Electronic Arts Stands By LGBT ‘Sims’ Characters Not Hiding Their Identities

In a bid to become more inclusive, Electronic Arts (EA) announced earlier this week that it would be adding sexual orientations to The Sims franchise, allowing players to determine characters’ romantic interests from the next update. 

While many may champion the move forward as a step towards equality, there has been a subset of the game’s fans that have responded to the change by asking the game maker for an option to turn off the new settings.

According to PC Gamer, EA has declined the request, saying that players who aren’t keen on the additional options in Sims 4 can just leave the system settings as they are. 

“If you change none of the settings, your Sim will romantically behave as they currently do. They’ll have no inherent attraction to a gender, attraction can shift through gameplay, and they will WooHoo with any gender—currently default state for Sims,” explained the series’ official Twitter account. 

Pointing out that LGBTQ+ identities are “a fact of life” and “not a toggle to be switched on and off,” design lead Jessica Croft said that while the game does aim to give players the option to toggle certain features, disabling this particular update was off the table. 

As previously reported, EA said its journey towards inclusivity was “still in progress,” and that the team was working on proper mechanical systems to eventually support non-binary Sims in the future. 

[via PC Gamer and GadgetAny, cover image via Electronic Arts]