Just yesterday, EA unveiled that The Sims 4 was getting a new feature – the "Marketplace," as it's so aptly dubbed – to sell what are essentially paid mods and custom content.
As the studio described in its announcement, The Sims 4 Marketplace "is an intentional evolution of a multi-year strategy to support custom content creators" and is accompanied by the arrival of a new real-money currency: Moola.
I, as a long-time Simmer myself, was a bit shocked to hear the news – after spending over $1,500 on DLC (including the fan-created Kits, which sound similar to what'll be on the Marketplace), it was a hard pill to swallow. I feel like sprucing up the base game experience should come in one of two ways, personally: browsing roundups of the best Sims 4 mods to download for free, or exploring updates from EA.
Enough money goes to full, developer-led paid DLC, or so I believe (I mean, come on, the last one just launched last month, and expansion packs release pretty regularly) – and it seems I'm not the only one who feels this way.
Online reactions to The Sims 4 Marketplace have been pretty uniform in structure. Folks are overall not thrilled. Under one Reddit post, they share their thoughts, comparing EA's new feature to Bethesda's own Creation Club – another unpopular service for paid mods in games like Skyrim.
"Soooo it's the Bethesda creation club," comments one player. Another adds, "This is hilarious, they just copied Bethesda." My personal favorite reads, "EA is basically reheating Bethesda's nachos. Remember the Creation Club?"
Simmers are also pointing out that The Sims 4 Marketplace is "basically microtransactions" – and they're not exactly wrong. It feels like a return (none of us wanted) of The Sims 3 Store, except nothing is free. And while it might feel like supporting creators outside of EA, they're not really getting the full cut themselves.
As someone points out in a thread elsewhere, "I really hope all the CC creators who signed up for this Sims 4 Marketplace eventually realize they're being played by EA, only getting 30% profit from your creations is truly a slap in the face and insulting."
Others are just annoyed that this is happening at all. "This isn't Minecraft, which is a stable one-time price game with additional content," a player outlines in a separate post.
"Sims 4 costs 1,000 dollars for many main features, and now wants to pile a Marketplace on top of that. Base game alone is boring and bland, save corruption looms. This is horrible."
In other words, the community is not happy. One silver lining, at least, is the fact that this opens up some new possibilities for console players who didn't have access to mods and custom content before. But, uh, I'm still not excited, though.
The Sims 4's biggest sex mod, WickedWhims, is launched 400,000 times a day according to its creator
