the sims community's reckoning

07 Oct, 2025

As many of you have probably heard by now, the game company EA is intended to be sold to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, a firm managed by Jared Kushner (Donald Trump’s son-in-law), and the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. This would involve the company going private and taking on a considerable amount of debt, making even harsher monetization, budget cuts, AI slop and layoffs likely.

EAs portfolio includes games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and The Sims, and I own games of all three of these franchises.

All of these have been dead to me for a while now, meaning I was done with any new Mass Effect game after Andromeda (even though I liked it!), not interested in playing Veilguard, and The Sims 5 (Project Renee) was cancelled, meaning Sims 4 is their "forever game" just receiving updates. However, I still enjoyed playing The Sims 3 or 4 every now and then, eyeing some add-ons, watched Sims YouTubers such as Plumbella.

The Sims Creator community is generally rather diverse and left leaning, often doing fundraisers for marginalized groups as well, so it came as a shock to them that the company that sponsored them as a partner and whose game they were promoting was sold off to these genuinely horrible people. Not only would supporting EA now pour money into the Trump regime semi-directly, but it would also support Saudi Arabia, where gay and trans people are still being killed, among many other human rights violations. How does that fit together with the wholesome, cute, and safe image these creators created?

A lot could be said about how a conversation about EA partnerships has been boiling under the surface already: The company has been genuinely awful for a while, especially around the state of the game, the buggy releases and the pricing. In my view, the role some creators adopted of making it their funny channel persona to roast EA and talk about what a shitty game it is and go "ha, EA, am I right?" was on thin ice already. It's one thing to say that and play the pirated version while not sponsored by them, but another to say that while playing the legit version and being paid by EA to do so. Good for EA I guess to even sponsor people who absolutely shit on the state of the game, but still.

Now the situation has dramatically changed for the worse, and creators feel the need to come out with statements about how they feel and what they are going to do. And my god, has it all been embarrassing as hell!

There are a lot of people in the world who cannot choose who to work for, who have to make ends meet, have no rainy day fund and have next to no power to leave an unethical company to work elsewhere. I'm not going to yell at abused, below-minimum wage workers because they have to work for Nestle or Amazon or fast fashion.

YouTube Creators and influencers in general do not belong to that group, especially people who are paid to sit at home and play a game.

They can most definitely find other sponsors and find other games to play. Many already do, as The Sims is seen as part of the Cozy Gaming niche, meaning they often already play Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Coral Island and many more. Not to mention that Sims competitors exist and more seem to come: InZOI exists¹, Paralives is coming out, others are announced and there are smaller indie games on Steam that each fulfill different aspects of The Sims, like letting you build houses, custom designs, controlling a population, etc.

Of course it will be a change, rocky for some, some subscribers lost; but it would be a small fraction of their subscriber count because the fanbase is similarly outraged and has values that go directly against this sale. They too are worried that the base game is going to get modified to be less progressive and inclusive, undoing a lot that EA has added over the past few years, like disability and illness items, trans options like top surgery scars or more pronouns, better skin tone selection and hair options, and more.

So the response by some, particularly the creator lilsimsie, has been so pathetic. Why is she puppy-eyeing into the camera, saying:

"This also raises the moral dilemma of: Do we want to continue playing and supporting a game that is owned by such awful people? [...] This is where I have been really struggling. Sims is my entire life, it's my livelihood, it's my hobby, it's my name! My last name is Sims. [...] But where does this leave me? I don't know. I'm going to keep playing the Sims. I'm going to keep talking bad about the Sims and about EA when I need to. Again, this is my jooob, sooo... it puts me in a really tough spot."

Content creators are one of the groups that have it the easiest in switching employment in that sense - change products, brands, or niches and escape. Is that not the damn point so many of them try to make? For years now, I have witnessed them say how great it is that they're their own boss², then use it! At least EA is not the platform you publish on, it is just one sponsor, and one game. People every day have to make really hard decisions, some have to give up other things, and you can't even ask these people to stop streaming a game when the funds go to these awful regimes.

You could make the argument that the PIF has held 10% of EA before, and the fact that they are investing widely in the gaming industry the last couple years, making avoiding harmful support like that difficult. However, I believe you can't "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism" yourself out of everything, because while many of us cannot give up employment or buying unethical food or having to rely on clothes produced in bad conditions, just not uploading yourself playing a game is so easy and such a luxury problem to have; it's not a need, not to mention that a 10% share vs. a jump into private equity and ownership is a big change that deserves reevaluation.

No one asks any of the creators to immediately drop content creation altogether and get a corporate job: they could simply pivot. They could stop being part of the EA Creator fund. They could have the same energy they did for Hogwarts Legacy and its boycott.

It's so embarrassing to sit there raising funds for a trans charity and then not give a fuck about them being killed in Saudi Arabia because it would require to play a game that doesn't have your last name (why even mention that and leave that in, oh my god!), going: "You guys I am just so conflicted and confused 🥺 I'm just a smol bean playing a game."
Just so that we are clear: Human Rights Watch says, crediting Reprieve, that Saudi authorities have executed at least 241 people this year in total already.

And people like lilsimsie make more off of all their online revenue than we ever will, so get up off your knees for this one. After that disastrous statement video (where she spent more time talking about feared ingame effects than the actual obvious politics) from a week ago, she has already uploaded 7 more Sims videos. You'd think that if all of this was weighing on her so heavily, she would at least take a break, but no. So no sympathy from me, at all.

"I will just wait and see." Wait and see for what, exactly? How bad it will be? You can already see how bad it is politically, and otherwise, does that mean it's fine that you promote that until they censor the game in a way that makes it less fun for you?

This is the person that is praised in the Sims community for "standing up against EA" over this, so you can only imagine the rest of them. Applauded for doing nothing, and saying nothing. The impact it would have if the literal #1 Sims YouTuber quit that shit! But she doesn't use her power, at all.

It's going to be interesting 6-9 months for the Sims creators and their fans; that's how long they have until the first effects of the deal are supposedly showing up. And I'm still waiting on Plumbella.

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Published 07 Oct, 2025

#2025