EA has published a job posting that gives exciting hints about the upcoming part of The Sims.
The development of Sims 5 aka “Project Rene” is in full swing. Playtests are already taking place behind the scenes, where the developers at Maxis are collecting important feedback from players.
Now, for a short time, EA posted a job ad looking for a “Head of Marketplace & Monetization“. In it, there were some hints as to how the new Sims spin-off might fund itself.
Free2Play, but microtransactions instead?
In (said job offer) among other things, they were looking for someone who would be responsible for an in-game marketplace. In this marketplace, content from EA and players will be offered – both for free and for a fee.
Further, the Sims 5 ad talks about “free-to-enter”. The “Head of Marketplace & Monetization” should therefore keep an eye on the offered content and its prices. The demand of the players should be covered by the content within the “marketplace”.
It sounds like Sims 5 – just like Sims 4 in the meantime – will be a Free2Play game, which will be financed by in-game purchases. There is no official news yet and the job advertisement has already been taken offline again.
Gamers fear the death of the Sims
Fans of the life simulation games now fear that Sims 5 heralds the death of the series. They feel that microtransactions and a full online marketplace would hurt the game
Because the upcoming part will also be playable on smartphones, fans fear a similar model to other mobile games.
Among other things, they already see time-based, paid events, goodies or content that keep popping up on their screen. The idea is not unrealistic, as the job posting also talked about features, events and content in collaboration with other product and franchise teams.
With all of this, The Sims would likely move away from the expansion packs that have been common until now and offer content exclusively in the marketplace. Should this come to pass, a number of players have already voiced that they will no longer be playing the latest installment.
However, all this is not set in stone yet, as the development of Project Rene is pretty much at the beginning and probably still needs a few years of development time, as (EA itself reported) has.
