Have you always wondered why there are no cars or pool tables in The Sims 4? We know why your favorite features aren’t in the game.
The Sims 4 Is it nearing the end of its life? After ten long years of good and loyal service, the title could well give way to a new iteration which would be more of an evolution and a remaster than a real new episode. In fact, Maxis has already confirmed this transition half-heartedly in its roadmap for 2026, noting that the franchise is preparing to take a new step in the coming months, while The Sims Project Rene has been demoted to the rank of mobile experience.
While waiting for clearer communication from the studio, The Sims 4 will continue its journey and continue to receive content, starting with the Legacy and Royalty DLCexpected on February 12, 2026 on PC and consoles. However, a central question remains at a time when uncertainties are accumulating. If this famous The Sims 4.5 were to finally offer an open world, a feature requested for a long time, do the game mechanics and objects requested by the community for almost a decade have the slightest chance of seeing the light of day too? Obviously not.
Why is there no car in The Sims 4?
The user gloamingtheplain, already at the origin of the revelations concerning Maxis’ plans around The Sims 4.5 as well as the Legacy and Royalty DLC, presented as the ultimate expansion of the game, has resurfaced on the ATRL forums. This supposed former developer of Firemonkeys Studios, who collaborated with Maxis and briefly worked on The Sims Mobile, answered one of the questions burning on fans’ lips: that of features and items requested by the community for over a decade. At the top of the list for many Simmers are music groups, motorcycles, cars (and more broadly means of transport), but also hotels, arcades, spiral staircases and even the pool table, which has been missing from the license for almost ten years.
So many elements, however, present in certain previous episodes, which raise a recurring question: why such a long wait to see them reappear in The Sims 4? The answer would lie above all in statistics of real use of said functionalities. According to this source, it was sometimes easier for the teams to design new concepts than to reimplement old features, due to both the particularly complicated technical base of The Sims 4 and the actual use that players made of it in previous episodes. “ When a new pack is designed or we are planning future content, the question that often comes up is: where is the data? », Explains the developer.
Data first
To decide, Maxis would thus rely almost exclusively on the usage statistics of The Sims 3and potentially the second episode, in order to determine if the implementation of a given element was viable in The Sims 4. Spiral staircases? First we had to check what the numbers said. And if only a small proportion of players used it, EA then moved to a second reading grid: “high cost, low value” or, conversely, “low cost, potential value”details the source.
The most often cited example remains that of billiard tables, regularly mentioned internally by the teams working on the various license projects (main games, mobile versions, DLC). Little used in The Sims 3 according to the data collected, they would thus have been classified in the first category: a development cost considered too high for limited added value, due to lack of sufficient interest on the part of players. Almost all of the concepts and functionalities mentioned above would have been considered, particularly in the context of The Sims Mobile. But they all suffered from the same problem: a usage rate considered too low in the previous episodes in which they had appeared. “ For example, we had ideas for a pop star career, with the ability for other players to attend your concerts, but it was one of the least used features in The Sims 3 », Explains the source.
Highly requested ideas thrown in the trash
Same observation for cars, brandished as a marketing argument by its competitor inZOI, while, in the previous episode, the community very much preferred taxis. “ Concretely, as soon as a Maxis developer tried to pitch a feature, the hierarchy immediately requested the statistics. And if there wasn’t… good luck! », he continues. If certain features today widely requested by players of The Sims 4 are still missing, the reason would therefore lie in a lack of popularity at the time of their first implementation.
But as many members of the community point out, in light of these revelations, many of these mechanics and objects were quite poorly designed in The Sims 3. Enough to explain the discrepancy between unflattering statistics and the persistent desire of players to see these systems return in a more accomplished and better integrated form in The Sims 4. ” Basically, EA and Maxis executives are willing to invest money if data from The Sims 3 suggests a product will be popular. If they indicate the opposite, it becomes practically impossible to get an idea across », concludes the source.
Source : gloamingtheplain
