Does Sims 4 allow you to play in multiplayer?
The Sims games have a huge, varied audience, but did the Sims 4 bring any Multiplayer support to allow that audience to get together?
In this article, we discuss if the Sims 4 has multiplayer features at all, and whether or not that was the plan during the development of one of the most popular simulation genre games in the world.
Does the Sims 4 have multiplayer?
The Sims 4 base game, or with any combination of DLC, packs and other content does not actually support most forms of multiplayer, whether that be local or online.
Arguably the gallery feature is a multiplayer component, but that doesn’t allow players to actually play together, just share their sims, rooms, houses and the like with other players via the internet – which those players can choose to download and then add to their games. But those Sims will be controlled like any other Sim in the world – either by the player running the game or the usual Sims AI.
In short, you cannot actually play multiplayer in the Sims 4 as it is sold. You can play it together on the same computer and take turns if you want, but that’s really it unless you want to count the Gallery feature as enough to be a multiplayer game.
Was The Sims 4 ever going to be Multiplayer?
There’s speculation about whether the game was originally intended to be multiplayer, and snippets of old code like the ones shown here seem to imply that at one stage it was in fact intended to be multiplayer.
Even if you don’t trust the likes of these bits of code, this isn’t an entirely difficult conclusion to draw either, compared to The Sims 3, Sims 4 has adopted an overall visual style that should be more performance-friendly, which would be well suited to supporting multiplayer.
Additionally, the lots/housing present in the game are tooled in such a way that would easily support Multiplayer as well, which was discussed in this Reddit thread a few years ago. In short, as each lot is gated behind its own loading screen, it’d be much easier to allow players to do whatever they want in their own little gated sections of the map, without impacting other players nearly as much.
If, for example, you entered build mode, it might have forcibly paused other players in the same world space as you, as the Sims 4 is typically paused while building.
This presumably wouldn’t be an issue with how lots are set up in Sims 4, as different lots are treated as different instances, which is why going to a different area always prompts a loading screen. Theoretically, that would enable different players to edit houses or play the games in separate lots without affecting each other – though that would raise a question about how time would work if one player builds while another actively plays, as typically players in build mode get their needs paused with time, but that would stop the game for the other player.
Regardless, it seems like there’s a very good chance based on these bits of information it was intended to support online multiplayer beyond the gallery, but that isn’t the game we ultimately got.
READ MORE: How to Free Place objects in The Sims 4
Anything else to be aware of?
That’s about it for the functionality that the core game supports. There is a Sims 4 multiplayer mod that I’ve also covered here you could look into if you’re determined to play some multiplayer Sims 4 with your friends.
With that said, if you’d like some more Sims 4 content, check out our category for the series here on The Click, and if you’d like to see more pieces that I’ve written personally, you can find those here.
