https://www.techradar.com/gaming/co...nd-of-the-month

This has nothing to do with sims, but I'm sure they'll give the same non-answer answer when it is TS4's turn be delisted or go through the process of 'sunsetting'.

4 will run alongside Renee. It will never end.

In the year 8510, when god shakes his mighty head. He'll either say he's pleased where The Sims 4 has been, or he'll tear it down and start again.

"The End is Nigh." Except for TS4.

As already stated, it is planned to run alongside Project Renee after that's released. EA hedging their bets? Many might not want all the online, multiplayer bells and whistles of Renee, so life-everlasting TS4 is there, remains there, to continue serving those who prefer the traditional style of play. So for those hoping Renee will be just as much a single player traditional Sims game as all else it will strive to be, I think that's the answer to your question. Not really, hence TS4 kept running in reserve. Which also displays a certain lack of faith on EA's behalf for Renee. They're just not sure it'll do as well as they hope, so keep TS4 engines running on standby. The getaway car. Better to have an old hand in the game than none, what with all the high stakes competition coming to sit at the table.

Mimic your best Darth Vader voice here - "I find your lack of faith disturbing."

But if Renee does better than expected. Exceedingly better. Then ask this same question about the demise of TS4 again. I think under those circumstances it will become obvious. As old sayings go, "you cannot serve two masters" is one of the better tried and tested and usually proves true. So not even you, EA. Dedicate your resources to serving one game, not two. TS4 packs and quality - rotten patches - have already suffered due to all the employees you've shifted over to work on Renee. How much worse will that get once Renee is released. Enough to finally sink TS4 whether you want to or not?

Two mediocre titles, one of them also ancient, in the Life Simulator arena that's coming will be far more noticeable than one game you're pouring all your resources into. EA, you truly have been at it too long on your own if you cannot see this eventuality.

My guess is 1-2 years after Renee releases IF it's popular enough. If it's not popular then we'll have to wait till Sims 5 whenever that maybe. By then the expansion packs will be kit worth of stuff without any new gameplay but they'll still charge full EP price for it and kits will have shrunken into single item you can buy additional recolors for separately and it'll give you a pop up reminding about that fact every time you use the base color in game "Only $5 more and you could have three extra recolors of this!? Cheap! Buy buy buy!" even if you've already bought them, you can buy them another time too because why not? Think of the poor little EA, they need the money more than you ever will.

Maximum entropy and heat death of the universe will happen BECAUSE of sims 4.

I do wonder just how many more DLC TS4 can actually handle. So-called expansion packs are now similar in size to game packs. Kits have been and will always be microtransactions in disguise. Does Maxis really think they're going to get another 84-85 DLC into TS4 before it is completely unplayable for everybody? Unless they plan on making EPs the size of kits, I don't see that happening. They've been recycling content for the past couple of years. I think it is fair to think that this won't be stopping... well, never. It kind of feels like they are going to be burning a candle from both ends.

Whether Project Nay-Nay is a success or a total flop remains to be seen. It has been a interesting conversation though within the community if nothing else. Even the most quiet of voices who do not make a habit of engaging with sims community drama have been making noise about the tidal wave of microtransactions that are on the horizon...

(Although I may be exaggrating and estimating it may stop sooner than we think)


For them to manage it to keep interesting, the maximum I would give it 2030-2035 till even new to the franchise will get bored by mediocore content and it will shut down alongside The Sims Freeplay servers. Otherwise, I’d be darn surprise if it continues to run even pass after all us members of ModtheSims become pensionars.

ETA2: P.S. I did this type of thread. If you curious for more opinions, you can check it out.

If the mobile titles are part of the discussion, the Sims Freeplay and Sims Mobile have both existed side-by-side for years despite having similar sorts of gameplay.

If TS5 is a free-to-play, multiplayer online game with a mods/CC marketplace, then it's safe to say that its market appeal will be slightly different than that of TS4's, just like TS4's appeal was different from that of TS3's despite both being mainline franchise entries.

That being said- the market niche for TS4 may continue onwards, but it's clear that the game engine itself is reaching the end of its lifespan- I find it hard to believe that they can continue releasing expansions for it for the decade to come and expect it to run well.

If TS4's rivals can make it, then I do expect that there will be a period when The Sims's dominance in the single-player life simulation genre will be challenged.

This right here is why I myself predict that TS4 hasn't got long to go. They're trying to go 1000 miles on a half-tank of gas, and now they're running on fumes! All these expansions, kits, etc. etc. I'm reminded of that somewhat humorous scene in the (now ancient) movie GONE WITH THE WIND about the horse pulling Scarlett O'Hara's carnage from Atlanta to her Tara hometown; how it fell over dead as soon as they arrived. She had asked too much of it. Yeah, it struggled all the way, giving all it could, but to what end?

Well . . . OK . . . Yeah. Scarlett did get to Tara. And EA will pay their stockholders. And that's all the matters, right?

They'll keep selling packs and pushing the engine till it fully breaks, then they'll release another infamous "1.69 TS3" patch - I'll bet they've already built the coding for this and are keeping it on standby - that only allows player to load base game and one or two EPs. And acting thereafter like that is all hunky-dory, going so far to say to the hardline complainers that is was their own fault for buying and installing everything they've released over the many, many, many, many, many years TS4 has run. TS3 all over again.

And as much as they probably have their TS4 1.69 patch waiting on standby, it does not stop them being any less reckless with putting the game engine - and our computers - through unnecessary hell. Take Home Chef Hustle for example. End of last year. Anyone working on TS4 knows it's a chitty-chitty bang-bang of a game waiting for the final huff and puff to its elderly demise. Yet it still did not stop them committing the cardinal sin of introducing close to ten thousand new files to the game for absolutely nothing. Some genius over a Maxis HQ decided that for the one or two new objects they were making for that pack, for those two Object XMLs, they were going to include data that also needed to be backed up with a corresponding SimData file. Maybe they forgot that's not how SimData files work, you cannot just make two for two object xmls. SimData files are all or none at all. So, now, for every, single Object XML in the game, the many thousands of build, buy, hidden, debug, animation objects, so, so, so many, they all now EACH have a SimeData file thanks to Captian Bozo. A SimData file with coding only relevant to two Home Chef Hustle objects and fuck all else.

Game been loading noticeably slower much since end of last year? Now you know why.

To understand the sheer scope and impact of that. It's taken them nigh on ten years to give us the amount of objects we now have in the game. From all the seen and usable stuff, to double that many again with all the debug and hidden stuff. Ten long years, to make all that. Then overnight, in one fell swoop, with one push of the patch batch button, gave us equally as many SimData files to correspond to those ten years worth of object xmls. That's not massive. That is supermassive, and then some! (I'm inclined to believe that our Captain Bozo still thinks they only created two files, blissfully unaware of the SimData file rule. Yet nobody else at Maxis HQ noticed this sudden tsunami of new files?! Nah, they knew. They just did not give a shit. Or maybe they want to break the game and make it finally end. Can you blame them?)

But don't worry. Maxis have the fix coming soon. A TS4 1.69 patch that literally blames you for buying all their shit and literally prevents you from playing all the shit you bought from them. Everything they make and put out now is just for profit, no real overheads at this stage, so they don't care. Ten thousand files thrown in that 9998 do nothing whatsoever other than slow up loading and resource retrieval in-game, they just don't care at all.

Not forgetting ten years worth of CC objects. If you've been an avid collector, then all of those Object XMLs are going to need a corresponding SimData file that it doesn't need for any coding purposes, but the game will want to see one. Has your CC creator added them to their back catalog of CC? It might not cause any real problems in the most part, but if the game takes conniption over it missing during lot load, you may find the game gets stuck during lot load and it's spinning green plumbob for eternity till you shut down with Task Manager. (Many reports of that very thing since last year, stuck lot loading. Most blame that on the general shoddiness of the For Rent patch, but it's not too much a stretch of the credulous to hazard that 9998 new, worthless files are also kicking the elderly engine sideways good and hard.) Cheers, Captain Bozo.

So, EA, when the game truly crashes and burns six months before you were expecting, and you stand to lose a good few million on the Kits you can no longer sell, Captain Bozo is the culprit. Why they have stolen food from the mouths of your children. Well, hardly stealing. They just took the food out of your baby's mouth, slapped the kid, then threw the food down the toilet, took a supermassive dump on the food, then flushed it away as if was nothing to nobody and nobody will even notice. Hardly what you can call stealing. But still, you should hunt down Captain Bozo and nail them to the wall for this! And use 9998 nails! Irony. I'm almost routing for you, EA.

Nothing sez they love this community like gaslighting for their own wrong doing; Grant trained them all so well. Graham went off about a month ago about context, but while complaining about the complaining, he offered no context.

That being said, when TS4 does blow up, I do hope history repeats itself. Let them go off and finger wag about how people spent too much money on their game. As a hard complainer that has spent exactly zero dollars, I do think a reality check is in order. 10 years in and people are still touting that EA / Maxis are their friends...

Rumour has it that development on the next game has been cancelled, and devs are being moved back to The Sims 4. So, unfortunately, maybe this game really will last on until the heat death of the universe.

Maybe they don't feel such urgency since Life By You was cancelled. "Let's milk this old cash cow for a few years longer!"