The Sims 4 has a hard time pleasing its fandom. Whether it’s launching without pools or waiting nearly two years for toddlers, Sims fans often feel like the team isn’t listening to them. Now, The Sims team has left a Stuff Pack up for a community vote. Guess what? Sims fans are still pissed about the results.




Stuff Packs are small, cheap game add ons that generally add one gameplay feature and a smattering of new assets. Past Stuff Packs have included Bowling Stuff, which added bowling lanes, or the new Fitness Stuff, which added a climbing wall. Community voting on the overall theme for an upcoming Stuff Pack started on April 3rd. “Eco Living” won out, the description citing, “Potential areas of focus include laundry, home technology, and solar energy.” The next few rounds of voting for the overall art style, clothing and Build & Buy objects went on without much incident. I personally love the look of this pack. I wanted more messy rugs and rustic sinks, and I love that bay window.


Laundry won handily in the vote on gameplay features. A blog post from The Sims’ team said that in all regions, the majority of players voted for laundry, then food preserves, then “off the grid,” then “carbon conscious”—except Russia, which swapped “off the grid” and “food preserves.” Laundry showed up in the last game, and it has a huge cult following in the part of The Sims’ community that likes playing realistically. Although the vote shows that laundry was popular in the community, that doesn’t mean some simmers aren’t still pissed.

The very first comment on a blog post from a very popular Sims fansite says, “Such a major disappointment. Why on earth would anyone want to do laundry in their game. I don’t like doing it in real life. Off the Grid or Food Preserves would have been a much better choice.” Multiple threads on The Sims 4's forums have decried laundry as “boring.”



On the anonymous confession blog Sim Secrets, six of the 29 latest confessions are people mad about laundry. One is just an image of a sim standing in front of a washing machine captioned, “You stupid shit for brains I swear to god.” One player made a joke-y video of “leaked” laundry gameplay:


Some simmers that are trying to rationalize why something so “boring” won have started coming up with conspiracy theories. The idea is that the team was always going to add laundry, and that the vote was a total sham. “What’s easier, incorporate a washer and some baskets in a stuff pack or working on solar panels, water pumps and even more stuff?” one redditor on r/TheSims wrote. “Of course there is no proof for that but the whole vote leaves a bad taste in my mouth.” Many simmers point out that laundry isn’t eco friendly, which is true, though the upcoming pack will offer washing tubs and clothes lines in addition to washing machines.

It seems like even when it’s up to the community, some simmers will find a way to be mad at The Sims’ team. As for me, I’m just hyped for that fucking bay window.