The Sims game series has typically offered a ridiculous number of options for how its virtual denizens live, work, play, and love—and it has never shied away from political blowback in the "love" category. The only major exception at this point has been a delineation between the series' three types of Sims—men, women, and children—in terms of 3D character rendering.

That changed on Thursday with an official unlocking of The Sims 4's customization options to all grown-up Sims. Voices, walking styles, clothing, accessories, and physiques can now be applied to men and women however users see fit.

"The Sims is made by a diverse team for a diverse audience, and it's really important to us that players are able to be creative and express themselves through our games," Maxis said in its announcement post. The company also made a statement to the Associated Press that was mindful of popular, real-life fashion choices: "Female Sims can [now] wear sharp men's suits like Ellen [DeGeneres], and male Sims can wear heels like Prince."

Further Reading EA working to fix block on gay name sharing in The Sims 4 fans' past complaints. Assumedly, prior games' 3D models of both characters and attached assets were built in such a way as to require more complicated gender-swap rebuilds of things like outfits.

Though we can't be sure if that cross-gender customization took so long due to technical reasons, we assume it was not for political ones due to Maxis' history of supporting Sims options like gay relationships and gay marriage—which landed the game's latest entry an "adults-only" rating in Russia when it launched there in 2014. Parent company EA has had a pretty long history of offering gender and sexuality choices for its other games' heroes as well.

The Maxis statement was careful not to fully enter America's latest political debate by mentioning changing a Sim's gender outright, which still requires a console-based trick to accomplish.