On Aug. 27, your Sims can finally dress like they’re headed to North Shore High or Bronson Alcott. Paramount Pictures is teaming with EA to drop Mean Girls and Clueless content into The Sims 4, and it’s arriving as two separate kits rather than one big expansion.
Next Thursday. Two movies. Two kits.
What you’re actually getting
Both kits lean heavily on Create-a-Sim, which is what you’d expect from a crossover built around two of the most screenshotted wardrobes in teen movie history. There are also two Build Mode items in the mix.
Each kit runs $3.99 according to EA’s blog post, which undercuts the usual kit price. EA hasn’t said how many items are in either one yet, and that’s the detail worth waiting on. A cheaper kit with a thin item count isn’t a bargain.
The comments section is not in a shopping mood
Plenty of Simmers were happy to see the outfits announced. Plenty more weren’t interested in celebrating anything EA does right now.
The company’s buyout by Saudi Arabia and private equity is still raw, and the reveal trailer post turned into a referendum on whether to spend money on Sims 4 DLC at all.
“Last year I would have bought…this year, I don’t purchase from Saudi Arabia. You no longer deserve my hard-earned money,” one user commented, adding the hashtag “#BoycottEA”.
Why this particular franchise feels the friction
Another user put it more bluntly: “Women in skirts? That’s not very Saudi Arabia of you.”
The Sims series was a pioneer for LGBTQ+ content in video games, and for a long stretch it was a safe space for queer gamers. The Sims Team has said in the past that the buyout wouldn’t influence The Sims 4. But the values the game was built on and the values of its new ownership don’t line up cleanly, and players have noticed.
That gap has pushed a chunk of the player base away from the game. The constant bugs haven’t helped either.
So the pitch on Aug. 27 is $3.99 for a slice of 1995 and a slice of 2004, sold by a company a lot of its own players have decided they’re done paying.
