What's Going On with The Sims 4's New Expansion Monetisation?
Published on 13 September 2025
Confused by the constant stream of expensive Sims 4 DLC? So am I. EA is releasing another full-priced £35 expansion less than three months after the last one. Here's a quick look at their new, aggressive monetisation plan and why it's a worrying sign for the franchise.
This is not another post about the nearly £2000 total cost of all The Sims 4 DLC. This is about something new.
I was looking at my Steam news feed the other day and saw an ad for a new Sims 4 expansion, "Adventure Awaits," dropping next month. As a long-time Sims fan and occasional Sims 4 enjoyer (which is a whole other post for another time), it obviously caught my eye. But then I had a moment of, "hold on, didn't we literally just get a full £35 expansion like two months ago?"
Yes, we did. You know the one. The low effort, reused assets, buggy, full priced "Enchanted by Nature" fairy expansion that they have barely fixed and improved. The one that a majority of the active player base rated negatively. Personally, I was waiting for more patches and a significant price cut before I even considered playing again.
And yet, here we are. Not even three months later, they are releasing another full priced expansion, also for £35. Even for EA, this is aggressively greedy.
I suppose with their so-called "competitors" shooting themselves in the foot (Life by You), being extremely low effort and bare-bones (inZOI), or serving a different niche (Paralives), EA doesn't even have to worry anymore. Why bother putting resources into Sims 5 when you can just milk Sims 4 dry now that people have fewer choices? Again, the state of the competition and the future of the franchise are topics for a longer post.
This feels like a new low for EA and an even more concerning future for the Sims franchise. At least with major AAA live-service games, you can kind of justify the ongoing massive costs with the scale of their development. But for a low-poly, over a decade old game that just literally reuses mechanics and systems from previous titles, and one that didn't even have a dedicated team for base game bug fixes until very recently, there's absolutely no excuse for this monetisation strategy. The low development cost guarantees that even a poorly-selling pack is still hugely profitable.
✅ The Verdict
Unfortunately, I won't be surprised if this is how aggressive EA is moving forward. EA has realised they don't need to sell a good expansion, just a good catalogue. By leveraging FOMO using content creators and the needs of "digital dollhouse" players, they can sell all-or-nothing bundles for £35 to many of the casual players who often won't even play the actual content they paid for, for more than a few hours. As long as that proves profitable, why care about anything else?