According to a recent announcement on social media, Electronic Arts is discontinuing The Sims 4: Legacy Edition next month. Since 2019, players wishing to run The Sims 4 on older Mac and PC operating systems could only do so via the Legacy Edition, a version of the game designed to run on unsupported OSs with some limitations. According to EA, those players will now have to upgrade their OS or get a new device if they wish to keep playing.Released back in 2014, The Sims 4 has been through countless updates, patches, and expansions in its long lifespan. Technical issues, bugs, and incomplete or missing features have plagued the game throughout this time, and even now The Sims 4 fans are still clamoring for fixes to a number of longstanding problems. In 2019, EA announced that the game would no longer be supported on computers running Non-Metal macOS and 32-bit PC OS. The Sims 4: Legacy Edition was released at the same time to allow fans with those systems to continue playing The Sims 4.RELATED: How to Download The Sims 4 for FreeEA announced on Monday that, from December 12th 2022 onwards, The Sims 4: Legacy Edition will no longer be available. Fans using the Legacy Edition will need to upgrade their OS or install the game on a new device in order to continue playing, otherwise they will be unable to access The Sims 4. Any save files from the Legacy Edition will be still be accessible to players who upgrade their systems, although fan-made custom content and mods for The Sims 4: Legacy Edition "may not be compatible with the full version of the game," according to EA.

It has not been made clear, in either the announcement on Twitter nor the EA Help article linked in that post, why the Legacy Edition is being discontinued. The EA Help article even includes a section with the heading "Why is this happening?", but that question went unanswered in that section and the article at large. As the team behind The Sims seems to be busy designing The Sims 5 at the moment, it is possible that EA no longer considered supporting The Sims 4: Legacy Edition to be worth the effort.

This announcement certainly comes as a disappointment to fans using the Legacy Edition to continue enjoying The Sims 4 on older devices, and many fans responding to the announcement on Twitter expressed confusion and annoyance at the unexplained decision by EA to discontinue the service. Fans of The Sims being annoyed with EA is hardly a new phenomenon though, and the death of the Legacy Edition is unlikely to be a deal-breaker for diehard Simmers.

The Sims 4 is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

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Source: EA Help