The Sims Mobile is Shutting Down Next Year (theverge.com)
(Monday October 20, 2025 @05:22PM (msmash)
from the PSA dept.)
- Reference: 0179836962
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/188252/the-sims-mobile-is-shutting-down-next-year
- Source link: https://www.theverge.com/games/802631/the-sims-mobile-shut-down-2026
The Sims is in a period of transition -- and as part of that, the ongoing mobile version [1]will be shutting down in a few months. From a report:
> EA announced that today's update for The Sims Mobile will be its last, and that on January 20th, 2026 the game "will no longer be accessible to play and will be sunset." The mobile iteration of the franchise first launched in 2018, and has seen more than 50 updates since then. EA says that starting today players will no longer be able to spend real money in the game, and that it will be delisted on both iOS and Android tomorrow before the servers shut down completely next year, making it entirely unplayable.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/games/802631/the-sims-mobile-shut-down-2026
> EA announced that today's update for The Sims Mobile will be its last, and that on January 20th, 2026 the game "will no longer be accessible to play and will be sunset." The mobile iteration of the franchise first launched in 2018, and has seen more than 50 updates since then. EA says that starting today players will no longer be able to spend real money in the game, and that it will be delisted on both iOS and Android tomorrow before the servers shut down completely next year, making it entirely unplayable.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/games/802631/the-sims-mobile-shut-down-2026
Transitioning? (Score:2, Insightful)
by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
> The Sims is in a period of transition
It identifies as GACHA.
Does this mean it will finally be playable? (Score:2)
by sims 2 ( 994794 )
There hasn't been a playable mobile version of the sims since the flip phone versions.
Everything for android/ios has been this "free" but you have to pay to breathe bullshit.
With the official version shutting down does that mean a modded actually playable version without having to spend 4,000 years waiting or $50,000 on paid skips will become available?
What is it? (Score:1)
by registrations_suck ( 1075251 )
What is "the sim mobile" ?
Re: (Score:3)
by TwistedGreen ( 80055 )
It's a kind of electronic slot machine where people can purchase short bursts of dopamine with a credit card.
We need Dark Ages on mobile. (Score:2)
by Shakes Fist ( 10502847 )
It can't be the complex code or rendering issues that holds Dark Ages back from being ported to mobile devices.
Re: (Score:3)
"sometime next year" is doing a lot of legwork but you just know the exact date isn't coming from anyone besides their general counsel to avoid that very thing.
The articles mentions their next-gen Sims game coming to all platforms so this is getting out in front of that but considering the last time EA tried to next-gen a Will Wright property was the historically botched 2012 always-online SimCity reboot, I would expect the name numbskullery to be present here, EA isn't exactly one to learn lessons.
Re: (Score:2)
Yea always online did not work in 2012 ( ignoring their server issues for a second). In 2012 guite a sizable porson of the intended market was still on dialup ( included but not limeted to ISDN) and a lot of those connections if not all, where meteered, which meant you suddenly had an hourly cost for playing the game and fir those without ISDN you allso tied up the households only telephone line which was never popular
Re: (Score:2)
It was that and so many other things, a release so bad it killed the franchise and another studio (Cities Skylines) was able to pretty much take all the business for the genre. Kinda sad SimCity is a dead franchise.
Re: (Score:2)
I never buy games from EA, and this is one of the reasons why.
Re: (Score:1)
I mean I have put quite a bit of money into arcade cabinets back in the day so I'm not completely opposed to the idea of temporary entertainment.
Not that I would bother with these kind of micro transactions just because there's plenty of better places for my money to go for entertainment but still.
I think the issue is that the way stuff like this is structured it doesn't clearly indicate how temporary your purchases are. That's on purpose. Making the purchases feel permanent increases their relative
Re: (Score:3)
> I mean I have put quite a bit of money into arcade cabinets back in the day so I'm not completely opposed to the idea of temporary entertainment.
I don't think there's any comparison here really. A subscription MMORPG is the modern equivalent of dropping a quarter into a pacman cabinet; a series of hard boosts and purchases, soft boosts with the expectation that the consequences persist- these things all assume the game will go on as long as it plausibly can. Games with a decent amount of active player
Re: (Score:2)
> I wonder if there are enough players left to attract the lawyer for a class action lawsuit
Good luck with that. I'm guessing the EULA requires:
A) Arbitration (rather than lawsuits) for all disputes.
B) Acceptance of the fact that EA can shut the game down at any time for any reason and you don't get any money back at all.
I recently had a thermometer - a physical thermometer - get remotely bricked by the shutdown of the app. A $100 device and Whirlpool gave me a $20 "gift card" that is basically not usable anywhere.
The consumer always loses.