Gaming🎮 By popular demand, EA is bringing not-quite-Tinder to The Sims 4

[Royal_Lizard]

The Sims 4 Lovestruck expansion pack may have leaked so early and so comprehensively that you could've sworn that it'd already been announced, but actually, we've only just officially learned that this romantic add-on — the centrepiece of TS4's Season of Love summer '24 content plan — is soon to be a real thing.

This isn't the first time that The Sims franchise has turned its attention to matters of the heart. The original game famously came out with the Hot Date expansion pack in 2001, and The Sims 2: Nightlife even introduced a matchmaking service, albeit one in which a somewhat insensitively-portrayed old, erm, wise woman would make your perfect mate fall from the sky by magic. The Sims 4 is going a bit more modern and doing away with the summoning spells (and racial slurs) by having your Sims just join a dating app instead.

Cupid's Corner surprisingly resists the urge to pun on Tinder, Bumble, etc. and instead is just quite a normal name for a dating app, which is a bit disappointing given The Sims 4's history of amusing off-brand names ("Plopsy" for "Etsy", anyone?). It also seems to be the main selling point of the expansion pack, although there are plenty of peripheral activities around the newly-overhauled dating mechanics as well, including the addition of a series-first Romance Consultant career track and accompanying skill for all you aspiring love gurus out there.

Read more