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Recommended reading 'It's not player friendly': EA boss says making The Sims 5 is 'not a good idea for our community' because players have over 10 years of spiritual, mental, and financial investment The Sims 4's rampant pregnancy bug was apparently caused by 'performance optimizations' and has now been fixed The best Sims 4 mods to expand your life sandbox One of the most infuriating little things about playing games in 2025: When the quality-of-life update fixes that one problem right after you finish a game Thank god: Battlefield 6 won't make you use the EA App on Steam (but it will if you're on Epic) Survival & Crafting Satisfactory's biggest patch since launch makes it friendlier for Steam Deck players: 'It's no exaggeration to say this update includes more than a year's worth of work' Planet Coaster 2's latest update introduces crime and punishment to your theme park, adding pickpockets, vandals, and security guards to stop them The Sims 4 has finally added the ability to disable your hundreds of DLC packs which feels like both a good and bad thing Mollie Taylor 20 August 2025 Goodbye, Journey to Batuu. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Maxis, Electronic Arts) As someone who played The Sims 3 on a tragically specced laptop, I'll always remember feeling mildly guilty whenever I ignored its suggestion to "select only a couple of packs at a time to ensure the best game experience," checking every box for every DLC I owned and hearing the whirr of my fans desperately fighting for their lives. Thankfully that's not an issue I've had with The Sims 4—the power of a better-optimised game not shackled to a 32-bit prison—but I've certainly had moments where I wished I could disable a pack or two here and there without having to faff around with the EA app's advanced launch options. Well, after almost 11 years, I finally can. (Image credit: EA) The Sims 4's latest base game update has added a proper pack selector which, side note, really highlights the sheer number of paid DLC it has. Unlike The Sims 3—which made you select packs before you booted up the game—The Sims 4 has it tucked away in the main menu. Related Articles 'It's not player friendly': EA boss says making The Sims 5 is 'not a good idea for our community' because players have over 10 years of spiritual, mental, and financial investment The Sims 4's rampant pregnancy bug was apparently caused by 'performance optimizations' and has now been fixed The best Sims 4 mods to expand your life sandbox It's certainly less of a requirement to disable packs than it was in the previous game, too. EA doesn't recommend doing it for any optimisation purposes (yet) and it seems more like a way for people to temporarily go without packs that are particularly disruptive to gameplay. It's giving more optional than necessary, which is exactly how it should be. I'm a fan of its introduction, personally, but I still have that tiny bit of fear lingering in the back of my brain that EA is eventually going to use this as a crutch for when the game bloats and potentially destabilises even further. From what the developer has been saying, it seems like The Sims 4 is sticking around for the foreseeable future, and with it already having the highest number of packs in the series, I imagine keeping everything running smoothly is only going to become more difficult. the sims pack selection update BROKE MY GAME - YouTube For the most part, though, this is just a genuinely good quality of life addition. As long as it works. Which in YouTuber lilsimsie's case, it currently doesn't seem to be. Disabling all of the packs is an easy enough task, but it seems as though re-enabling them can take at least 20 minutes. To be fair, lilsimsie was trying to re-enable every single pack in the game, but it's certainly worth keeping in mind. Personally, I hope having this in-game pack selector is a stepping stone to being able to fine-tune what we can pull from each pack in the future. Certain gameplay features can be checked on and off, but it's still pretty selective. Being able to disable larger gameplay overhauls while still keeping the furniture and Create-a-Sim items would be huge. I just hope that doesn't take another 11 years to happen. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Best gaming laptop 2025All our current recommendations 👉Check out our full guide👈 1. Best overall: Razer Blade 16 (2025) 2. Best budget: Gigabyte G6X 3. Best 14-inch: Razer Blade 14 (2025) 4. Best mid-range: MSI Vector 16 HX AI 5. Best high-performance: Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 6. Best 17-inch: Gigabyte Aorus 17X Mollie Taylor Social Links Navigation Features Producer Mollie spent her early childhood deeply invested in games like Killer Instinct, Toontown and Audition Online, which continue to form the pillars of her personality today. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 as a news writer and now lends her expertise to write a wealth of features, guides and reviews with a dash of chaos. She can often be found causing mischief in Final Fantasy 14, using those experiences to write neat things about her favourite MMO. When she's not staring at her bunny girl she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. 'It's not player friendly': EA boss says making The Sims 5 is 'not a good idea for our community' because players have over 10 years of spiritual, mental, and financial investment The Sims 4's rampant pregnancy bug was apparently caused by 'performance optimizations' and has now been fixed The best Sims 4 mods to expand your life sandbox One of the most infuriating little things about playing games in 2025: When the quality-of-life update fixes that one problem right after you finish a game Thank god: Battlefield 6 won't make you use the EA App on Steam (but it will if you're on Epic) Satisfactory's biggest patch since launch makes it friendlier for Steam Deck players: 'It's no exaggeration to say this update includes more than a year's worth of work' Latest in The Sims 'It's not player friendly': EA boss says making The Sims 5 is 'not a good idea for our community' because players have over 10 years of spiritual, mental, and financial investment The Sims 4's rampant pregnancy bug was apparently caused by 'performance optimizations' and has now been fixed The Sims 4 Enchanted by Nature expansion adds emotionally draining fairies and a whole lotta green After another disappointing Project Rene leak I wish EA would finally step in and say anything at all to Sims fans The best part of The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies expansion is just coming up with fun small business ideas How to get disruptive customers to leave in The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies Latest in News Take-Two lawyers give Mafia nude mods the cement shoes treatment, DMCA projects that had the Don's daughter parading in the buff World of Warcraft: Midnight will introduce a 'Prey' system, and by jove, I think Blizzard might be close to fixing the MMO's open-world difficulty problem I hope you like Black Ops 7, because it's upping the grind (again) so you'll be playing it forever Final Fantasy 14's Monster Hunter collab has two very easy steps: buy the game, spend 500 hours beating the game The US government wants a 10% stake in Intel in return for that CHIPS act cash Cult of the Lamb has revealed a huge DLC coming next year, finally letting us explore the towering mountain from the back of the map which has been bugging me since launch HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC Best graphics cards in 2025: I've tested pretty much every AMD and Nvidia GPU of the past 20 years and these are today's top cards Best gaming laptop in 2025: I've put the best of this new generation head-to-head and we have a winner Best gaming chair in 2025: I've tested a ton of gaming chairs and these are the seats I'd suggest for any PC gamer Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads Asus ROG Falcata Alienware 18 Area-51 (2025) review LG Ultragear 45GX950A review Sword of the Sea review—Atmospheric sand-surfing with somewhat samey puzzles Emeet Pixy review PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. 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