Eight years after The Sims 4, the game has remained on the market by retaining a large base of active players thanks to constant maintenance, content, and updates by those responsible.
However, all players familiar with The Sims know that the base game itself, without any extras, is empty in gameplay and can be a bit boring; therefore, it is important to have expansions and extra content to take advantage of the best way to play.
This has led many independent developers who are fans of the game to create all kinds of mods for the Sims and thus generate many different experiences from design to various options in the game.
For the same reason, many popular creators in the Sims community create different mods for the game independently. Many of them made this their main job thanks to monthly subscription platforms because that's how they can monetize their work.
THE SIMS 4’S LATEST POLICY UPDATE HAS WORRIED ALL MODS CREATORS
A recent update to the game's policies has detailed that creators must not promote their mods "in a way that suggests they are endorsed by or affiliated with The Sims, Maxis, or Electronic Arts." Creators may not use any of the game's trademarks in their content when promoting mods but may claim that the mod is obviously for The Sims 4 or a relevant expansion pack.
EA recognizes how important mods are to the gaming experience and explained how the community would be able to re-enable their mods after the recent game update disabled them.
However, even with everything mentioned, terror has attacked the creators since, in the new game policy, it is mentioned that "the modifications must not be commercial and must be distributed free of charge." EA clarifies that mods cannot be sold, licensed, or rented, nor can they contain features that "support monetary transactions of any kind." That said, developers can only "recover their development costs through passive ads and donations."
WHAT DOES EA MEAN BY PASSIVE ADVERTISING AND DONATIONS?
The thing is that many mod creators add a lot of advertising within the game itself, so what they mean by passive ads is that these ads should only be limited to the information of the mod distribution website. In addition, all users should access the mods for free, regardless of whether they donate.
Another significant change is that within the policy update, it is mentioned that early access mods will not be allowed or supported. What do we mean by this? It means that previously when a creator released an early access mod, users could donate to a creator's Patreon to access various mods before they were released to the public; however, as everything must now be free, this will also be forbidden.
For all players of The Sims 4, it is excellent news to obtain any mod for free, however, for all those independent developers, it is literally taking away a job and harming their economic income.
This update has divided the community; there are those who are in full support and those who are not, it will be a matter of seeing how EA listens to its users and makes decisions in the face of complaints from its community.
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