The Sims franchise has been around for a long time, 21 years to be exact, but not every iteration of the game is readily available for players to access. The Sims 4 is the most digital of all Sims series to date, but other digital versions of past Sims games are still available via Origin. The Sims 3 and its subsequent DLC all have a home on the store, as well as The Sims Medieval, and its DLC Pirates and Nobles. Once upon a time, even The Sims 2 used to be available on Origin, but was removed toward the end of 2017.

EA stopped servicing The Sims 2 in 2014, but eased players into the change by gifting anyone who’d purchased a digital copy of The Sims 2 through Origin the upgraded Ultimate Collection. This collection included all stuff and expansion packs for the base game. There was talk of releasing the compilation in retail settings, but that never happened. Instead, only players who snagged the game between 2014 and 2017 on Origin have access to it. Despite its age, The Sims 2 remains to be quite popular in The Sims community, and some fans on Twitter are getting antsy from the lack of Sims 2.

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The Appeal of The Sims 2

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Despite The Sims 2 being over 15 years old, it’s still surprisingly popular in The Sims community. Not only was the game a foundation for the rest of The Sims franchise to come, but it had a ton of heart and personality. The NPCs and townies already had relationships with each other before players loaded up a family, and the game toed the line between too much and just wacky enough perfectly. It also won a ton of awards and reached a score of 90 on Metacritic.

Players don’t consistently play The Sims 2 for its graphics, of course, but all the gameplay options definitely make it a top-tier Sims game. Even without the DLC, The Sims 2 base game allowed for hours of play time thanks to not only the design of the game, but the randomness of it as well. If Sims’ social needs were down enough, the Social Bunny would appear and talk to Sims to get their social needs up again. The kicker part was the Bunny was only visible to the Sim who needed it, so if players switched to other household members it looked like the Sim was talking to themselves. Weird, fun gameplay like that kept players coming back for more.

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Why The Sims 2 Probably Won’t Come Back to Origin

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For now, The Sims 2 is known as a “sunset” game, meaning those who have the game digitally or physically on discs have access, but otherwise there’s no other way to play the game. In an official tweet from the EA Help Twitter account, it was made clear that there are no plans to have The Sims 2 return to Origin any time soon. Reasons for this include the game’s age (which doesn’t exactly make sense since lots of players still make it work on newer computers), as well as not having a dedicated development or support team in case players need help troubleshooting, which does make sense.

This definitely isn’t the news Sims fans wanted to hear, but for now it’s the only official word on the matter. The Sims 2 and its subsequent DLCs are fantastic entries into The Sims franchise that all players deserve to have access to, but it just doesn’t seem possible at this moment in time. Sims fans on Twitter have voiced their disappointment and frustration quite loudly (and even a bit rudely at times), but for now it seems pretty clear that The Sims 2 will not be returning to Origin in the near future.

There’s been no word about releasing a remastered version of The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection, but that doesn’t mean all hope should be completely lost. It might just need to be delayed a bit.

The Sims 2 originally released on September 14, 2004.

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