Job Listing Suggests The Sims 5 Could Launch Free-To-Play

gameranx.com:

Insider Gaming reports that the highly anticipated The Sims 5 might launch as a free-to-play game from the onset.

As reported by Insider Gaming, a job listing for ‘Head of Monetization & Marketplace’ has come up for Project Rene. Project Rene is the apparent working code name for The Sims 5.

The job listing further explains that the successful applicant will “Own pricing of all content in this free-to-enter game, ensuring we have an optimal pricing and content architecture.”

The Sims fans were possibly anticipating this, and some might have even been looking forward to it. The Sims 4 launched as a paid retail game, but fans were not happy with what they felt was not enough content and polish to justify the full retail price.

For the past eight years, developer Maxis set to work on releasing DLC packs for The Sims 4 alongside updates and bugfixes. Those DLC packs also received criticism from fans, because of the incomplete state that they were received in.

This was definitely the case with the comparatively recent My Wedding Stories DLC, which came out last year. Because this DLC was released with bugs, it wasn’t even possible to go through with the in-game weddings it promised. This also stands as the lowest rated of their DLC.

Now, EA decided to make The Sims 4 free-to-play later in that year, in October 2022. This was particularly relevant because they had made so much DLC that it was enough to make the game profitable without charging for the base game.

So, EA opened up The Sims 4 for anyone to play for free, and those who could afford it would promptly buy some DLC.

EA would obviously not be blind. Even now we see the launch of games like Disney Dreamlight Valley, technically in Early Access state, but very much