10 major Sims 4 features you probably forgot it didn’t have at launch 10 years ago

The Sims 4 turned 10 years old this week, bringing the longest-reigning game in the series into double digits. It’s been around so long now that I sometimes forget what it was like at launch: Back in 2014 it didn’t even have basements, for instance. After poring over old patch notes for other examples, it turns out I’d forgotten about all sorts of other features that I’ve gotten used to taking for granted.

As a Sims player, there will always be more features I want the series to add. Like, are we ever going to get cars in The Sims 4? I may occasionally dip away to The Sims 3 to revisit features like the open world and Create-A-Style, but The Sims 4 has made big strides of its own since it launched, adding better representation of skin colors and genders, as well as introducing my beloved tiny houses. For its 10th anniversary, I wanted to acknowledge how much further The Sims 4 has changed. So here’s a rundown on all the features you likely forgot didn’t exist 10 years ago.

2014

#1 Ghosts

This update came just a few months after The Sims 4 launched, but prior to Patch 5, Sims who died would just… be dead. After the ghosts update, the afterlife started to look way more like we know it now, with ghost Sims who can be a nuisance around the house by possessing objects and pranking live Sims or be added to the family to stay playable in their post-mortem state.

#2 Pools

I had completely forgotten that The Sims 4 launched without swimming pools. It’s a travesty that the original launch was missing such an important cultural touchstone for the series. With Patch 7, The Sims 4 got swimming pools in Build Mode and a swimwear category in Create-A-Sim. It also meant that Sims could die by drowning when running out of energy in the pool, but that whole “deleting the ladder to trap them” thing remains a relic of the past, since Sims in The Sims 4 are able to just climb out of the edge of a pool on their own.

2015